FRANKLIN COUNTY OHIO - BIO: STARLING, Lyne (published 1880)
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History of Franklin and Pickaway Counties,  Ohio
Pub by Williams Bros,  1880

LYNE STARLING

Lyne Starling was born in Mecklenburgh County,  Virginia,  in the year
1784;  removed to Kentucky in 1794,  and came to Franklinton in 1806. 
Through the influence of his brother-in-law,  Lucas Sullivant,  he was
placed in the clerks office for Franklin County,  a position for which, 
though young,  he was well qualified by previous training.  Subsequently
he was appointed clerk of the circuit and district courts of the United
States,  and also of the supreme and common pleas courts of Franklin
county.  Mr. Sullivant afterward furnished the means and formed a
partnership with his young relative in the mercantile business,  and he
became a successful merchant and enterprising trader,  being the first
one who ventured cargoes of produce down the Scioto,  and thence to New
Orleans in decked flat-boats.  This venture,  proving remunerative,  was
of great advantage,  not only to himself,  but to others.  He was a
commissary and large contractor for supplies to the Northwestern army
under General Harrison,  which assembled at Franklinton and Urbana
during the war of 1812.

Mr. Starling was all his life a sagacious business man,  and was one of
the original proprietors of Columbus,  the present central portion of
the city having been laid out on land owned by him.  A short extract
from a letter to his sister in Kentucky,  dated Franklinton,  July, 
1809,  may be of interest,  as fixing the date of the purchase of this
land:  "I have lately purchased an elegant seat and tract of land
opposite town,  on the other side of the river,  which I have an idea of
improving."  evidently as a gentleman's country seat,  in the suburbs of
the capital,  Franklinton.

Judge Gustavus Swan,  who had known Mr. Starling for forty years, 
speaks thus of him in an obituary,  written with great apparent
fairness:

"The deceased was,  by nature,  emphatically a great man.  He had a
quick and clear perception,  a retentive memory,  and a sound unerring
judgment.  He possessed the rare faculty of annihilating,  in an
instant,  the space between cause and effect.  He arrived at
conclusions,  and was acting upon them,  while ordinary minds were
contemplating the premises.  It was this peculiar intellectual
superiority which rendered his efforts in business so uniformly
successful,  and which enabled him,  before reaching the meridian of
life,  to amass one of the largest fortunes which have been accumulated
in the West."

His health failing,  he traveled extensively,  both in this country and
abroad.  Being a man of quick perceptions,  and a close observer both of
men and things,  he gained much practical knowledge and from intercourse
with the best society,  was much improved by his travels;  his
experience,  during these years of leisure,  compensating for his early
and exclusive devotion to business.

Mr. Starling never held any political office,  though an unsuccessful
candidate for congress,  his wealth and apparently exclusive manner
being against him with the masses,  who considered him an aristocrat. 
He finally made Columbus his permanent place of residence,  where he
returned to take charge,  as administrator,  of the large and valuable
landed estate of Mr. Lucas Sullivant.

Not long before his death,  to show his regard for the city whose first
houses he built,  and in which his fortune had been amassed,  he donated
thirty-five thousand dollars to establish a medical school,  named after
him,  Starling Medical College.  As he was never married,  at his
death,  which occurred in 1848,  his large estate was distributed,  by
will,  among his relatives.

At his own request,  he was buried in the old graveyard at Franklinton, 
near his sister,  Mrs. Sullivant,  and other friends.  When the Green
Lawn cemetery was established,  the remains were removed,  and a fine
monument marks the last resting place of one of the founders of the city
of Columbus.


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