River Mile: 450

Population: 2,727

U.S. Census Profile

The village of New Richmond was founded in 1814 by Jacob Light, a veteran of the American Revolution. The name may have come from Light’s nephew, who helped him lay out the town and who hailed from Richmond, Virginia. In 1816, Englishman Thomas Ashburn laid out a town right next to New Richmond that he named Susanna, after his second wife. That town merged into New Richmond twelve years later. The town was a major terminus during the steamboat era, with so much produce getting shipped to the nearby big city that Clermont County was known as “Cincinnati’s Garden.”

In addition to shipbuilding, wool mills, saw mills, grain mills, distilleries and factories for clothing, furniture and carriages supported the town’s economy through the 19th century. The town was an early hotbed of abolitionism. Kentuckian James G. Birney first published his abolitionist newspaper, The Philanthropist, in New Richmond in 1936, and local churches publicly denounced slavery even earlier. The Ohio River brought disaster as well as wealth to the town, which lies within the flood plain. Some major floods occurred in 1898, 1907 and 1913, all eclipsed by the Great Flood of 1937, which destroyed more than half of New Richmond’s 415 homes. The village was hit hard again in 1955, 1964, 1967, 1997 and 2018.