Westerville, once known as "The Dry Capital of the World", is a city in Franklin and Delaware counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. It is a northeastern suburb of Columbus. The population was 35,318 at the 2000 census. The land that is today Westerville was first settled around 1810. In 1818, Matthew, Peter, and William Westervelt, settlers of Dutch extraction, migrated to the area from New York. Matthew Westervelt donated land for the construction of a Methodist church in 1836, and the settlement was subsequently named in the family’s honor. In 1839, the Blendon Young Men’s... Seminary was chartered in Westerville; Matthew Westervelt was one of its first trustees. The Church of the United Brethren in Christ bought the seminary in 1846, and the next year the seminary was reformed, and renamed Otterbein College after the church’s founder Philip William Otterbein. It continues today in Westerville as the private Otterbein University. Westerville was platted by 1856, and officially incorporated in August 1858. The town’s population in that year was 275. Throughout the Antebellum era, several homes in Westerville were stations on the Underground Railroad.
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