12-31-2025 8:32pm

Newcom's Tavern Played A Major Role In Dayton's Development

Beth Callahan Editor

Above: Newcom's Tavern ca. 1799 by Rebekah Rogers (1875). Courtesy of the Dayton Metro Library.

Courtesy of Misti Spillman, Manager, Preservation and Community Outreach Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum. Living here in Warren County, we are fortunate to be between the two larger cities of Dayton and Cincinnati. This allows us to not only share in both of these city's accomplishments, but in their residents. And, believe it or not, one way of learning about these people can often be found in historical cemeteries. Dayton, Ohio's Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, which is one of the oldest garden cemeteries in the United States, is filled with history. And, this January the WarrenCountyPost.com has been given the privilege to publish a piece from Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum about Newcombs Tavern.

The oldest building in Dayton is Newcom’s tavern. It was built by Robert Edgar in 1796 for George & Mary Newcom at what would become the southwest corner of Main and Water (later renamed Monument) Streets.

George Newcom was born in Ireland in 1771 and came to the United States with his parents in 1775, settling in Delaware. George met & married his wife, Mary, in Pennsylvania before travelling onward to Dayton in the 1790’s.

As well as being the first tavern owner & trading post operator, George Newcom was Montgomery County’s first sheriff & jailer, got elected to the Ohio state senate in 1815, then became the first president of Dayton’s first bank.

Though he had been a soldier under Anthony Wayne & served in the War of 1812, Newcom’s title—he is often called “Colonel”—appears to be a term of respect rather than a military rank.

George Newcom died in 1853 at the age of 82. He and his wife Mary are buried in section 16, lot 53 at Woodland Cemetery.

According to Robert Edgar’s son, John F. Edgar, Newcom would pay Robert Edgar 6 shillings per day for cutting & hewing logs, and Edgar in turn would provide the Newcoms with one deer per week to pay his board while the work was done [1].

Once completed, Newcom's tavern served as Dayton's first school, first church, courthouse, council chamber and store. George & Mary Newcom’s daughter, Jane, was born in a second-floor bedroom in 1802—making her the first baby born in the newly settled Dayton [2].

In 1815 the Newcoms sold the tavern, which continued to be used; first as an inn, then a general store. Throughout the years, the structure had been altered—it had been plastered inside, weather boarded on the outside—until the original building was nearly forgotten.

In 1894, architect Charles Insco Williams began preparations to tear the building down to make room for a new apartment building. Newcom’s tavern might have slipped away from us then, and almost did—if not for Mary Davies Steele’s determination to save it.