Casting around for an alternative, St Clair thought of the Society of Cincinnati, an organisation of veterans from the American War of Independence of which he was a member.

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The society had taken its name from Cincinnatus, a hero of the Roman republic who had turned his back on the peaceful life of a farmer in order to serve the state, in a way that reminded the veterans of the career of their own first president, George Washington. So the new town north of the Ohio river became Cincinnati.

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