Luke Foster
Luke Foster, of the pioneers at Columbia, was one of the lieutenants appointed for the militia of Hamilton county by Governor St. Clair. He performed a most patriotic act in 1789, when the troops at Fort Washington were on particularly short commons, and General Harmar sent two of his officers to Columbia to get supplies. Captain James Flinn had corn to sell, but would not let the soldiers have it, saying that, while he lived near Marietta, the year before, he had sold corn to the garrison at Fort Harmar and had never been paid for it. Captain Strong answered that the men at the fort had been living on half rations for nine days, and if they were not supplied they must leave or starve. Mr. Foster, who was standing by, upon this instantly offered to lend them a hundred bushels of corn, which was part of the growth from two and a half acres in Turkey bottom, planted with six and a half quarts of corn, for which he had exchanged the same quantity of corn meal. His offer was gratefully accepted; but so remiss was the garrison afterwards in payment, or so poorly supplied, that, when in need himself, he had to ride six times to the fort to get as much as nineteen bushels of it returned. Mr. Foster, it may be of interest here to note, finally settled two miles south of Springdale, in Springfield township, where he lost his life on the tracks of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad, August 28, 1851, being struck by a gravel train. He was eighty-eight years old, had become deaf, and was otherwise greatly enfeebled. For many years he was an associate judge of the court of common pleas, under the old system, and was one of the first appointees to that office in Hamilton county.
Luke Foster, one of the Columbia pioneers and a lieutenant under appointment of Governor St. Clair, was the patriot who made the offer of a hundred bushels of corn to relieve the garrison at Fort Washington in 1789, as is related elsewhere. He remained with the Pleasant Valley settlement; also became an associate judge of the court of common pleas, and was killed August 28, 1857, at the great age of eighty-eight years, by a gravel train on the Cincinnati Hamilton & Dayton railroad, which passed through his farm.
From History of Hamilton county, Ohio, Henry & Kate Ford, L. A. Williams & Co., Publishers, 1881