The land that is today Westerville was settled by those of European ancestry 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.Anita Palladino ed., Diary of a Yankee Engineer: The Civil War Diary of John Henry Westervelt x n.5 (1996). In 1839, the Blendon Young Men's Seminary was chartered in Westerville;Edward Alanson Miller, The History of Educational Legislation in Ohio from 1803 to 1850, at 83 (1920). Matthew Westervelt was one of its first trustees.Palladino, supra, at x n.5. The Church of the United Brethren in Christ bought the seminary in 1846,Henry Kiddle & Alexander J. Schem, eds., The Cyclopædia of Education (3d ed.), 1883, p. 823 (at Google Books). 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.Quentin Charles Lansman, Higher Education in the Evangelical United Brethren Church, 1800–1954, at 18 (1972).
