Lyne Starling was born in Mecklenburgh county, Virginia, in the year 1784; removed to kentucky in 1794, and came to Franklinton in 1806. Through the influence of his brother-in-law, Lucas Sullivant, he was placed in the clerk's office for Franklin county--a position for which, though young, he was well qualified by previous training. Subsequently he was appointed clerk of the circuit and district courts of the United States, and also of the supreme and common pleas courts of franklin county. Mr. Sullivant afterward furnished the means and formed a partnership with his young relative in the mercantile business, and he became a successful merchant and enterprising trader, being the first one who ventured cargoes of produce down the Scioto, and thence to New Orleans in decked flat-boats. This venture, proving remunerative, was of great advantage, not only to himself, but to others. He was a commissary and large contractor for supplies to the Northwestern army under General Harrison, which assembled at Franklinton and Urbana during the war of 1812.

Mr. Starling was all his life a sagacious business man, and was one of the original proprietors of Columbus, the present central portion of the city having been laid out on land owned by him. A short extract from a letter to his sister in Kentucky, dated Franklinton, July, 1809, may be of interest, as fixing the date of the purchase of this land: "I have lately purchased an elegant seat and tract of land opposite town, or the other side of the river, which I have an idea of improving," evidently as a gentleman's country seat, in the suburbs of the capital--Franklinton.

Judge Gustavus Swan, who had known Mr. Starling for forty years, speaks thus of him in an obituary, written with great apparent fairness:

"The deceased was, by nature, emphatically a great man. He had a quick and clear perception, a retentive memory, and a sound, unerring judgment. He possessed the rare faculty of annihilating, in an instant, the space between cause and effect. He arrived at conclusions, and was acting upon them, while ordinary minds were contemplating the premises. It was this peculiar intellectual superiority which rendered his efforts in business so uniformly successful, and which enabled him, before reaching the meridian of life, to amass one of the largest fortunes which have been accumulated in the West."

His health failing, he traveled extensively, both in this country and abroad. Being a man of quick perceptions, and a close observer both of men and things, he gained much practical knowledge, and, form intercourse with the bess society, was much improved by his travels; his experience, during these years of leisure, compensating for his early and exclusive devotion to business.

Mr. Starling never held any political office, though an unsuccessful candidate for congresss--his wealth and apparently exclusive manner being against him with the masses, who considered him an aristocrat. He finally made Columbus his permanent place of residence, when he returned to take charge, as administrator, of the large and valuable landed estate of Mr. Lucas Sullivant.

Not long before his death, to show his regard for the city whose first houses he built, and in which his fortune had been amassed, he donated thirty-five thousand dollars to establish a medical school, named after him--Starling Medical college. As he was never married, at his death, which occurred in 1848, his large estate was distributed, by will, among his relatives.

At his own request, he was buried in the old graveyard at Franklinton, near his sister, Mrs. Sullivant, and other friends. When the Green Lawn cemetery was established, the remains were removed, and a fine monument marks the last resting place of one of the founders of the city of Columbus.