Worthington was settled in 1803, the same year Ohio became a state, by eleven families from Connecticut and Massachusetts, led by businessman James Kilbourne. With help from his friend, Thomas Worthington, Kilbourne purchased the land that would become the village of Worthington. When Kilbourne returned to New England, he began planning the layout for the village, making Worthington among the first planned cities in the Midwest.
In the 19th century, the area was established as a marketplace for all of the surrounding farms. But by the turn of the 20th century the area underwent a massive change when the village was connected to the capital city of Columbus by an electric street railway which opened up job opportunities for the locals and made the area a suburb. With that came an influx of improvements in quality of life, from a telephone exchange, to a public water system, electric lines, and free mail delivery.