The Sebring family came from the Netherlands and moved to Pennsylvania. George E. and Elizabeth Larkins Sebring eventually settled in East Liverpool, where they ran a grocery business and lived with their ten children. The Sebrings then decided to find property and build a pottery town, as they had been involved in potteries in East Liverpool and East Palestine. They settled on 200 acres of farmland near the Mahoning River, with the railroad running through the property. After a great deal of work in starting the new town, the Articles of Incorporation were filed in 1899. Potteries and homes were constructed, and Sebring became a flourishing town, at one point considered the pottery center of the world.

The Sebring family came from the Netherlands and moved to Pennsylvania. George E. and Elizabeth Larkins Sebring eventually settled in East Liverpool, where they ran a grocery business and lived with their ten children. The Sebrings then decided to find property and build a pottery town, as they had been involved in potteries in East Liverpool and East Palestine. They settled on 200 acres of farmland near the Mahoning River, with the railroad running through the property. After a great deal of work in starting the new town, the Articles of Incorporation were filed in 1899. Potteries and homes were constructed, and Sebring became a flourishing town, at one point considered the pottery center of the world.

In 1911, Ohio entrepreneur George E. Sebring was drawn to the raw south-central Florida peninsular wilderness, known for bountiful fishing and game. After cofounding Sebring, Ohio, in 1898, he envisaged another eponymous town that would attract new residents to this largely unsettled area located 30 miles from the nearest railroad depot. The businessman purchased 9,000 acres on the shore of Lake Jackson, and his new town was designed and surveyed between October 1911 and April 1912. By virtue of its location along the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, the community of Sebring emerged as a novel tourist and golfing destination and was established as the seat of newly formed Highlands County in 1921. Cultural and technological advances have transformed the once-rural community into a thriving modern city that today retains its small-town atmosphere as the City on the Circle.