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Erection of the Township,
and Derivation of Name - Subsequent Changes
in its Territory, and Present Area -
Boundaries, Streams and Water Privileges -
Topography and Soil - Pioneers -
Coming of
Benjamin J. Cox to Fort Findlay -
First
White Child Born in the Township -
Sketches
of the Shirleys,
Morelands,
Simpsons,
Chamberlins,
Hamiltons,
Slights,
Gardners,
Hedgeses, and all of the Earliest
Settlers of the Township Outside of the
Village - Suspicious Disappearance of Dr.
Wolverton from Whitlock's Tavern
- First Elections and Township Officers, and
List of Justices - Churches and Schools -
Roads and Population - Factories.
[Photo of WILLIAM M. MCKINLEY]
Pioneers - In
the general history of the county is
mentioned briefly the coming of the first
settlers to Findlay, and are given the names
of those pioneers who located here prior to
1830. The first permanent settler, or
rather "squatter," in what is now Findlay
Township, as well as in the county, was
Benjamin J. Cox. He was a native
of Virginia, where he grew to manhood and
married Mary Hughes. Early in
the present century, with his wife and four
children- two sons and two daughters - he
removed to Ohio, locating near Yellow
Springs, in Greene County, where Elizabeth
now the wife of Jacob Eberly, of
Portage, Wood County, was born September 20,
1806. From Greene the Cox family
removed to the south part of Logan County,
where they lived during the war of 1812,
four children having been born there, one of
whom died. Mr. Cox, who was a
one-eyed man, served as a scout in the
armies of Hull and Harrison.
Upon the close of the war and the evacuation
of Fort Findlay, in 1815, Mr. Cox,
who had often been to the fort, brought his
family to this point and took possession of
a story and a half hewed log house, erected
and previously occupied by Thorp, the
sutler of the garrison, while the war
lasted. Here in 1816 another daughter,
Lydia, was born, she being the first
white child born in the township, as well as
in what is now Hancock County. She is
at present a resident of Michigan, herself
and Mrs. Eberly being the only
survivors of the family. Mr. Cox
was a typical backwoodsman - a man who never
thought of the morrow, and was only happy
when following the chase. He cleared
and cultivated some land near the fort, and
also kept a sort of a frontier tavern, but
most of his time was passed in hunting.
He lived in harmony with the Indians, who
then dwelt at several points along the
Blanchard, and in 1818 when they removed to
their reservation around Big Springs, the
chief Kuqua, offered Mr. Cox a
farm if he would go and live with them, but
he refused the offer. The land upon
which Mr. Cox lived was entered by
Hon. Joseph Vance, William Neill and
Elnathan Cory, in July, 1821, and in the
fall of 1821 he had to give up his house to
Wilson Vance and remove to a smaller
cabin, which stood a little southwest of it.
In 1823 Mr. Cox left Findlay and went
to the Maumee, subsequently locating near
Portage, Wood County, whence he and his wife
removed to Indiana and there died.
Among the first settlers of Defiance County was the
family of Robert Shirley, and his
daughter, Mrs. Ruth Austin, widow of
Rev. James B. Austin, in her
"Recollections of Pioneer Life in the Maumee
Valley," alludes as follows to their
previous attempted settlement in Hancock
County:
"My father, Robert Shirley, when viewing the
country in 1820, had selected Fort Findlay
as the place of their settlement, and in the
spring of 1821 they each sent out a four
horse wagon, with plows, etc., seed-corn and
potatoes, also a stock of provisions and a
few hogs. Two men were sent with each
wagon, making a party of six. My
brothers, James and Elias,
took father's team. They cleared and
fenced land, and put in corn and potatoes.
When the summer's work was done, one man
returned with each wagon to Ross County,
leaving a horse apiece for the three men
remaining. Brother James
remained and Elias returned. To
fatten the hogs, slaughter and pack them
down, and to gather and store the corn and
potatoes for the winter was the work of
those remaining; then they left all in the
care of Mr. Cox's family - the only
residents there - and returned to their
homes. The horse left for brother
James had previously got away and went
back to Ross County. The alarm at home
was very great when the horse arrived
without its rider; all were sure he had been
killed until a letter was received from him
explaining the circumstance. Having
heard much of the Fort Defiance region,
brother James went there before
coming home, and was so captivated with it
that, on his return, he persuaded father to
change the location of his future home from
Fort Findlay to Fort Defiance."
In the spring of 1822 the
Shirley family removed from Ross County
to the vicinity of Fort Defiance, and in her
account of the trip Mrs. Austin, then
a girl of eleven years of age, says: "After
accompanying us to our destination, brother
James returned to Fort Findlay for
the purpose of conveying the provisions
stored there, for the subsistence of the
family, to Fort Defiance. He made the
journey through the unbroken wilderness
alone, on foot, provided with his compass,
gun, ammunition, flings, punk and blanket.
Our parents had great fears that James
would fall a prey to wild animals or
Indians, but he got safely through, and
purchasing a pirogue at Fort Findlay, took
the provisions down Blanchard's Fork to the
Auglaize, and thence down that stream to
Fort Defiance. These provisions had
been raised the previous year in Hancock
County, with the expectation that the future
home of the family would be at Fort
Findlay."
The MORELANDS
were the next family to settle in Findlay
Township, the two sons, William and Jacob,
having come out with the Shirleys
from Ross County in the spring of 1821.
They cleared a small patch of ground, put in
a crop, and erected a cabin on the southwest
quarter of Section 17. In the fall the
whole family, consisting of the parents and
two sons and four daughters, removed to this
county. The father, William, Sr.,
built a cabin on the north bank of the
river, a little northeast of the dam which
crosses the stream at Findlay, and all of
the children lived with him except Jacob,
who kept "bachelor's hall" in the cabin up
the river, on what is now the Aaron Baker
farm. This tract was soon
afterward entered by John P. Hamilton,
and when the latter came out in the spring
of 1822. Moreland was compelled to
remove from the land which he had improved
with the intention of entering it when able
to do so. William Moreland, Sr.,
was one of the judges at the elections held
in Findlay Township in 1823 and 1824, being
elected overseer of the poor in the later
year. In 1824 he was assessed fro one
horse and three head of cattle, but he never
owned any land, and after residing in the
county about eight years he removed to
Michigan. In October, 1823, Jacob
Moreland entered the west half of the
southeast quarter of Section 7, Township 1
north, Range 11, and settled upon it.
He is found assessed in 1824 with four head
of cattle. On May 4, 1826, he was
married to Sarah Poe (a niece of
Jacob Poe) by Robert McKinnis,
justice of the peace, this being the
second marriage in Hancock County. He
was elected township treasurer in April
1828, and removed to Michigan about the same
time as his father. William
Moreland, Jr., entered the north half of
the northwest quarter of Section 18,Township
1 north, Range 11, Dec. 21, 1826, and on
Mar. 12, 1827, he was married to Julia,
daughter of Job Chamberlin, Sr., by
Joshua Hedges, justice of the peace
of Findlay Township. He afterward sold
his land to William Taylor and
removed to a small farm on the west bank of
Eagle Creek, in what is now Madison
Township. In the spring of 1831, the
territory now embraced in Eagle, Van Buren,
and the west half of Madison Township was
cut off Liberty and Findlay and erected as
Van Buren; and at the first election held in
the new Subdivision of June, 1831,
William Moreland, Jr., was chosen as
justice of the peace. In May, 1833, he
purchased the improvement of John Diller,
but soon afterward sold out and settled on
Section 36, Findlay Township. His wife
died in March, 1836, and he subsequently
followed his father and brother to Michigan.
Two of his sisters, Susan and Elizabeth,
were married, respectively, to John and
Joseph Gardner, pioneers of Hancock
County, who also moved away at an early day.
Another sister married John Simpson, Jr.,
and removed to Michigan, while the remaining
one married a Mr. Locke, who lived on
the Tymachtee.
JOHN SIMPSON, of Ross County, Ohio, entered the
east half of the northeast quarter, and the
east half of the southeast quarter of
Section 25, Township 1 north, Range 10,
October 25, 1821, and with his son John
settled upon it the same fall. About
two years afterward his father was killed by
a falling limb. While hoeing corn in a
field which they had partly cleared up, a
storm came on, and in running to the house
for shelter he was struck on the head by a
falling limb and killed instantly. A
few years after his father's death another
son, Thomas, came out from Ross
County, and they subsequently sold their
land to Job Chamberlin, Sr., and
John Boyd. John Simpson, Jr.
married a daughter of William Moreland,
Sr. After selling the old
homestead the Simpsons purchased of
John Gardner, Sr., the west part of
the southeast quarter of Section 13, whereon
a portion of Findlay now stands. On
the 14th of March, 1828, they sold this
tract to Wilson Vance, who
subsequently laid it out in town lots.
George W. Simpson is also found among
the electors of 1828, and it is presumed he
was a member of this family. Soon
after selling out to Vance they went
to Michigan, toward which a considerable
immigration was moving about that period.
During their residence in this county the
Simpsons did very little farming, but
kept a pack of hounds and followed the chase
like true backwoods Nimrods. It is
said that one of their principal inducements
in going to Michigan was a report brought
back by a visiting wag that all sorts of
crops produced abundantly in that region
without cultivation, and wild game was very
plentiful. Such a land of paradise for
the hunter was what the Simpsons were
looking for, and they went only to find it
similar to the country they had deserted.
JOB CHAMBERLIN,
SR., comes next in the order of
settlement outside the town of Findlay,
having located with his family on the hill
which bears his name, February 15, 1822.
Mr. Chamberlin and his wife,
Deborah, were born, reared and married
in Colchester, Connecticut. Soon after
marriage they removed to Cayuga County, N.
Y., where eight children were born to them,
viz.: Deborah, Sally, Nancy, Lucy,
Vesta, Julia, Norman and Job.
The eldest there married Benjamin O.
Whitman, who afterward removed to the
county. In 1819 the parents, with the
seven remaining children, boated down the
Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to Lawrenceburg,
Ind., and settled at Georgetown, a village
about six miles from Lawrenceburg.
Here Nancy died, and in the spring of
1821 Mr. Chamberlin removed to
Urbana, Ohio. On the 4th of October,
1821, he entered the southwest quarter of
Section 30, Township 1 north, Range 11, and
the following February arrived with his
family at the site of his future home,
leaving two daughters, Sally and
Lucy, in Urbana, where they were soon
afterward married, respectively, to Levi
and Thomas Taylor, pioneers of
Champaign County. Messrs, Vance,
Cox, Moreland, Smith and Simpson,
the only families then living in the
township, assisted Mr. Chamberlin to
build a log cabin, into which he moved with
his family the third day after their
arrival. He soon made a clearing which
he planted in corn, and from this crop
raised sufficient to winter h is stock
through the winter of 1822-23. Mr.
Chamberlin took an active interest in
all the early elections. In those held
in 1823 and 1824 he was one of the judges of
election, and in the latter year was chosen
treasurer, and also one of the trustees of
Findlay Township, which at the first county
election in April, 1828, and was defeated,
but he was elected township trustee at that
election. In the first tax levy, made
in 1824, Mr. Chamberlin is assessed
for five head of cattle, viz.: three cows
and a yoke of oxen. But in a few
years he was able to furnish the pioneers,
who came into the county, with hogs, cattle,
sheep, wheat, corn, wool and other
necessaries then very scarce in this part of
the State. In 1827 he bought out
John Simpson, paying for the eighty
acres in hogs, and thus became the owner of
240 acres, covering a large portion of
"Chamberlin's Hill." His wife died
Jan. 8, 1829, and the next year he married
Miss Sarah Criner. In 1831 he
divided the old homestead on the hill
equally between his two sons, Norman and
Job, and removed to a farm on Section 7,
Liberty Township, where he died Sept. 4,
1847, his widow surviving him till Dec. 28,
1854. In early life Mr. Chamberlin
was a Baptist, but his second wife being a
Presbyterian he united with that church
after his marriage to Miss Criner.
Of the four children who came with him to
this county in 1822, all are dead except
Job. Vesta married
Joseph C. Shannon, who then lived on the
Tymochtee, and died in about a year
afterward. Julia became the
wife of William Moreland, Jr., in
1827, and died in 1836. Norman
married Elizabeth Baker in 1832.
She died the following year, and in 1834 he
was married to Eliza Watson, sister
of Richard Watson, Sr., and died at
his home on the hill in 1845, while serving
as coroner of the county, leaving one son,
John, who, in after years removed to
Illinois. Job, with his wife
and family, lived on the hill till 1874,
when he moved into the village, where he is
now residing - the oldest living pioneer of
Hancock County.
JOHN P. HAMILTON
entered the west part of the southwest
quarter of Section 17, Township 1 North,
Range 11, Oct. 8, 1821; and the east part of
the southwest quarter of the same section,
June 10, 1822. In the spring the
southwest quarter of the same section, June
10, 1822. In the spring of the latter
year Mr. Hamilton brought out
Matthew Reighly and wife, and settled on
his land, taking possession of a cabin
previously erected by Jacob
Moreland, who intended entering the
tract, but put it off until too late, and
thus lost the land and improvements thereon.
With the assistance of Mr. Reighly a
crop was put in, and in the fall Mr.
Hamilton brought his family to their new
home on the Blanchard. He and wife,
Martha, were natives of Virginia,
who had settled in Gallia County, Ohio,
whence with three children, Eliza, Robert
and Mary B., they came to Hancock,
where Lucinda, Julia, Emily, Parmelia
and John were born. Of these
Mrs. Job Chamberlin and Mrs.. Emily
Vandenburg of Findlay, and John and
Parmelia of Kansas, are the only
survivors. In 1824 Mr. Hamilton
was assessed for two horses and two head of
cattle. At the first county election
in April, 1828, he was elected one of the
three commissioners of Hancock County, and
re-elected the following October, serving
until December, 1831. Mr. Hamilton
was one of the progressive men of that
day and took an active interest in all the
early public business of the county.
He died in Findlay, Nov. 8, 1857.
BLUFORD HAMILTON
came out with his brother, John P.,
in 1822, and resided with the latter till
his marriage with Zibella Beard,
about 1829. He was one of the voters
at the first county election; but as he died
in the spring of 1833, he is not very well
remembered.
THOMAS SLIGHT settled
in Findlay Township early in the summer of
1822. He entered the south part of the
southeast quarter of Section 17, Township 1
north, Range 11, Oct. 29, 1821, his land
adjoining John P. Hamilton's on the
east. Mr. Slight was assessed
in 1824 with one horse and four head of
cattle. In April, 1828, he was elected
coroner of Hancock County, and re-elected in
October following, serving till November,
1830. He was again elected to the same
office in October, 1832, and once more in
1835. Mr. Sight was a native of
Maryland. He reared quite a large
family and some of his descendants still
reside in the county. He had a brother
named Joseph, who came with him to
Hancock, whence most of the family removed
to Indiana.
JOHN and ELIZABETH GARDNER
and family settled on the site of Maple
Grove Cemetery late in the fall of 1822.
The parents were Pennsylvania-Irish and had
a family of four sons and three daughters
when they came to this county. The
Gardner boys, Jonathan, John, William
and Joseph, are remembered as
well-developed specimens of physical
manhood, who had few superiors in the
backwoods sports of pioneer days. The
father entered over 200 acres of land in
Findlay and Liberty Townships in 1821 and
1822. John and Joseph Gardner
married, respectively, Susan and
Elizabeth Moreland. In 1828
John Gardner, Sr. sold his land near
Findlay and soon after removed to Lagrange
County, Ind. The whole Gardner
family left the county soon after this time,
some of them settling in Indiana and others
in Michigan. At the second election,
held in Findlay Township in April, 1824.
John Gardner was elected one of the
two fence viewers; and the same spring was
assessed for two horses and four head of
cattle. He was also a voter at the
first county election in April, 1828, and
the family were residents of the county
about seven years.
JOSHUA HEDGES came
from Fairfield County, Ohio, to this
township in September, 1824, and settled
north of the river on Section 11, where he
had entered about 160 acres of land Mar. 28,
1822. Mr. Hedges was born in
Virginia May 24, 1793, and removed to
Fairfield County, Ohio, with his parents
when quite small, where he grew to manhood
and, April 13, 185, was married to Miss
Hannah Reese, also a native of Virginia,
born in September, 1796. They had a
family of one son and five daughters when
they came to Hancock County, and three
children were born here. Of the nine
only one survives, though several of their
grandchildren reside in the county. In
April, 1826, Mr. Hedges was elected
justice of the peace, and re-elected to the
same office. He was the first
treasurer of Hancock County, serving from
April to October, 1828. In 1840 he was
elected coroner and served one term.
Mr. Hedges died on the old homestead
northwest of Findlay, in 1845, his widow
surviving him ten years, dying in 1855.
He was a tall, muscular, energetic man, very
hospital and strictly honest, a stanch
Democrat and for many years a member of the
Methodist Church.
DAVID GITCHEL, of
Logan County, Ohio, settled on the southeast
corner of John Simpson's land, on
"Chamberlin's Hill," about 1825. He
built a cabin and cleared a few acres of
ground, but when Simpson sold out to
Job Chamberlin, Sr., in 1827,
Gitchel moved to a piece of land about a
mile south of the Simpson place, and
finally went back to Logan County.
In the spring of 1827
ISAAC JOHNSON and wife, and sons,
Joseph, Isaac, Miller and Eli,
and daughters, Betsy and Lydia
(the former of whom subsequently married
Matthew Reighly, and the latter Peter
Deamer), came to this township.
The Johnsons removed from Virginia to
Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1811, and thence to
this county sixteen years afterward.
The father released a piece of land of
Joshua Hedges, in Section 11; was
elected overseer of the poor in April, 1828,
and after several years' residence in the
county he removed to Indiana. His son,
Joseph, though bending under the
weight of old age, is yet a resident of the
county. A sketch of him will be found
in the history of Marion Township.
JOHN BOYD
JOHN JONES
located northwest of Findlay in the fall of
1827, whence he removed to a piece of land
on Eagle Creek, south of the town. He
was elected constable of Findlay Township in
April, 1828. After a few years'
residence in this county he went West, and
is little remembered even by the oldest
settlers.
JACOB FOSTER
JUDGE ROBERT L. STROTHER
WILLIAM DULIN
LEONARD TRITCH
ABRAHAM and MARGARET SCHOONOVER
JOHN BAKER, RICHARD WADE and HENRY FOLK
ROBERT BONHAM, SR.
DANIEL ANDRECK, JOHN BISHOP, JOHN HARRITT, BENONI CULP
and JACOB FELLER
JOHN BYAL
Other settlers in 1832 were THOMAS G. WHITLOCK,
ALVIN SCHOONOVER, PETER DEAMER and
SAMUEL SPANGLER
In the spring of 1833 ANTHONY STROTHER
FREDERICK DUDUIT
In September, 1833, WILLIAM BYAL
SAMUEL K. RADEBAUGH
First
Elections and Township Officers, and List of
Justices -
Churches
and Schools -
Roads and
Population -
Factories
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