Adams Township, Defiance County

How Adams Township, Defiance County began

Adams Township fills the northeast corner of Defiance County, a full 36-section township organized April 6, 1836 while it was still part of Henry County, and named for Judge Bishop Adams, its first settler. Settlers from Montgomery, Warren and Delaware counties and New York arrived in 1835-37 on land so wet that a beaver-built marsh covered about two sections of Section 16 until the county ditch drained it. The 1883 county history counted Lutheran, Dunkard, Catholic and United Brethren churches and nine school districts; the township has no village and 884 people lived there in 2020.

Settled 1835, incorporated 1836-04-06 (township organized, as part of Henry County), by Judge Bishop Adams (first settler, Section 18); Eli and Ephraim Markel and Aaron Diehl among the 1835 arrivals.

Where the name comes from

Named for Judge Bishop Adams, the township's first settler, who took up land in Section 18; one of ten Adams Townships in Ohio.

Before the town

The Ridge Road (also called the Adams road), which crosses the township's great drained marsh in Section 16, follows what the 1883 county history describes as an ancient lake shore running from the Maumee River at Independence (in neighboring Richland Township) north to Detroit, Michigan -- a high, sandy, naturally graded route the history says was "much traveled by the ancient red men from near Detroit." The marsh itself, created over generations by beaver dams, yielded elk horns and numerous skeletal remains when drained in the 1800s, though no source we found specifies whether those remains were identified as Native American, so this remains an open question rather than a confirmed burial site.

• Ridge Road (Adams Road) (trail) — Adams Township, crossing the Section 16 marsh, on a route from Independence (Richland Township) to Detroit, Michigan, pre-settlement tradition (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1835 — Eli Markel and his nephew Ephraim Markel reach the township in September after seven days on the road from Delaware County; Aaron Diehl buys the 160 acres in Section 21 that he began to farm in 1843.
2. 1836 — Judge Bishop Adams is credited as first settler (Section 18); John Hornish Sr., Jacob Swartz and Charles Tubbs also arrive, and the voters of the new township include Eli Markel, George Grubb, John Scott and Darius Jones.
3. 1836-04-06 — Adams Township is organized, while still part of Henry County, and named for first settler Judge Bishop Adams.
4. 1837 — The township's first school is taught by Mrs. Tubbs in the summer, a subscription school of about nine scholars; Henry Lehman, born in Germany, takes up land in Section 21.
5. 1845-10 — Twenty-seven men vote at the October election in Adams Township, among them John Hornish, Charles Tubbs, Darius Jones and Ephraim Markell; the United Brethren class is organized the same year by Abraham Battenbury and meets first in a log schoolhouse.
6. 1870 — The United Brethren congregation builds its church at a cost of about $1,000; membership is 75 by 1883.
7. 1877 — A steam-powered sawmill, costing $2,500, is built in the township by Mr. Diehl.
8. 1878 — The German Baptist (Dunkard) church is built on Section 31; the township's Catholic church (Section 28, about $2,500) and Lutheran churches (Sections 10 and 13) also stand by 1883.
9. 1883 — The county history records nine school districts but eight schoolhouses, a prairie-marsh in Section 16 nearly drained by the county ditch, and Justices John Knape and Munson Whitney.
10. 2020 — Adams Township has 884 residents in the 2020 census, with no municipality inside it; U.S. 24 crosses its southeastern corner.

Stories

The marsh a beaver colony built

Section 16 of Adams Township once held what the 1883 county history calls a great prairie -- but before settlers drained it, it had been a great marsh or pond, built up over generations by beavers cutting timber and damming the low ground until it held water across some two full sections of land. When farmers finally drained it with a county ditch, they turned up elk horns and numerous skeletal remains in the exposed muck, physical evidence of how long the beaver-made wetland had stood undisturbed. Running through the same section was the Ridge Road, a naturally high, sandy route the county history describes as an old lake shore, said to have carried traffic between the Maumee River at Independence and Detroit, Michigan for generations before any township existed to name it -- a rare case in Defiance County's rural townships of a documented, if traditional, Native travel corridor rather than just a settled place name.

Bears, bucks and the possum trick on Adams's creeks

The 1883 county history preserves the reminiscences of Adams Township's first families, and the hunting stories are the best of them. Ephraim Markel, who came in September 1835 after a seven-day wagon trip, killed three or four bears and forty or fifty deer a year and trapped wolves, since the township was so wet that the 'big swamp' of Section 16 flooded the land around it. John Hornish Jr., at about thirteen, wounded a large buck that turned on him; Hornish stood his ground, his gun finally fired into the animal's breast, and when the buck charged and caught an antler under a root he finished it with his knife. Years later he and J. K. Potter shot an old bear beside a small creek, and when Hornish stepped up and struck the apparently dead animal with a club she sprang up and swung at him, missing only narrowly, so that Potter had to shoot her again. Charles Tubbs, by contrast, spent little time hunting and is remembered mostly as a hard-working farmer who saw his wife teach the township's first school in 1837.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Maumee River water pulled through two river intakes and stored in a 74-acre upground (off-channel) reservoir before treatment, near the Maumee/Auglaize/Tiffin River confluence at Defiance The water here

• Defiance City94% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Ayersville Water and Sewer District3% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Christi Water System Inc2% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Brunersburg Wd - Brunersburg1% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Brunersburg Wd - Airport0% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)

Public schools (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-04-17

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