Aid Township, Lawrence County

How Aid Township, Lawrence County began

Aid Township, in northern Lawrence County, is the only Aid Township in Ohio and holds no incorporated town. It was already a counted township in the 1840 census, grew to 1,425 people by 1860 on iron-furnace, coal and farm work, and then lost people for the next hundred years as the charcoal furnaces closed; the 2020 count is 819. Its best-known son is Simeon Slavens Willis, born in the township in 1879, who became the 46th Governor of Kentucky (1943-1947). Its own founding date and the origin of its name are not recorded in the sources found.

Incorporated by 1840 (first appears in the county's 1840 census; organization date not found).

Where the name comes from

No source found records why the township was called Aid; it is the only Aid Township in Ohio. Willard's 1916 county history and the township's Wikipedia article both list the township without explaining the name.

Before the town

No source found records a Native village, mound, trail, or treaty event specific to Aid Township. The township lies within the Ohio River lands ceded at the 1795 Treaty of Greenville; the county's broader Native history is covered at the county level. The 1916 county history places the Waterloo coal seam under Aid, Lawrence, Decatur and Symmes townships but says nothing of earlier Native use of the land.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1816-12-20 — Lawrence County is created by act of the legislature of December 20, 1816, named for Captain James Lawrence of the War of 1812 navy; Aid is one of the townships later laid out inside its bounds.
2. 1840 — The township is counted for the first time in the federal census at 610 inhabitants.
3. 1850 — Aid has 884 people, and a post office named Aid, 'in the township by that name', is among the county's post offices listed for 1850.
4. 1856 — The county assessor rates Aid's 24,041 acres at $86,216 in land value, a little above neighboring Lawrence Township (21,130 acres, $57,236).
5. 1857 — William L. Griffith is born in Aid Township on February 2; his father Louis A. Griffith, son of a charcoal burner at the old Union Furnace, serves the township as justice of the peace and the county as commissioner.
6. 1860 — The census counts 1,425 people in Aid, the township's high point; the enumerator B. F. Cory counted Aid and Symmes together at 2,226.
7. 1879-12-01 — Simeon Slavens Willis is born in Aid Township; he attends school in Lawrence County, then in Greenup County, Kentucky.
8. 1890 — The census count is 1,375; it falls to 1,301 in 1900 and 1,118 in 1910 as the charcoal furnaces close.
9. 1910 — The census count is 1,118, down from 1,301 in 1900.
10. 1914 — The assessor's 1914 return values Aid Township at $443,816, with the Marion School District adding $115,953; Marion, the township's school district, has 11 teachers and 379 pupils and is one of six high-school districts outside Ironton.
11. 1943-12-07 — Willis takes office as Governor of Kentucky; he serves until December 9, 1947.
12. 2020 — The township's population is recorded at 819 across 40.9 square miles in the decennial census.

Stories

The governor from Aid Township

Simeon Slavens Willis was born in Aid Township on December 1, 1879, and went to school in Lawrence County and then across the river in Greenup County, Kentucky. He taught at a three-room school at Springville (now South Portsmouth) before he was twenty, read law with private tutors and was admitted to the bar on November 11, 1901. In January 1902 he opened a law office in Ashland, Kentucky, and he later served as city solicitor there (1918-1922) and on the Kentucky Court of Appeals from 1927 to 1932. He was elected Governor of Kentucky and held the office from December 7, 1943 to December 9, 1947, the 46th person to do so. Sources give his death as April 2, 1965 (one passage of the same article says April 1) at Frankfort.

From charcoal kilns to the justice's bench

The Griffith family shows how the furnace economy reached into Aid Township. Louis A. Griffith was born in Center County, Pennsylvania, in 1820, and came to Ohio as a boy with his father, a charcoal burner who ran the kilns that fed the old Union Furnace. Louis was among the first iron moulders to cast the furnace's well-known iron kettles, and later farmed, served as county commissioner, and was for years justice of the peace in Aid Township. His son William L. Griffith, born in the township on February 2, 1857, taught school there for a year, took a medical degree at the Miami Medical College in Cincinnati in 1893, and practiced at Steece and then, from 1897, at Etna Furnace with Pedro as his post office.

Photographs

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

Ohio River surface water, treated at the Ironton Water Treatment Plant (built 1993, approved capacity 4 million gallons per day, about 1.3 MGD produced). The foot-of-Vernon-Street siting describes the original 1872 waterworks, not the current intake location. The water here

• Hecla Water Association100% of residentsOhio River

Community health centers (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Public schools (2)

Public libraries (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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 2025-05-08

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