Ashley

How Ashley began

Ashley grew up on land settled by Robert Brown around 1817, in the section of Oxford Township that the 1880 county history calls the Alum Creek District. The village itself was platted June 15, 1849, as "Oxford," then almost immediately renamed for co-owner L. W. Ashley, and it grew quickly once the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad made it a livestock-shipping point second to few stations on the line. It incorporated in 1855, and four of its buildings from that boom era, plus the Samuel Sharp family's country house nearby, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and 1982. Today it is a small residential village of about 1,200 people inside Oxford Township, still centered on the same High Street and Franklin Street the 1849 survey laid out.

Settled c. 1817 (Robert Brown, on the ground later platted as the village), platted June 15, 1849, as "Oxford"; renamed Ashley soon after, incorporated 1855 (petition filed March 3, 1855; granted June 1855; first officers elected August 30, 1855), by L. W. Ashley and J. C. Avery, the landowners; surveyed by County Surveyor Charles Neil.

Where the name comes from

The village was first platted under the name Oxford, matching the township, but the name was changed to Ashley for L. W. Ashley, who owned the ground jointly with J. C. Avery and platted it with him on June 15, 1849. Ashley continued adding to the town himself as late as 1860, when he laid out three more lots. Wikipedia's short article on the village gives the same origin in a single line: the name comes from "L. W. Ashley, one of the original owners of the village site."

Before the town

No source found records a Native village, camp, or named site on the exact ground where Ashley now stands. The 1880 county history does describe the wider section of Oxford Township in which Ashley arose as "a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians," with parties of Wyandot hunters ranging the forests as late as 1815 along a trail on Indian Run (in the Windsor's Corners part of the township, a few miles from the future village site), and it names one man specifically: an old Wyandot called Scionto, who continued coming into the township to trap game until about 1820, making the cabin of Joseph Cole, just over the line in Troy Township, his regular headquarters. Delaware County as a whole takes its name from the Lenape (Delaware) people, and the Mingo chief Pluggy had his town on the site of the modern city of Delaware, about ten miles north, from 1772 until his death in 1776; the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which opened this part of Ohio to settlement, was signed by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, and other nations. None of this is tied to the Ashley town site itself, only to the surrounding township and county; see the Delaware County file for the fuller regional record.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio, including the future Oxford Township, to the United States.
2. c. 1817 — Robert Brown settles the southwest quarter of what becomes the village of Ashley; his cabin later stands on the ground occupied by the Ashley Hotel.
3. 1849 — L. W. Ashley and J. C. Avery plat the village on June 15, sixty-nine inlots surveyed by County Surveyor Charles Neil under the name Oxford, soon changed to Ashley.
4. 1850 — Lewis Purmort opens the first store, moving stock into a sitting room of Aloy Patee's new Ashley Hotel before building his own storeroom; a post office is established with J. H. Miller as first postmaster.
5. 1855 — A petition for incorporation is granted, and on August 30 Ashley elects its first village officers, with James Culbertson as Mayor.
6. 1868 — A Masonic lodge, No. 407, is constituted at Ashley on April 8 under dispensation from the Grand Master of Ohio.
7. 1877 — A new two-story, four-room schoolhouse is built for the village's special school district, replacing the two-room building of 1862.
8. 1879 — Ashley ships 249 railroad cars of livestock in the year, 1,400 head of cattle, 16,679 sheep and 4,910 hogs, one of the busiest shipping points on the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis line.
9. 1980 — Four Ashley buildings, at 101 North Franklin Street and 223, 500 and 505 East and West High Street, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 25.

Stories

A Town Renamed Before It Was a Year Old

When Charles Neil ran his survey lines through the Alum Creek District in June 1849, the plat he recorded called the new town Oxford, the same name as the township around it. It did not stay Oxford for long. The ground belonged jointly to L. W. Ashley and J. C. Avery, and within the year the settlement was going by Ashley's name instead. Ashley kept adding to his town for another decade, platting three more outlots in 1860, and by 1880 the county history could describe a place of three dry-goods stores, two hotels, a distillery, two sawmills, three planing mills and two carriage shops, grown up, in its own words, "from a cross-roads settlement in the woods to a thriving village, second to none of its kind in the county."

Livestock by the Trainload

Ashley's fortune was the railroad. The Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis line ran directly through the village, and by the late 1870s Ashley was shipping more stock than almost any other way station on it. In 1879 alone, loaders sent out 249 rail cars from the Ashley yards: eighty cars of cattle, eighty-three of sheep, eighty-four of hogs, totaling 1,400 head of cattle, nearly 17,000 sheep, and almost 5,000 hogs bound for market. Behind that traffic stood the farms of Oxford Township, whose "great south woods" section, once considered nearly worthless swamp, had by then been drained and cleared into some of the county's most productive stock and grain land.

Four Houses from the Boom Years

Ashley's National Register listing is not a single landmark but four ordinary-looking village houses and storefronts, all entered on the register on the same day in November 1980: at 101 North Franklin Street, at 223 West High Street, and at 500 and 505 East High Street. They date from the decades after the 1849 platting, when the railroad trade was filling in the town's original sixty-nine lots and the later additions of 1849, 1850, 1852 and 1860. A fifth Ashley-area listing sometimes associated with the village, the Samuel Sharp House, actually stands several miles away on Horseshoe Road in neighboring Marlboro Township, sharing Ashley's 43003 ZIP code but not its corporate limits.

Photographs

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

Olentangy River intake at Del-Co's plant on Olentangy River Rd, Liberty Twp, south of the city of Delaware The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.53% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Ashley Village47% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 6 of 8 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 2.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

Cite this page