Auglaize Township, Paulding County

How Auglaize Township, Paulding County began

Auglaize Township sits in the northeast corner of Paulding County, bordered by Defiance and Putnam Counties, and takes its name, like Auglaize County and Ohio's other Auglaize Township in Allen County, from the Auglaize River that runs through it. It was one of only four Paulding County townships already organized by 1842 -- alongside Brown, Crane, and Carryall -- making it among the county's oldest organized governments. It has no incorporated village of its own; its one notable community is Junction, an unincorporated crossroads in the township's west that earned its name in the canal era as the exact spot where the Wabash and Erie Canal met the Miami and Erie Canal, a distinction that made it briefly important before railroads passed it by.

Incorporated by 1842.

Where the name comes from

Named for the Auglaize River, which runs through the township; Ohio also has an Auglaize County and one other Auglaize Township, in Allen County, both named for the same river.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or treaty site specific to Auglaize Township is recorded, though the township's namesake Auglaize River was a significant corridor for the Ottawa (Odawa) in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the Ottawa Oquanoxa Reserve established by the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs lay along the same river system in neighboring Brown Township.

Nations recorded here: Odawa (Ottawa).

Timeline

1. 1810 — Shadrach Hudson, a veteran of St. Clair's defeat who later hauled supplies for the army, settles on section 19 on the right bank of the Auglaize about half a mile east of Junction; the 1892 atlas dates his arrival 1810, while an 1890 newspaper correspondent says the surviving two-story log house was built about 1822 or 1823.
2. 1830s — Junction is established in the township's west at the point where the Wabash and Erie Canal met the Miami and Erie Canal, taking its name from that junction.
3. 1840 — A. C. Adams teaches the first school in the township, to ten or twelve pupils in a log cabin on section 25 with a clapboard roof, puncheon floor and stick chimney.
4. 1841 — William K. Daggett builds the first saw mill in the township about a mile north of Junction, powered by water from the canal; it runs for nearly forty years.
5. 1842 — Auglaize is one of only four Paulding County townships already organized, alongside Brown, Crane, and Carryall; most of the rest of the county, including Emerald, Jackson, Harrison, Benton, and Latty townships, has no organized government yet.
6. 1842 — John Mason, Sr. and Nathan Shirley lay out the village of Junction at the meeting of the Wabash & Erie and Miami canals; the Junction post office opens the same year with Mason as postmaster.
7. 1845 — The northern half of Auglaize Township is stricken off to form Defiance County, and sections 13, 24, 25 and 36 are taken from Emerald Township and added on its west, leaving two sections numbered 24, 25 and 30 in different ranges.
8. 1849 — The first church is organized at Junction by a Methodist Episcopal minister named Adams, who opens the first Sabbath school the same year.
9. 1854 — The first schoolhouse in the township is built at Junction, a one-story frame 28 by 30 feet; a two-story brick replaces it in 1876 at a cost of $2,500.
10. 1882 — A second post office, Arthur, is established in the eastern part of the township and named for President Chester A. Arthur; John Moore is its first postmaster.
11. 1890 — The township's population is 1,027, down from 1,053 in 1880; Junction, once a canal-era town with hotels, warehouses and saloons, is described as a deserted village with three small stores and one hotel.

Stories

A Town Named for a Junction That Outlived Its Purpose

Few Ohio place names are as literal as Junction's: the small crossroads community in the west of Auglaize Township took its name because it sat at the exact point where the Wabash and Erie Canal, running west toward Indiana, met the Miami and Erie Canal, running south from the Maumee toward Cincinnati. For a stretch of the 1830s and 1840s, that made Junction a genuinely important spot on the map, a transfer point between two of the era's major waterways. It did not last. With the construction of the railroad, business activity shifted to other nearby places, and the town's population dwindled. Today it survives as an unincorporated crossroads on State Routes 111 and 637, its name the only surviving marker of the two canal lines that once crossed there.

The oldest house in the county

Shadrach Hudson built a two-story log house of squared logs on the right bank of the Auglaize, about half a mile east of Junction, with a huge fireplace at each end. A soldier with St. Clair when the general was defeated by the Indians, and a teamster hauling army supplies in the War of 1812, he was struck by the fertility of the Maumee valley and came back to settle. The 1892 county atlas calls the house the oldest in the county and notes that photographs of it were sold throughout the county in 1890, when a correspondent of the Oakwood Sentinel described it standing on the Potter farm near the cemetery where the Hudsons, Careys and Shirleys were buried. Hudson and his wife gathered their large family around the family altar every day and entertained passing strangers with roasts of bear meat, venison and wild turkey. The same account says the house was built about 1822 or 1823, a few years after the atlas's date of 1810 for his arrival.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Defiance City78% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Oakwood Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Paulding Village4% of residentsPaulding Reservoir, fed by Flat Rock Creek
• Ayersville Water and Sewer District2% 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)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

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