Berkshire Township, Delaware County

How Berkshire Township, Delaware County began

Berkshire was the third township in Delaware County settled by white families, when Colonel Moses Byxbe led a company from Berkshire County, Massachusetts onto land along the Little Walnut in the fall of 1804. Organized as a separate township in 1806 and named for the settlers' Massachusetts home county, Berkshire once stretched over much of the county's east-central townships before repeated subdivisions left it its present bounds. Byxbe's planned settlement at Berkshire Corners never grew into the town he hoped for, its commercial life instead migrating to Sunbury, platted in 1816 on the township's eastern edge, and to Galena, platted the same year where the Big and Little Walnut Creeks meet. Today the township is best known for the villages of Galena and Sunbury and for the Alum Creek and Hoover reservoirs nearby.

Settled 1804, incorporated 1806, by Major Thomas Brown's petition, separating Berkshire from Sharon Township, Franklin County.

Where the name comes from

Named for Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the home of Major Thomas Brown, Colonel Moses Byxbe and other of the community's prominent early settlers, according to the 1908 county history.

Before the town

No source consulted names a Native village, mound or trail within Berkshire Township's own boundaries. The closest the 1880 county history comes is a settler's recollection of 'a trail through the woods' that Berkshire boys followed on horseback, with sacks of corn, to a mill on the Whetstone (Olentangy) River in the settlement's earliest years — described as a path the pioneers themselves used, not identified in the source as a Native trail. Berkshire's land was surveyed as part of the United States Military District and distributed as Revolutionary War bounty-land warrants; Colonel Byxbe acquired his original 8,000 acres this way. That land was opened to settlement by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, in which the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa and other nations ceded most of Ohio to the United States. For the county's documented Native villages, trails and burials, including sites recorded in neighboring Kingston Township, see the county file.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa.

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio, including the future Berkshire Township, to the United States.
2. 1804 — Colonel Moses Byxbe leads a company from Berkshire County, Massachusetts, including surveyor Azariah Root and thirteen-year-old nephew Edwin Potter, first to Worthington in August and then, that November, onto his land on the Little Walnut, founding the Berkshire Corners settlement.
3. 1805 — A shoemaker named Curtis arrives in January, followed by John Kilbourn, Ralph Slack, Elam Vining Sr., blacksmith James Harper, Adonijah Rice, and two Black women named Sarah Brandy and Polly Noko, among the settlement's earliest recorded residents.
4. 1806 — Berkshire organizes as a separate township, taking its name from the Massachusetts county its leading settlers had left.
5. 1807 — Albert Root is born, the first white child in the township.
6. 1808 — Nathaniel Hall builds the community's first grist mill, on Alum Creek in what is now Berlin Township.
7. 1811 — Major Thomas Brown erects the township's first brick house, built of brick made near the site; it is still standing in 1908.
8. 1816 — William Carpenter plats Galena on April 3, at the junction of the Big and Little Walnut Creeks, on a village previously known as Zoar; the same year, November 9, Sunbury is platted on the township's eastern edge.
9. 1838 — Almon Price incorporates the village of Rome after laying his farm off into lots; with nothing to spur growth, the incorporation is later annulled on petition of the lot holders.
10. 1882 — Sunbury incorporates as a village within the township.

Stories

Colonel Byxbe's Wagon Train

Moses Byxbe was already a man of wealth in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, a hotel-keeper and store owner who had accumulated a large stock of Revolutionary War soldiers' land warrants. He located 8,000 acres of them in what became Berkshire and Berlin Townships, then organized a small expedition west in June 1804: a four-horse team driven by Orlando Barker, a three-horse team under Witter Stewart, and a single-horse wagon under Solomon Smith, loaded with store goods and household belongings, with Byxbe's own family following in a carriage. Surveyor Azariah Root and Byxbe's thirteen-year-old nephew Edwin Potter came along as well. After an 'adventurous journey' the party reached Worthington in August, close enough to Byxbe's land to serve as a base; he built a two-story frame house there and lived in it three months while he prepared cabins on his own tract, moving his family in for good that November.

Two Black Pioneers Named in the Record

Among the settlers who followed Colonel Byxbe into Berkshire Township in its first year, the 1908 county history names two Black women, Sarah Brandy and Polly Noko, alongside the shoemaker Curtis, surveyor John Kilbourn, and blacksmith James Harper. The source gives no further detail about their lives, work or how they came to the settlement — a gap typical of how nineteenth-century local histories recorded Black residents even when naming them individually. Their presence in the record nonetheless establishes that Berkshire Township's population was not uniformly white from its first winter.

A Town Called Zoar, Twice

Before it was Galena, the village at the junction of the Big and Little Walnut Creeks was known as Zoar, platted by William Carpenter in April 1816 around a log building that served as both school and church. When townspeople sought a post office, they discovered another Zoar already existed in Ohio, so at the suggestion of a resident named Nathan Dustin the village took the name Galena instead. Gilbert Carpenter Sr. had already built a sawmill there in 1809, and Benjamin Carpenter Jr. added a grist mill around 1818; growth was steady rather than rapid, but residents raised $13,000 by subscription, plus three donated acres for a depot, to bring the old Columbus and Mount Vernon Railroad through town.

Berkshire Corners' Lost Ambition

Colonel Byxbe had grand plans for his own settlement at Berkshire Corners, promoting its location and telling prospective settlers it might become the county seat, even possibly a state capital. It never happened. Byxbe himself shifted his energy and his large landholdings toward the town of Delaware instead, and without his continued backing, Berkshire Corners' prospects faded even though it was never formally platted as a village. Major Brown ran a store there until his death in 1816; his successor Flavius Fuller found the business unprofitable and closed it once Sunbury, a few miles east, began to boom as the area's commercial center. A cattle dealer named S. S. Bennett kept some trade alive at the Corners for a time, but the settlement never became more than a crossroads.

Photographs

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

Alum Creek Reservoir intake at the Scott plant, Lewis Center Rd at Africa, Orange Township The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.100% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells

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