Bokes Creek Township, Logan County

How Bokes Creek Township, Logan County began

Bokescreek Township, formed in 1837 out of Perry Township, sits in the northeastern corner of Logan County and takes its name from Bokes Creek, which runs through it. It holds parts of the villages of West Mansfield and Ridgeway. Its best-documented settlement is Flatwoods, a Black farming community founded in 1854 by Christopher Williams that grew through Underground Railroad arrivals and free Black settlers through the 19th century before declining to a ghost town in the 20th; its one-room schoolhouse survives, moved to a park in West Mansfield. The township remains rural, with 1,374 residents at the 2020 census.

Incorporated 1837, by Logan County commissioners, organizing the township from Perry Township.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Bokes Creek, which flows through it. One account holds the creek's name derives from a Native American word for 'lost,' after a Native man was lost along the stream; another holds it commemorates a white settler named Bogy who was lost near the creek. Sources consulted do not resolve which account is correct.

Before the town

No source consulted names a specific historic village, treaty site, mound or earthwork within Bokescreek Township itself. The township's name may itself preserve a Native American-origin word, though the sources are not certain about it. County-wide, this part of Logan County lay within the broader hunting and settlement range described for the Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo, Ottawa and other nations through the late 1700s; the county's documented Native villages (Mackachack, Wapatomica, Zane's Town, Moluntha's Town, Blue Jacket's Town and others) cluster along the Mad River well to the south and west of this township, and none is recorded here. The fuller county-level Native American history includes the Adena and Hopewell mound-building periods and the treaties that ceded this land.

Timeline

1. 1837 — Bokescreek Township was formed from Perry Township.
2. 1854 — Christopher Williams made the first settlement at Flatwoods, a community that grew as an overwhelmingly Black settlement in the township, with some families arriving as former enslaved people by way of the Underground Railroad.
3. c. 1868 — Flatwoods residents had established a Baptist church and Bokescreek Township School No. 10, a one-room schoolhouse.
4. 1923 — The Flatwoods schoolhouse closed as one-room schools in the area were consolidated.
5. 1999 — Local preservation efforts began to save the Flatwoods schoolhouse from demolition.
6. 2000 — The Flatwoods schoolhouse building was relocated to Veterans Memorial Park in West Mansfield.
7. 2002 — An Ohio Historical Marker commemorating the Flatwoods Schoolhouse was dedicated.

Stories

Flatwoods: a Black farming community built from scratch

In 1854, Christopher Williams made the first settlement at what became Flatwoods, in the interior of Bokescreek Township. Unlike most rural Ohio hamlets of the period, Flatwoods was built up almost entirely by Black families: some were free Black settlers who bought and cleared farmland, and according to the Logan County Historical Society, some had reached the community as former slaves traveling the Underground Railroad. By about 1868 the community supported its own Baptist church and a one-room schoolhouse, Bokescreek Township School No. 10. One of its early teachers, Solomon Day, attended Oberlin College while teaching at Flatwoods and went on to a career as an educator in Dayton. The school ran until 1923, when the consolidation of one-room schools around the county closed it, and Flatwoods slowly emptied out into a ghost town over the following decades. The schoolhouse itself survived: a preservation effort beginning in 1999 kept it from being torn down, and in 2000 it was moved to Veterans Memorial Park in West Mansfield, where an Ohio Historical Marker dedicated in 2002 now tells its story.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• West Mansfield Village89% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Rushsylvania Village11% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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