Butler Township, Columbiana County

How Butler Township, Columbiana County began

Butler Township, organized in 1806 in northwestern Columbiana County, holds two small unincorporated communities: Damascus, platted in 1808 and built up chiefly by Quakers, who gave it a biblical name in the same pattern as Salem and East Palestine elsewhere in the county; and Winona in the township's southeast. The township's best-documented historic property is the Franklin Harris Farmstead, an 1894 Queen Anne and Stick-Eastlake farmhouse built by a Quaker Civil War veteran turned dairy farmer, south of Salem on Depot Road.

Settled early 1800s, platted 1808 (Damascus), incorporated 1806 (township organized), by Columbiana County commissioners; Damascus platted by its Quaker settlers.

Where the name comes from

The reason for Butler Township's name is not recorded; Ohio has six townships named Butler. Damascus, within the township, was named for the ancient city of Damascus, Syria, part of a wider pattern of biblical place-naming among Columbiana County's Quaker-influenced towns.

Before the town

No specific Native American village, camp or burial site is recorded within Butler Township's present boundaries. The township lies within the region ceded under the 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh and confirmed by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Timeline

1. 1803 — Philip Iry enters section 34, and Isaac Test and Garret Campf enter section 23, among the township's first settlers; Henry Wintrobe enters section 8 in 1804, and Henry Woolf comes from Loudoun County, Virginia, that year and buys sections 18, 19 and 30 at $2 an acre.
2. 1805 — Friends hold the township's first meeting and put up a small log meeting-house; Joshua Lynch of New Jersey and Catlett Jones of Virginia minister there.
3. 1806 — Butler Township is organized in northwestern Columbiana County.
4. 1806 — Butler Township is organized on June 3, together with Wayne and Hanover; Henry Wintrobe, who farmed the highest land between the Ohio and Cleveland, is a justice of the peace this year and for many years after. Isaiah Harris comes from North Carolina and buys 320 acres in section 24.
5. 1807 — Jacob Sheets, who married Henry Woolf's daughter Polly, comes to the township and builds a sawmill whose dam he lines with willows.
6. 1808 — Damascus is platted, built up chiefly by Quaker settlers.
7. 1808 — The plat of the town of Damascus is recorded on April 8 by Horton Howard, agent for a Mr. Hoopes of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with 4-rod by 10-rod lots, 33-foot streets and four lots reserved for the neighborhood's needs.
8. 1822 — The first school in the Votaw neighborhood is opened in a log cabin in the northeast quarter of section 33; school was kept for three months by whoever was able and willing to teach.
9. 1827 — A large brick meeting-house is built on the site of the Friends' log meeting-house of 1805; a high wind destroys it in 1856 and it is rebuilt the following season.
10. 1828 — A post office opens at Damascus.
11. 1831 — The grist mill at Valley, built by John Emrich in the first decade of the century, passes to Aaron Stratton; it is in constant operation until Emerson Stanley holds it in 1879.
12. 1839 — The New Garden Friends meeting, previously held in Hanover Township, is transferred to Winona.
13. 1854 — The Friends divide: the Gurneyites keep the Damascus meeting-house, and the Wilburites build their own at the east end of Walnut Street two years later; the Ohio Yearly Meeting of the Gurney branch convenes at Damascus every second year.
14. 1868 — A post office is established at Winona with James H. Dean as postmaster; the village name is chosen at a public meeting from the names in Longfellow's poem 'Hiawatha.'
15. 1879 — Damascus has three Quaker meeting-houses, a Methodist Episcopal and a Wesleyan church, an academy, a hotel, three stores, a woolen mill and about 75 dwellings; Poplar Street is the county line with Mahoning County.
16. 1894 — Quaker Civil War veteran Franklin Harris, of the 104th Ohio Infantry, builds the Queen Anne and Stick-Eastlake farmhouse on Depot Road that becomes the Franklin Harris Farmstead.
17. 1997-11-24 — The Franklin Harris Farmstead, five buildings on four acres, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

A Quaker veteran's dairy farm

Franklin Harris served through the Civil War with the 104th Ohio Infantry before coming home to Butler Township to farm, and in 1894 he and his wife Priscilla built themselves a substantial house on Depot Road south of Salem -- a mix of Queen Anne turrets and Stick-Eastlake trim, set on a sandstone foundation under a slate roof, a notably ornate choice for a working dairy farm. The Harrises ran cattle and milk from the property for years afterward, and the farmstead's five surviving buildings across four acres were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

A Quaker town split by a county line

Damascus was laid out in 1808 by Horton Howard for a Pennsylvania landholder named Hoopes, with a plat signed by the Quaker proprietors on the eighth day of the fourth month, and it grew up around the Friends who had held their first meeting in the township three years earlier. By 1879 the village had three meeting-houses on Walnut Street, a Methodist Episcopal and a Wesleyan church, an academy, a woolen mill and about seventy-five houses. The 1854 division among Ohio Quakers split the congregation into Gurneyite and Wilburite branches, each with its own house of worship, and the Gurney Ohio Yearly Meeting met in Butler every other year, with a large house provided for it. Poplar Street, the village's cross street, was the boundary between Columbiana and Mahoning counties, so that half of the town lay in Goshen Township to the north.

Hiawatha in Butler Township

When the neighbors in the south of Butler Township petitioned for a post office in 1868, a public meeting was called to choose a name for the village, and the name Winona was picked from the characters in Longfellow's poem 'Hiawatha.' It stood mostly in the southwest quarter of section 26 and the southeast quarter of section 27, land first entered by James Burson and John Johnson and by the Whinnery brothers, Robert, Thomas, Zimri and John. James H. Dean was the first postmaster, followed by Samuel Williams, Isaac B. Lupton and Alfred Bruntingham. By 1879 the village had about 45 houses, a store, a steam sawmill and grist mill, a meeting-house, and a fruit nursery; the New Garden Friends had moved their meeting there from Hanover Township in 1839.

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

Every historic place in Columbiana County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Salem City93% of residentsEast Cold Run Reservoir & Spring Valley Reservoir (Cold Run Creek)
• Sebring Village4% of residentsMahoning River (surface water intake)
• Washingtonville Village3% of residentsEast Cold Run Reservoir & Spring Valley Reservoir (Cold Run Creek)
• Deer Run Mc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Colleges (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (2)

Shale and injection wells (6)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-05-07

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