Butler Township, Darke County

How Butler Township, Darke County began

Butler Township, in the southern tier of Darke County and six miles square, was organized about 1819-20, though the 1880 county history found no record of the date in the county offices. It was named, the 1880 history thinks only indirectly, for Major Butler of St. Clair's Defeat, by way of Butler County, Ohio, home of many pioneers. A central tract known as Maple Swamp, around which St. Clair's army turned in 1791 according to the 1914 history, was ditched by the county and became some of the best farmland in the county. New Castine is its village, and the township was so reliably Democratic it was called 'the South Carolina of Darke County.'

Settled 1814 (John DeCamp or Job Camp, accounts differ), incorporated c. 1819-20 (no record of the date survives), by pioneers mainly from Butler County, Ohio.

Where the name comes from

The 1880 county history says the 'most current statement' was that the township honors Major Butler, killed at St. Clair's Defeat, but concludes this is probably true only indirectly: the township was settled mostly by people from Butler County, Ohio, and was named for their old home county. The 1914 county history agrees, adding that Butler County was named for General Richard Butler.

Before the town

The 1914 county history says a swamp once covered the middle of Butler Township and made General Arthur St. Clair turn his army east from the neighborhood of Castine toward Beech Grove in 1791, on the campaign that ended in St. Clair's Defeat; it also says it is 'generally supposed' that Wayne's trail crossed the township's south line near the Eaton pike and passed just west of the present township house on toward Fort Jefferson, while in 1812 a more westerly trail through Fort Black (New Madison) was used. No Native village or mound inside the township is recorded in the sources checked. The land was ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Miami, Shawnee.

• Wayne's trail (supposed route) (trail) — crossing the township from the Eaton pike toward Fort Jefferson, west of the township house, 1790s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1791 — General Arthur St. Clair's army, marching north to the Wabash, is said by the 1914 history to have turned east near Castine to avoid Maple Swamp.
2. 1814 — The township's earliest reputed settler arrives: Job Camp in the 1880 history, John DeCamp in the 1914 history.
3. 1816 — Jacob F. Miller is a Justice of the Peace, the earliest officer the 1880 history names.
4. 1817 — Francis Harter and his sons and James Mills settle in the township (1817 or 1818); Jacob Weingardner follows in 1819.
5. 1819-20 — Butler Township is organized; the date is not recorded in the county offices.
6. 1821 — Charles Harriman settles on the site of New Castine.
7. 1824 — The first schoolhouse is built on Section 35 near the later New Castine, with Samuel Satterley as first teacher.
8. 1830 — Joseph Danner builds a blacksmith shop on Section 26; Dr. J. P. Love buys it in 1833.
9. 1834 — Four school districts and the road districts, in use for about twenty years without legal form, are finally bounded by law.
10. 1840 — Otterbein Chapel, a log United Brethren church, is built in the northwest of the township; the 1914 history thinks it was probably the first church building and that a quarterly conference met there in 1844.
11. 1849 — The United Brethren build a church at New Castine.
12. 1859 — The Reformed congregation builds 'Beech Grove' church on the Greenville and Ithaca pike.
13. 1869 — The township's first turnpike, the Greenville and Eaton Pike, is built north-south through New Castine.
14. 1880 — Butler has five churches, nine school districts and thirty miles of turnpike; the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway crosses its northwest corner.
15. 2020 — Census population is 1,455.

Stories

A township that lost its own birth certificate

By 1880, Butler Township's own residents could not say for certain when their township had been organized. The county history reports that 'the most diligent search of the records in the county offices gives no information concerning the date' of organization, and that conversations with the oldest living residents gave no definite answer either, only a general impression that it happened around 1819 or 1820. The disorganization ran deeper than paperwork: Dr. J. P. Love, a resident of New Castine since 1833, recalled that some twenty years after the first settlement the township still had four school districts and several road districts that had never been legally constituted. Only in 1834 were they finally bounded and laid out by law.

Maple Swamp

A tract in the middle of Butler Township was known as Maple Swamp for the soft maples growing in it. The 1880 history says it was 'subject to frequent inundations,' and its value was low until the county commissioners had a drain put through it, after which the deep alluvium made it, in the writer's words, the richest and best farmland. The 1914 history adds an older memory: in the early days the swamp was so extensive that it made General St. Clair turn his army eastward from the neighborhood of Castine toward Beech Grove. By 1880 it was claimed that Butler had less untillable land than any other township in the county, and eleven years earlier it had contracted for thirty miles of turnpike at a cost of $60,000.

The New Garden Road

The east-west road that crosses the Greenville and Eaton pike at New Castine is still called the 'New Garden Road' in the 1880 county history. The name came from the semiannual meetings of the Quakers of New Garden, Indiana, and from the regular pilgrimage to them by large numbers of Quakers from Union Township, Miami County, Ohio, who passed along this road. The same history notes that Butler was so solidly Democratic that it had been called 'the South Carolina of Darke County,' a reputation the 1914 history attributes to families who moved in from Kentucky and the South just before the Civil War.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• New Madison Village44% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Arcanum Village27% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Greenville City23% of residentsGreenville Creek (primary, ~78%) blended with 8 wells
• West Manchester, Village Of3% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Verona, Village Of2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Sherwood Forest MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Northtowne Communities Llc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 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.
• Financial Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-09-15
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-06

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