Butler Township, Richland County

How Butler Township, Richland County began

Butler Township, in the northeast corner of Richland County, was organized March 5, 1849 (Wikipedia gives February 5, 1849) from the part of old Clear Creek Township left in Richland County when Ashland County was formed and a two-mile strip off Blooming Grove, and was named for Gen. William O. Butler of Kentucky, the 1848 Democratic vice-presidential nominee. It is the flattest township in the county, drained by the head of the Whetstone, and settled slowly; Jacob Foulks came in 1815, and his son Henry laid out the village of La Fayette, now Adario, in 1838. The township has remained a farming community with Methodist and Disciple churches, a Grange organized in 1874, and no railroad; its township hall stands at Adario. The village of Butler, despite the shared name, lies in Worthington Township.

Settled 1815 (Jacob Foulks and Abraham Claberg, on the Whetstone), incorporated March 5, 1849 (organized as a township), by organized from Clear Creek and Blooming Grove townships.

Where the name comes from

Named for Gen. William O. Butler of Kentucky, a Mexican War veteran who ran for vice president in 1848 on the Democratic ticket headed by Gen. Lewis Cass.

Before the town

No mound, village or treaty site specific to Butler Township is recorded. Graham's 1880 county history says that when Abraham Claberg came in 1815 only two or three other families lived in the township and 'occasionally, Indians were seen'. A. J. Baughman's 1903 newspaper history notes that a local antiquarian, Daniel D. Staufer, was writing the history of 'an Indian tribe which in the long ago hunted game among the Butler hills', which points to hunting use by an unnamed group rather than settlement. The region was Wyandot and Lenape (Delaware) hunting ground north of the 1795 Greenville Treaty line.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Jacob Foulks settles and enters land on the Whetstone; Abraham Claberg settles on its banks the same year.
2. 1816 — Ransom Foulks, son of Jacob, is born, the first white child born in the township; John Wolf settles in the west part, and his house serves for years as a preaching place for Methodist circuit riders.
3. 1818 — Robert Houston, from Delaware, enters 160 acres on the Whetstone; the same year Nancy Foulks's death is the township's first recorded death.
4. 1819 — John Owens, an Irish immigrant, enters a quarter section on the Whetstone two miles north of Olivesburg and plants the first orchard in the neighborhood.
5. 1823 — President James Monroe grants Joseph Craig, named in the Butler village article as the first white settler of the area, a land patent.
6. 1824 — Robert Houston marries Sarah Owens, the first marriage in the township.
7. 1828 — A grand union wolf hunt of the surrounding townships closes on a center near the later site of La Fayette; deer and turkeys are killed but no wolves.
8. 1838 — Henry Foulks lays out the village of La Fayette and keeps its first store; Baughman says it was later renamed Adario to match its post office.
9. 1839 — A Mr. Fairchild starts the township's first sawmill, on the site later used by John Houston's steam sawmill.
10. 1842 — The first religious society at La Fayette is formed with eight members; it builds a $500 frame Methodist church in 1844 on an acre given by Edward T. Kirk.
11. 1849-02-05 — Butler Township is organized from parts of Clear Creek and Blooming Grove townships at six miles by four (Wikipedia's date; Graham and Baughman give March 5, 1849).
12. 1857 — The La Fayette Methodists replace their first church with a larger building contracted to James O. Hagerman for $1,200.
13. 1870 — About this year a Disciple church, 40 by 50 feet, is built in the northwest part of the township.
14. 1874 — Butler Grange is organized in April; it meets every two weeks in its own hall in La Fayette and keeps a small stock of groceries.
15. 1927 — A school is built at Adario that later becomes the Butler Township hall.

Stories

A township named for a defeated candidate

In 1848 Gen. Lewis Cass of Michigan headed the Democratic presidential ticket with Gen. William O. Butler of Kentucky as his running mate; the ticket lost to Zachary Taylor. Richland County's Democratic settlers nonetheless carried both names into the map: Cass Township lies in the county's northwest corner, and when the legislature carved a new township from Clear Creek and Blooming Grove in the northeast corner the following March, it was named for Butler. The village most associated with the family name, meanwhile, took a winding path of its own: platted as Independence in 1848 by Daniel Spohn and known locally as Spohntown, it did not formally become Butler until 1891, when the post office name was applied to the whole town to end confusion with another Independence, Ohio in Cuyahoga County.

The grand wolf hunt of 1828

In 1828 the settlers of Butler and the neighboring townships organized a union wolf hunt. A center was marked in a small neck of woods near where La Fayette now stands, with the trees blazed all round as a 'dead line', and marshals were named to keep the lines closed. About ten in the morning hundreds of men and boys formed lines two or three miles out and advanced with guns, tin bugles, dogs, pitchforks and butcher knives, making all the noise they could. As the lines closed, the marshals lost control and men began firing early; one man had tree bark knocked into his face by a passing bullet. A number of deer and turkeys were killed but no wolves, and the day ended in a feast; the 1880 historian said he had eaten a turkey Archibald Owens shot that day.

La Fayette becomes Adario

Henry Foulks, son of the pioneer Jacob Foulks, laid out a village on the Whetstone in 1838, kept its first store, and named it La Fayette for the French general of the Revolution. It gained a Methodist church in 1844, a steam sawmill run by John Houston, and in 1874 a Grange hall, and by 1880 liquor-selling was prohibited there. Because its post office carried the name Adario, the village took that name too, although Baughman noted in 1908 that many people still called it La Fayette. It never had a railroad, and in 1908 it was still waiting for a promised trolley line; today the township hall, a former school built in 1927, stands there.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · richland.ohgenweb.org · richlandcountyhistory.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

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• Greenwich Village49% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Ashland City22% of residentsJerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Shiloh Village15% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Rural Lorain Co. Water A11% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• Northern Ohio Rural Water - SE District3% of residentsLake Erie
• Bailey Lakes Village0% of residentsLake Erie
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