Cass Township, Richland County

How Cass Township, Richland County began

Cass Township, in the northwest corner of Richland County, was erected out of the east half of Plymouth Township on December 12, 1849 and named for Gen. Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Democratic Party's 1848 presidential nominee. The village of Shiloh, in the township's north end, is the township's only incorporated place and its only National Register listing. Shiloh began life in September 1852 as a railroad junction called Salem Station and took its present name in 1862, in the aftermath of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh; its late-19th-century prosperity, built on railroad trade and local natural gas, is preserved in the Italianate Silas Ferrell House on Main Street.

Incorporated December 12, 1849 (erected out of the east half of Plymouth Township), by organized as a separate township from the east half of Plymouth Township.

Where the name comes from

Named for Gen. Lewis Cass of Michigan, the 1848 Democratic candidate for President.

Before the town

The 1880 county history says no Indians of consequence camped in the township, except a small band of Wyandots or Delawares, probably part of Armstrong's band from Greentown, who kept a permanent camp on the head-waters of the Black Fork; the settlers were never molested by them. No mound or earthwork is recorded. The township lies north of the Greenville Treaty line of 1795.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

• Permanent camp on the head-waters of the Black Fork (camp) — head-waters of the Black Fork, Cass Township, early 1800s, before settlement (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1815 — John McCart built the first cabin in the township on Section 24 and John Long, from Knox County, the second on Section 13, near the head-waters of the Black Fork; Daniel Prosser, John Morris and the Murphys followed in that and the next year.
2. 1816 — Benajah Boardman, a Methodist missionary, held the first religious services about 1816 or 1817 in John Long's cabin on the site of Planktown.
3. 1819 — The first schoolhouse was built on Section 9 and A. D. Bodley was the first teacher.
4. 1828 — Settlers built the hewed-log Salem Church, 50 feet by 40, on Section 1 by their united labor, the township's first church; it was replaced by a $1,625 frame church in 1852 and sold in 1874 to the Dunkards for $300.
5. 1832 — John Snyder, Abraham Fox and Michael Conrod laid out the town of London on the line between Sections 33 and 34, with 47 lots; it struggled for several years and by 1880 held only a few farmhouses.
6. 1837 — John Plank laid out Planktown, first called Plymouth and then Richland, around John Long's cabin on the road that carried wheat from Knox County to the lake; as many as 200 teams passed in a day after harvest.
7. 1849-12-12 — Cass Township is erected out of the east half of Plymouth Township and named for the 1848 Democratic candidate for President, Gen. Lewis Cass.
8. 1850 — The Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad came through the township; a village called Salem Station was laid out half a mile north of the later Shiloh, with a station house and a whisky shop, and moved south to higher ground.
9. 1852-09 — The village that became Shiloh was laid out as a railroad junction town called Salem Station.
10. 1857-06-12 — Return J. M. Ward, a former Planktown resident, was hanged in Toledo for the murder of his wife; he had also confessed to killing a peddler and Noah Hall at Planktown, a record that, with the railroad passing a mile away, helped to kill the town.
11. 1862 — Salem Station was renamed Shiloh, shortly after the Civil War Battle of Shiloh (April 1862).
12. 1880 — Merchant Silas Ferrell, who owned Shiloh's general store, an agricultural-implement factory, and a stake in the grain elevator, built his Italianate house on Main Street.
13. 1987-12-14 — The Silas Ferrell House was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

A junction town renamed for a Civil War battle

Shiloh started out in September 1852 with the flat, functional name Salem Station, marking a stop where two rail lines crossed in Cass Township's north end. Ten years later, in the spring of 1862, Union and Confederate armies fought the bloody two-day Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the name entered the national vocabulary. Salem Station's residents renamed their town Shiloh that same year. The rail junction kept growing through the rest of the century, drawing trade and, later, income from local natural gas deposits, prosperity that put down brick and stone in the form of merchant Silas Ferrell's 1880 Italianate house on Main Street — the only building in Shiloh, and the whole township, on the National Register today.

Planktown, the town the railroad missed

In 1837 John Plank bought the tavern at John Long's cabin, where teams hauling wheat from Knox County to the lake had been stopping for years, laid out a town, and called it first Plymouth and then Richland, though everyone said Planktown. Long himself, the township's second settler, had never wished to keep an inn; he sold out to a man named Rumer and built another house by his tan-yard. Mr. David Long told the county historian that as many as two hundred wagons loaded with wheat from the valleys of the Muskingum's tributaries passed through in a single day just after harvest. The town grew to perhaps two hundred people, with two stores and two hotels, and gathered a bad crowd of thieves and gamblers as well. When the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad ran through the township a mile away in 1850, people left for the new town of Shiloh, and a windstorm later flattened the old tavern. By 1880 only seven families, mostly farmers, lived there.

Photographs

Local history sources: sites.rootsweb.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · richlandcountyhistory.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Shelby City50% of residentsCity reservoirs (Nos. 2 & 3) fed by Black Fork Mohican River/Marsh Run
• Plymouth Village27% of residentsWest Branch Huron River, stored in Willard's upground reservoir
• Shiloh Village23% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 0 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-03

Cite this page