Center Township, Williams County

How Center Township, Williams County began

Centre (Center) Township was established by the Williams County commissioners on March 7, 1836, from original townships 6 and 7 north in range 2 east, with its first election held at Jacob Dillman's house in April 1836. Settlement began in the summer or autumn of 1833, when the widow Mary Leonard came from Montgomery County with her sons-in-law James Overleas, Sebastian Frame and John Hickman and located in the southeast; Joel Kinsey followed in January 1834 and Jacob Dillman from Stark County in 1834. Dillman built the first schoolhouse and the county's first steam sawmill. In 1905 Shinn found it exclusively agricultural, its trade drawn off by Bryan and Edgerton; its villages, Melbern and Williams Center, held a store or two each.

Settled 1833, incorporated March 7, 1836, by Mary Leonard and her sons-in-law James Overleas, Sebastian Frame and John Hickman; Jacob Dillman.

Where the name comes from

Named for its location near the geographical center of Williams County before the county was reduced in size by later splits.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail or treaty site specific to Center Township is recorded. Williams County's wider Native history includes the prehistoric Nettle Lake Mound Group and the 1807 and 1817 treaty cessions that opened this part of northwestern Ohio to settlement.

Timeline

1. 1817 — The Treaty of the Maumee Rapids carries Indian title to this part of northwestern Ohio, including the future Center Township, to the United States.
2. 1833 — In summer or autumn the widow Mary Leonard comes from Montgomery County, Ohio, with her sons-in-law James Overleas, Sebastian Frame and John Hickman, in three or four ox-drawn wagons, and the four families settle in the southeast of the township; Frame, an elder of the Dunkard church, leads the first worship that winter.
3. 1834 — In January Joel Kinsey of Montgomery County enters the northwest quarter of Section 35 and builds a log cabin; George Skinner enters land that fall and sells it in October to Jacob Dillman, a wheelwright from Stark County who is looking for a mill site with water power.
4. 1836-01 — Centre (later Williams Center) is platted in the southwest quarter of section 35, intended as the seat of a combined Williams-Defiance county government.
5. 1836-02 — Montgomery Evans, Nathan Shirley and Thomas Warren plat the rival village of Freedom a few weeks after Centre, with the same ambition of becoming county seat.
6. 1836 — On March 7 the commissioners erect original townships 6 and 7 north, as far as the Michigan line, into Centre Township, with the first election at Jacob Dillman's house on the first Monday of April.
7. 1836 — Jacob Fetters of Montgomery County, a veteran of the War of 1812, settles on Section 27 and dies on December 19; Bannister Poole, born in Virginia in 1784, comes from Summit County; Jacob Neihart (1837) and William Sheridan (1840), a blacksmith, follow.
8. 1840 — Bryan is platted a short distance to the east and wins the Williams County seat contest, ending both Freedom's and Williams Center's hopes of becoming a county seat.
9. 1840 — William Sheridan, a blacksmith from Stark County, settles on a 15-acre farm; his son William Sheridan Jr. became prominent in county, district and state politics.
10. 1842 — Freedom, unable to compete with the nearby platted village that became Williams Center, is abandoned.
11. 1870 — Jacob Dillman, a United Brethren, temperance man and supporter of the county agricultural society who had built the first schoolhouse in the township and the first steam sawmill in the county with his own means, dies in March; Shinn says he did more for the county than perhaps any other man.
12. 1905 — Shinn describes Centre as exclusively agricultural with ten public schools; Melbern, in the west central part, and Williams Centre, near the southern line, each have a store or two, a church and mechanical shops, and the population has remained stationary because Bryan and Edgerton take the trade.

Stories

Two Villages, Weeks Apart, Both Betting on a County Seat

In the space of a few weeks in early 1836, two competing villages went up in Center Township, and both were founded on the same wager: that whichever one won out would become seat of a re-formed, unified Williams-Defiance county government. Centre, later renamed Williams Center, was platted first, in January, in the southwest quarter of section 35. Montgomery Evans, Nathan Shirley and Thomas Warren answered with Freedom the following month. Neither bet paid off as planned -- when the county lines were redrawn in 1845 and Bryan was platted a few miles east in 1840, the county-seat question was settled without either village winning it. Freedom could not compete with its neighbor and was abandoned by 1842; Williams Center survived, but, as one local historian put it, only as "a shadow of what it could have been."

Mrs. Leonard's four families

In the summer or autumn of 1833 a widow, Mary Leonard, came to what is now Centre Township from Montgomery County, Ohio, with her sons-in-law James Overleas, Sebastian Frame and John Hickman. Her family were nearly grown, and the men had come to enter land in the spring. They traveled with three or four wagons drawn by two yoke of oxen each and loaded with household goods; on arrival they lived in their wagons and in temporary shelters of poles, brush and blankets while the men built rough round-log cabins. These four families were probably the only people living in the township that year. Frame was an ordained elder of the Dunkard church, and Shinn says the first religious exercises in the township were conducted by him at his own house or at Mrs. Leonard's cabin; the families met during the severe winter of 1833-34 to worship and talk over the problems of pioneer life. Mrs. Leonard's household encountered no serious drawbacks, her sons and sons-in-law helping her make a comfortable home. Jacob Dillman, who bought his farm from George Skinner in 1834, found that the clover seed Skinner had sown was Canada thistle, which took years to eradicate.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohioghosttowns.wordpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Regional glacial aquifer (generally identified as the Michindoh aquifer), groundwater wells The water here

• Bryan City89% of residentsMichindoh (Maumee) Glacial Aquifer, groundwater wells
• Edgerton Village5% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Norlick3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Williams Co/hillside Country Living1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Oakwood MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (7)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-07-06: county board of elections.

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