Charlestown Township, Portage County

How Charlestown Township, Portage County began

Charlestown Township, the only Charlestown Township in Ohio, was surveyed as Town 3, Range 7 and fell mainly to John Morgan, who sold to Samuel Hinckley of Northampton, Massachusetts; it was known as Hinckley Township until its 1814 organization. Abel Forcha, a widower hunter who fed early settlers with game, arrived around 1803 but never owned land here; Gen. John Campbell, who settled in 1805 and later founded Campbellsport at the four-township corner, is credited as the true first settler and recruited the Blandford and Granville Company of Massachusetts, who organized a Congregational church before they even left home. The township reportedly took its name after Campbell's Congregational settlers accepted a barrel of whisky from Charles Curtiss toward their church building in exchange for naming the town Charlestown rather than for its Massachusetts proprietor. A post office ran from 1820 to 1904. In the 20th century the township was transformed by two large public installations: Camp James A. Garfield, an Ohio National Guard training base created in 1941 on the northern half, tied to the Ravenna Arsenal, and West Branch State Park with the Michael J. Kirwan reservoir, opened in 1966 on the southern half. Today the township has 1,735 residents (2020).

Settled c. 1803 (Abel Forcha, hunter, no land claim); 1805 (Gen. John Campbell, first landholding settler), incorporated Organized 1814, having previously been called Hinckley Township, by Gen. John Campbell (first settler and agent who recruited the Blandford & Granville Company of Massachusetts).

Where the name comes from

The 1885 county history's own explanation is that the township was to be called Hinckley, for proprietor Samuel Hinckley of Northampton, Massachusetts, but that the Blandford & Granville Company's Congregational settlers instead named it Charlestown after Charles Curtiss agreed to contribute a barrel of whisky toward building their first church if they would use his name for the township, a bargain the 1885 history calls 'fighting the devil with fire.' No source ties the name to Charlestown, Massachusetts, or another place of that name.

Before the town

The 1957 county history 'Portage Heritage' lists Charlestown Township among those with recorded prehistoric mounds and burials, without an exact location. No named historic-era Native American village or camp specific to the township is documented in the sources consulted. For the county's broader Native history.

Timeline

1. c. 1803 — Abel Forcha, a widower who had first settled near Benjamin Tappan's settlement at Ravenna, moves to what becomes Farnham's Hill in Charlestown; he supports himself and neighboring settlers by hunting but never acquires land here, so the 1885 county history does not count him as the township's first true settler.
2. 1805 — John Campbell (later Gen. Campbell), who had married Sarah Ely of Deerfield in Portage County's first recorded wedding in 1800, settles on Lot 1 in the township's extreme southwest corner, building a house that stood on the corner of Charlestown, Ravenna, Rootstown and Edinburg townships, the future site of Campbellsport.
3. 1809 — Campbell, appointed land agent for the township, travels east and recruits the Blandford & Granville Company, a group of settler families from Granville and Blandford, Massachusetts, who organize a Congregational church before leaving home and pledge to forfeit $100 apiece if they fail to clear five acres and build a cabin within five years.
4. spring 1815 — Fifty-six people arrive together as one party, including families from Windham, Connecticut and Northampton and Granville, Massachusetts, each bringing a dozen or so children; the township's population doubles again within the same year.
5. 1814 — Charlestown Township organizes with thirteen votes cast; Lucretius Bissell is elected the first Justice of the Peace.
6. 1817 — Rev. Caleb Pitkin accepts a call from the township's Congregational church, remaining until 1827 when he leaves to take charge of the college at Hudson (later Western Reserve College).
7. 1820 — A post office opens in the township.
8. 1904 — The township post office closes.
9. 1900s — Dan R. Hanna, son of U.S. Senator Marcus A. Hanna, develops Cottage Hill Farm astride the Ravenna-Charlestown line into a showplace estate, donating land and building what is now called Hanna Road.
10. 1941 — Camp James A. Garfield, an Ohio National Guard training base tied to the Ravenna Arsenal, is created on the township's northern half; the U.S. Government's acquisition of land for the arsenal includes the former Hanna farm, by then owned by Congressman Chester Bolton.
11. 1966 — West Branch State Park and the Michael J. Kirwan reservoir open on the township's southern half.

Stories

A barrel of whisky buys a name

Before they ever left Massachusetts, the settler families John Campbell recruited from Granville and Blandford had already organized themselves into a Congregational church, and they carried that seriousness of purpose into the new township, naming it first for its Massachusetts-connected proprietor, Samuel Hinckley. But when it came time to build an actual church building, one of the settlers, Charles Curtiss, made an offer the fledgling congregation could not easily refuse: he would contribute a barrel of whisky toward construction if they would rename the township Charlestown instead. The 1885 county history calls the trade 'fighting the devil with fire,' a wry acknowledgment that whisky, however morally suspect to churchgoing settlers, was one of the only local products that reliably represented cash money on a frontier where a contribution of raw grain had no market at all. The congregation accepted, the name stuck, and the township's later Congregational and Methodist churches both still stand near the site the barrel of whisky helped pay for.

A township split between guns and a reservoir

By the mid-20th century, Charlestown Township's farmland had given way to two very different kinds of federal and state land use, each claiming roughly half the township. In 1941, as the country armed for the Second World War, the northern half became Camp James A. Garfield, an Ohio National Guard training ground tied to the Ravenna Arsenal — the same wartime munitions complex that, in nearby Ravenna, would employ more than 14,000 Ohioans at its peak, and whose acquisitions swallowed the former Cottage Hill Farm estate that Cleveland steel magnate Dan R. Hanna had built into a showplace decades earlier. A generation later, in 1966, the township's southern half was given over to an entirely different public purpose: West Branch State Park and the Michael J. Kirwan reservoir, built for flood control and recreation. Between the two, a rural township that had organized quietly in 1814 found most of its land turned over to state and federal purposes within the span of a single generation.

Photographs

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

Lake Hodgson, a reservoir on the Congress Lake Outlet/Breakneck Creek watershed, with intake at the city's plant at 5383 Lakewood Rd (built 1984, replacing the older Crystal Lake plant) The water here

• Ravenna City93% of residentsLake Hodgson
• Maple Del Manor Llc3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Birchwood Manor Mhc New3% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Ranch Club Estates Water Association1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Orchard Estates I Mhc, Llc0% of residentsBuried valley/sandstone aquifer wells (12 county wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-16

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