Chatfield Township, Crawford County

How Chatfield Township, Crawford County began

Chatfield Township lies in the northern part of Crawford County, crossed north to south by the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike. Hunters had the land before settlers, and Wyandot families camped each autumn by the cranberry marsh on its edge until about 1830. Silas and Oliver Chatfield built cabins on the turnpike as early as 1827, and the township, probably named for them, was organized by 1833. German emigrants filled it from the 1830s: by 1881 about 190 of its 200 families were of German descent and its schools taught largely in German. The villages of North Liberty ('Hog Town,' platted 1834) and Richville (platted 1840) rose and declined, and the township is now rural, with the village of Chatfield at its center. It is the only Chatfield Township in Ohio.

Settled 1827 (Silas and Oliver Chatfield on the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike; hunters before about 1824), platted North Liberty, May 1834; Richville, May 1840, incorporated by 1833 (township officers qualify; earlier records missing), by Silas and Oliver Chatfield.

Where the name comes from

Perrin's 1881 county history says Silas and Oliver Chatfield, among the earliest settlers, are probably the people the township was named for, 'although this is not definitely known.' Jacob Whetstone, a hunter who claimed to be first to build a cabin there, said it would have been named Whetstone in his honor if Crawford County had not already had a Whetstone Township.

Before the town

Chatfield Township has one of the better site-level Native references among Crawford County townships: for centuries the area was a hunting ground, with recorded hunting camps at the headwaters of Sycamore Creek, amid swamp forest (elm, ash, beech, pin oak, maple) and a large cranberry bog that stood underwater most of the year. Perrin's 1881 county history adds that Indians, largely Wyandot from their reservation, came every autumn to camp near the cranberry marsh at the township's southeast edge, picked berries and hunted all winter, and sold the berries at Sandusky City; they camped there as late as 1830 and left reluctantly when settlers began to keep them from the marsh. The same account tells of Indian women who took pumpkins from Richard Davidson's yard, a youth treed by Davidson's dog, and a friendly wrestling match between a settler at a logging and a band of about ten Indians whose nation it does not name. The area lay in the New Purchase opened by the 1817 Treaty of the Foot of the Rapids, and the Wyandot reserve at Upper Sandusky was ceded in the 1842 Treaty of Upper Sandusky, with removal in 1843.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Sycamore Creek headwaters hunting camps (camp) — Chatfield Township, on the headwaters of Sycamore Creek, pre-1820s (exact period not dated in source) (remarkableohio.org)
• Autumn Wyandot camps by the cranberry marsh (camp) — southeastern Chatfield Township, near the western edge of the cranberry marsh, until about 1830 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. c. 1824 — Hunters Jacob Whetstone, George Stuckman and John ('Hog') Henry have entered the township by this date; Whetstone claims the first cabin, built several years before the township's creation.
2. 1827 — Silas and Oliver Chatfield, English-descended brothers, build cabins on the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike as early as this year; Silas is elected a trustee and Oliver treasurer in 1833, and both later sell and move west.
3. 1828-1830 — English settlers, mostly from New England by way of eastern Ohio counties, take up land along the turnpike: Richard Davidson, David Tipton, John Robinson, John Hamilton, David Clute, Ichabod Smith, Luther Flint and others.
4. 1830 — Indians, largely Wyandot from their reservation, camp each autumn in the township's southeast near the cranberry marsh as late as this year; they gather the berries for sale at Sandusky City.
5. 1832 — Methodists begin holding meetings in settlers' cabins and Richard Frisbee and Nathan Anthony open taverns on the turnpike about a mile north of the future Richville; a large German emigration begins about the same time.
6. 1833-11-11 — Township trustees meet and divide Chatfield into three school districts; Ichabod Smith is justice of the peace and Richard Davidson township clerk, the earliest officers whose records survive.
7. 1834-05 — North Liberty is surveyed and platted by county surveyor Thomas C. Sweney for proprietor John Henry, forty-one lots astride the turnpike; the village, never more than thirty-five people, is known as 'Hog Town.'
8. 1834 — David Shaffstall builds a water-powered sawmill on Sycamore Creek; Elizabeth Thompson teaches the first school, in North Liberty.
9. 1837 — German Lutherans and Reformed jointly use a large log building sided with black walnut as their first church; Chatfield's first frame school, on the turnpike near Richville, is built in 1836.
10. 1840-05 — Nathan Rich platted Richville, nineteen lots in the southeast quarter of section 18; his mill, built the same year, and an ashery making up to twenty-five tons of pearl-ash a year drive its growth.
11. c. 1840 — John Lucas and his widowed daughter Sarah Breston raise silkworms in the northeast of the township, spinning silk thread sold at Bucyrus and Sandusky City; they give it up after about twelve years.
12. 1843 — The post office, first established about 1833 at Richard Frisbee's tavern, is moved to Richville, with Dr. A. B. Fairbank as postmaster.
13. 1844 — A Baptist church is built on the turnpike in the southern part of the township.
14. 1845 — Boundaries change: the eastern tier of sections goes to Cranberry Township and the eastern tier of Lykens becomes part of Chatfield, giving the township its present bounds.
15. 1881 — About two hundred families live in Chatfield, 190 of them of German descent; the township is the county's 'banner Democratic township,' with 180 of about 200 votes cast for Democrats.
16. 1900 — The village of Chatfield, at the township's center, has 298 people at the census; it has 205 in 2020.
17. 2020 — The census counts 696 people in the township.

Stories

Swamp, bog, and hunting camp before the plow

Long before Silas and Oliver Chatfield built their cabins on the turnpike, the land that became their namesake township was hunting ground used by Native people, with camps recorded at the headwaters of Sycamore Creek. The country around those camps was heavily forested wetland, and to the east a large cranberry bog lay under water for most of the year. Perrin adds that Indians, 'largely members of the Wyandot tribe' from their reservation, came every autumn and built rude wigwams in the southeast near the marsh, remaining all winter and picking cranberries to sell at Sandusky City, until settlers began to keep them from the marsh; they camped there as late as 1830. It took decades of drainage and clearing before the township took on its open agricultural character.

'Hog Town' and its hog-taking founder

North Liberty was the first village laid out in Chatfield, surveyed and platted in May 1834 by county surveyor Thomas C. Sweney for John Henry, who owned the land. Forty-one lots were laid off and a few families moved in; no store or tavern ever opened there, and a man named Kronenbach built a small store a quarter mile south. Henry was the old hunter who was known for taking his neighbors' unmarked hogs, which ran loose in the woods; the neighbors began calling him 'Hog' Henry, and he adopted the name without protest. One day, hunters near the cranberry marsh heard a rifle shot, found Henry skinning a freshly killed hog, and one of them shot him through the thigh. He recovered in a few months and went on as before. From then on the village he had laid out was called Hog Town, a name it kept, and the history says the neighbors' ill will toward Henry kept it from ever prospering.

The silk farm in the backwoods

About 1840 John Lucas, an Englishman, and his widowed daughter Mrs. Sarah Breston began raising silkworms in the northeast of Chatfield township. They built long sheds with shelves, heated them to hatch eggs brought from Eastern cities, planted black mulberry seed in boxes for the worms to eat, and hired half a dozen girls to tend the caterpillars. The hardest part was growing enough mulberry plants; neighbors were paid in money or silk thread to help, but few kept at it. The worms spun cocoons, the thread was unwound and wound onto spools, and hundreds of spools were sold at Bucyrus and Sandusky City, though no cloth was made, only neckties and ribbons woven by Mrs. Breston. People came from miles around to watch the worms. After about twelve years the returns did not cover the cost and the buildings were pulled down.

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

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