Chesterfield Township, Fulton County

How Chesterfield Township, Fulton County began

Chesterfield Township, organized in 1837, sits in northern Fulton County along the Michigan border and is named for Chesterfield Clemons, who settled on section 14 on October 6, 1834, and is recorded as its first white settler; it is the only Chesterfield Township in Ohio. The land lay in the strip Michigan governed as part of Seneca Township until December 1836. Alanson Briggs opened an Indian trading post on the old Territorial Road in 1835, and the township's first election, where the settlers chose the name, was held in 1837. It never had a village or railroad; its farms traded at Morenci, Michigan, and it was long known for cheese making. The small communities of Advance, Denson, Inlet and Oakshade lie within it, and its southern edge runs along the western rim of the glacial Defiance Moraine.

Settled 1834-10-06, incorporated Organized June 4, 1837, by Chesterfield Clemons (first settler).

Where the name comes from

Named for Chesterfield Clemons, the first settler, who came from Paynesville, Ohio, with his wife Fannie and daughters in October 1834 and died in the township in 1842. John S. Butler, who was present as a boy, recalled that at the first township meeting in 1837 everyone agreed the township should be called Chesterfield in Clemons's honor. It is the only Chesterfield Township in Ohio.

Before the town

Alanson Briggs came into the township in the spring of 1835 to run an Indian trading post on the Territorial (Vistula) Road east of Morenci, on section 12; John S. Butler, bound to Briggs as a boy of eleven, said their only customers at first were Indians, that he learned their language, served as interpreter, and later helped government agents gather the Indians for removal west. Butler recalled Chief Winameg visiting the store and hearing the chiefs Winameg and Ottokee discuss the settlers' coming, and late in life he visited the Potawatomi reservation in Kansas, to which he said the Indians of this county had been sent. Aldrich (1888) records Native men helping settlers raise cabins, and in August 1839 a dance by the Indians of the vicinity and more than four hundred from Illinois near the Jeremiah Sheffield cabin, which passed without violence. Clemons reached the township by the Rice Trail from the Maumee toward Hillsdale, Michigan. No mounds or earthworks are recorded. The land lies inside the tract ceded at the 1807 Treaty of Detroit.

Nations recorded here: Potawatomi.

• Alanson Briggs's Indian trading post (other) — section 12, on the old Territorial Road east of Morenci, later the J. H. Turner farm, 1835 to the late 1830s (archive.org)
• Rice Trail (trail) — trail from the Maumee toward Hillsdale, Michigan, by which Chesterfield Clemons entered the township, in use 1834 (archive.org)
• 1839 gathering and dance near the Sheffield cabin (camp) — near the Jeremiah Sheffield cabin, August 1839 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1807-11-17 — The Treaty of Detroit cedes the tract of northwest Ohio that includes the future township's land.
2. 1834 — In the winter of 1834 the Michigan territorial council places the disputed land under its township of Seneca, Lenawee County.
3. 1834-10-06 — Chesterfield Clemons and his family arrive and locate on the west part of section 14, living in their emigrant wagon until a cabin is built.
4. 1835 — Alanson Briggs brings his family and a stock of goods from Cleveland in the spring and opens an Indian trading post on section 12, the township's first store and first tavern.
5. 1835-07-29 — Martha Turner, daughter of Amaziah Turner, is born, the first white child born in the township.
6. 1836 — In the fall a twice-weekly mail route opens from Toledo to Lima, Indiana, over the old Territorial Road, the township's first mail service; the boy John S. Butler carries it on horseback.
7. 1836-12 — The disputed strip becomes part of Ohio and the Michigan township name of Seneca lapses; the land is unorganized until 1837.
8. 1837 — Chesterfield Township is organized and named for pioneer settler Chesterfield Clemons.
9. 1837-06-04 — Lucas County commissioners meeting at Toledo organize Chesterfield Township, taking in land from the Michigan line to the Fulton line, including most of later Gorham and northern Dover.
10. 1837-07-19 — The first township election is held at Briggs's store with twelve votes cast, according to John S. Butler, who was there; Briggs is elected clerk and goes to Sylvania to be sworn in.
11. 1838-03-06 — The western part, towns nine and ten south, range one east, is set off as Gorham Township.
12. 1839-08 — Indians of the vicinity and more than four hundred from Illinois hold a dance near the Sheffield cabin; the settlers are not molested.
13. 1842 — Chesterfield Clemons dies at his home in the township.
14. 1843 — The state militia musters for the last time at Etna in Pike Township with Alanson Briggs as colonel and Lyman L. Beebe captain of the Chesterfield company.
15. 1843-06-05 — Town ten south, range two east, is taken from Chesterfield to help form Dover Township.
16. 1844 — Lyman L. Beebe builds the township's first steam saw mill, on the later Crittenden farm.
17. 1854-04-01 — Residents of Chesterfield and Royalton form the Rose Hill Cemetery association at the Maple Grove schoolhouse; the first burial, of Nehemiah Cone, follows on August 8, 1854.
18. 1858-04-10 — The East Church in Christ (Disciples) is organized in East Chesterfield with seventy charter members; its frame meeting house is dedicated on December 21, 1865.
19. 1893 — A post office opens at Advance, on the township's border with Dover and Pike townships, operating until 1901.
20. 1916 — The Chesterfield Centralized School opens in a new brick building a mile west of Oak Shade, and all district schools in the township close.

Stories

Chief Winameg points the way

For more than a year after Chesterfield Clemons settled on section 14 in October 1834, his family saw no white face outside their own household, although Alanson Briggs's trading post stood only a few miles off; Clemons had come in by the Rice Trail and Briggs by the Territorial Road, and there were no other roads. One October day Indians told Briggs they had seen a white man. A few days later Chief Winameg came to the store and, asked where the man was, said 'White man build wigwam.' The chief led John Butler to a surveyor's section-corner stone, pointed in one direction and swept his arm a number of times, then pointed another way and swept twice. Each motion meant a mile, and the next day Briggs and Butler followed the courses and found the Clemons settlement, whose family welcomed them as the first white visitors they had seen in over a year.

The standoff at Briggs's store

About 1836 two men of the neighboring band spent an afternoon at Briggs's trading post buying drinks, and at supper time demanded more. Briggs refused, and when the two took him by the arms toward the liquor room he threw them across the store; he stood six feet seven inches. The next day they returned with six warriors in paint, and one raised a tomahawk toward Briggs. Because Briggs spoke no Indian language, the boy John Butler told the whole story of the fight in their language while the warriors listened, then asked the two men whether it was true. When they said it was, the warriors left without another word. Butler, who told the story in 1907, credited Briggs's past fair dealing for the visit ending that way.

The mail boy on the Territorial Road

John S. Butler, born in Wayne County, New York, in 1824, was bound out at about eleven to Alanson Briggs. From the fall of 1836 he carried the mail on horseback twice a week on the route from Toledo to Lima, Indiana, over the old Territorial or Vistula Road, a distance Aldrich gives as 110 miles, with one post office between the ends and 33 miles of unbroken forest west of Morenci. He once fell into the St. Joseph River with the United States mail on top of him, and once was chased for several miles by wolves. He later married Lovina, daughter of Chesterfield and Fannie Clemons, in 1846, farmed on section 32, and died in the township in 1907.

A playmate in Kansas

The only playmates John Butler had in his first year at Briggs's post were Indian boys, with whom he shot at marks. Late in life he visited friends in Kansas who lived near the reservation to which, he said, the Indians of Fulton County had been sent, and he went looking for the Potawatomi. In their village he saw a face he thought he knew, and when he said he had forgotten the man's name, the man answered that Butler was the white man's boy with whom he had played beyond the Great Water. The man told him that of all the young men of his band who had come west, he alone was left. They talked for hours, and Butler said he left the only Indian in the world who still remembered him.

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

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