Claibourne Township, Union County

How Claibourne Township, Union County began

Claibourne Township was surveyed by Richard Claiborne and settled in the early 1820s by Cyprian Lee and a handful of neighboring families who bought pieces of his Buller Claibourne survey; it was carved off the southern part of Jackson Township and organized as its own township in 1834. It takes its name from that original land survey. Farming, a few horse-powered mills and a small tannery sustained the township through the 1800s while Richwood, platted in 1832, grew into the county's second-largest town on the strength of the railroad. Today Claibourne Township is still mostly farmland wrapped around Richwood village.

Settled 1820-1825, incorporated 1834, by Cyprian Lee and neighboring settlers on the Buller Claibourne survey; organized by act of the county commissioners in 1834.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for the Buller Claibourne survey (after surveyor Richard Claiborne, who ran the original 1811 survey lines), not for the village of Claibourne, which was founded later.

Before the town

The 1883 county history describes the township as Indian hunting ground still in use when the first settlers arrived in the early 1820s, close to the line set by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. It records friction between settlers and Native hunters over bee trees and diminishing game, and preserves an unconfirmed tradition that settlers Henry Swartz and Ned Williams killed two Native men along Peacock Run. The same account notes that skeletal remains were later turned up in gravel pits near Richwood, without identifying them further. No named village, trail or treaty cession specific to this township is recorded beyond that; for the wider record of Wyandot, Shawnee, Mingo and Miami presence in Union County and the treaties that opened it.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Miami.

Timeline

1. 1809 — The first land surveys in the township are made; the Buller-Claibourne survey of 4,267 acres, the largest in the county, covered nearly all of the early settlement.
2. 1811 — Richard Claiborne surveyed the land later known as the Buller Claibourne survey, giving the future township its name.
3. 1820-1825 — Cyprian Lee, a Delaware-born shoemaker, became the township's first settler on part of the Claibourne survey; neighbors Edward Williams, Robert Cotrell and Henry Swartz bought adjoining land from him.
4. 1822 — The first of the settlers who buy farms from Cyprian Lee (Edward Williams, Robert Cotrell and Henry Swartz) arrives in 1822; Cotrell, the third, comes in 1823.
5. 1825 — Cyprian Lee and Henry Swartz took the contract to build the township's first road.
6. 1825 — Leesburg Township is organized and at first includes the future Claibourne; it takes the name given at Cyprian Lee's cabin-raising, when the helpers, joking 'ketch Lee,' christened the settlement Leesburg.
7. 1826 — The Clark brothers George, Henry and James, from Amherst County, Virginia, settle on 1,673 acres in the north part of the Buller-Claibourne tract just east of Richwood.
8. 1829 — Most of the territory is made part of Jackson Township when it is formed; it remains there until Claibourne is organized in 1834.
9. 1832 — Richwood was surveyed August 8-10 by Special Deputy Surveyor Thomas G. Plummer on the Pelham Survey; the plat was recorded August 20, 1832.
10. 1834 — Claibourne Township was organized from the southern part of Jackson Township; the first township election was held October 14, 1834, with nineteen votes cast.
11. 1855 — The county commissioners incorporate Richwood, in the center of the township, on March 6 on a petition of forty citizens.
12. 1879 — G. W. Warner opens a store and is appointed postmaster at Claibourne in August; the New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio (Erie) railroad lays a side track and station there in the winter of 1880-81.
13. 1880-81 — The community of Claibourne was established as a stop on the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad through the efforts of G. M. Warner; a post office followed there in 1879.
14. 1881-03-14 — Frederick J. Sager plats the village of Claibourne for William Jolliff Jr.; by the end of 1882 it has a sawmill, two stores, a hotel, a brick schoolhouse and a Methodist Protestant church.
15. 1910 — The hamlet of Claibourne has 140 residents; the county history ranks the township second in the county in population, because Richwood lies within it.

Stories

How Leesburg got its name from a cabin-raising

Local tradition, recorded in the 1883 county history, ties the naming of a neighboring settlement to Cyprian Lee, the first settler on the Buller Claibourne survey. At Lee's cabin-raising, a gathering the account calls 'a gala day for the settlers,' a German-born neighbor is said to have declared, in his accent, 'Vell, ve calls it Leesburg' — and the name stuck for the township that later split off around Lee's original claim. Lee himself, a shoemaker by trade from Delaware, had arrived on the frontier sometime between 1820 and 1825 and sold off pieces of his land to arriving families through the 1820s. The story survives only in the county history's retelling, but it captures how casually places were named on this stretch of the Union County frontier.

Richwood grows on the railroad

Richwood was platted in August 1832 by Thomas G. Plummer for proprietor Philip Plummer on the Pelham Survey, but it stayed a small crossroads village for decades. By 1840 only twenty-five families lived there. The turn came with the railroad: by 1880, after the line reached town, Richwood's population had climbed to 1,317, making it the second-largest town in Union County after Marysville. The 1880-81 arrival of a second line, the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad, gave the township a second small rail stop, Claibourne, platted by William Jolliff Jr. with its own post office by 1879.

Horse mills and forty-mile grists

No water grist mill was ever built in Claibourne Township, and the county history makes a good deal of what that cost its pioneers. For several weeks the family of Henry Swartz ground all its meal in a hand coffee mill, and neighbours borrowed a hand mill belonging to John Swartz, on which a few hours of struggle yielded fair corn meal. Adam Dilsaver then built a horse mill near Richwood where customers brought their own horses, three or four to turn the clumsy machinery; it ran nearly constantly and sometimes all night, and farmers left home at two in the morning to get their turn. Richard Irwin had a similar mill a mile and a half east of town. Some preferred to haul grain forty miles to a real water mill rather than use their horses that way, and one four-horse load went to a mill on Mad River in Champaign County, where the press of business was so great that weeks passed before the township's hungry families got their flour.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · uccogs.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Richwood Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Money issues on the ballot since 2024: 1 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-23

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