Clayton

How Clayton began

Clayton grew from the village of Salem, laid out in 75 lots by John Leatherman on January 15, 1816 on land Jacob Grew had entered from the government in 1805, at the western edge of Randolph Township on the Dayton-Covington Turnpike. Salem was renamed Clayton later in the 19th century; Wikipedia states the city was named for John Clayton, a War of 1812 veteran, though that claim carries no cited source and we could not independently confirm it. The village of Clayton and the rural remainder of Randolph Township merged into the present City of Clayton in January 1998. Today it is a Dayton-area suburb of roughly 13,000 people within the Northmont community, still centered on the old Salem crossroads west of Englewood.

Platted 1816, incorporated 1998 (city, by merger of the Village of Clayton and Randolph Township), by John Leatherman platted the town of Salem in 75 lots on land originally entered by Jacob Grew (April 29, 1805).

Where the name comes from

Platted in 1816 as Salem, on the west side of Randolph Township. The village was later renamed Clayton; Wikipedia's article states it was named for John Clayton, a War of 1812 veteran, but flags that claim as needing a citation, and no independent source for the name change or its date was found. The exact date Salem became Clayton is not established in the sources we found.

Before the town

No site-specific Native American history for Clayton (Salem) itself was found. The best documented account of the wider area comes from Earl Leon Heck's 1969 history of Randolph Township, which places Clayton's part of the township within a Miami-Shawnee contact zone west of Dayton in the mid-to-late 1700s. Heck writes that 'the Stillwater Valley seems to have been just a little west of the main center of the Miami-Shawnee activities,' and that Indians described by the first North Carolina settlers of 1802 were 'but scattered remains of the Miami Indians' by the time of settlement; because the Miami had allied with the English, the newly arriving settlers were not treated with hostility. Heck also records that a party of friendly Native people camped on a Hoover family farm along the Stillwater River in 1811, just before the Battle of Tippecanoe, and that a chief named Shane later told a Hoover son he had crept inside General William Henry Harrison's lines the night before that battle but chose not to fire on him. The township's own 1882 county history corroborates the general picture without adding a Salem-specific site: it records only that block-houses were built and neighbors gathered in them at night as rumors of Indian depredations spread, but that Native people never actually molested the township's settlers, and that every morning the settlers dispersed again to their clearings. None of this is tied to a specific site within Clayton's boundaries, and no mounds, earthworks, named villages, or trails are recorded for the Salem/Clayton section of the township specifically.

Nations recorded here: Miami, Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1804 — Randolph Township, in which Salem (later Clayton) would be laid out, was formed from Elizabeth Township by the Montgomery County Commissioners on November 6, and named for Randolph County, North Carolina, home of most of its first settlers.
2. 1805 — Jacob Grew entered the land on which the town of Salem would later be platted, on April 29.
3. 1807 — A. Edwards began teaching at a school near Salem, the second teacher recorded for the township; William Smith, still living in 1882, was among his pupils.
4. 1816 — John Leatherman platted the town of Salem in 75 lots on January 15, in the western part of Randolph Township; Union was laid out four weeks later, February 12, by Daniel Rasor and David Hoover.
5. 1806 — John Wertz built a mill in Salem; the 1882 Montgomery County history records it as rebuilt in 1820 by John Bench and later owned by James Heck (a derivative 1969 township history instead gives the rebuilder's name as John Ranch; both are given here since the primary and secondary sources disagree on the spelling).
6. 1846-1877 — H. M. Turner, Jacob Heck and Joseph Turner ran a distillery at Salem for several years; Turner & Bros. built a large distillery there in 1847 that burned and was rebuilt, and H. M. Turner continued the business alone until making its last run in February 1877, after which no distillery operated in the township again.
7. 1848 — Randolph Lodge No. 98 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows was instituted at Salem on January 31, with charter members John W. Turner, Thomas F. Wieser, Joseph M. Turner, Michael Cline, Albert G. Hadden and James F. Hibbard.
8. c. 1838 — The National Road (later U.S. 40) was cut through Randolph Township; local tradition held that the stretch between Englewood and Clayton was kept in better repair than other parts of the road from its earliest days.
9. 1880 — Salem's mill, built by John Wertz in 1806 and rebuilt in 1820, burned down on December 20.
10. 1906 — Clayton became a stop on the Dayton Northern Traction Line.
11. 1998 — The City of Clayton was established in January through the merger of the Village of Clayton and the remaining rural portion of Randolph Township.

Stories

The Rattlesnake Spring

Writing for the 1882 History of Montgomery County, E. F. Warner described a noted spring in the western part of Randolph Township near Salem (Clayton), known locally as the Rattlesnake Spring, so named for the great number of the reptiles that lurked in its vicinity in the township's early years. A local man, John Ranch, is said to have killed thirty-three rattlesnakes there in a single day, and to have been forced to abandon his task because of the strong odor given off by the dead and living snakes around him. The spring was one of nearly a hundred that dotted the bluffs of Baker's Creek, Little Wolf Creek, and the Stillwater in this part of the county, and a Mr. H. M. Turner later opened a stone quarry near Salem. The story survives only through Warner's 1882 account, retold decades later in Earl Heck's history of the township.

Salem's early trades

Because Salem and Union were, in Earl Heck's words, 'the centers of population during the pioneer period,' the village drew Randolph Township's earliest manufacturing. John Wertz built a mill there in 1806, rebuilt in 1820 by John Ranch and James Heck. Jacob Heck and Joseph Turner ran early stills in the village, and Michael Landis operated a carding factory that turned raw wool into fiber for spinning. Warren Estabrook built Salem's first hotel and sold it around 1847 to William Summerset. Among the town's early doctors was Dr. Powell, remembered as its first physician, and Dr. Martin, who practiced in Salem until he moved to Illinois in 1838. Dr. Christopher Gish, later a prominent physician in nearby Harrisburg (Englewood) and Brookville, also practiced in both Salem and Harrisburg before 1875.

A shoemaker's apprentice who went to Congress

In the early 1880s, the 1882 county history noted in passing that A. Harris had 'first manufactured boots and shoes on an extensive scale' in Salem in its early years, employing many hands to supply the whole surrounding country. Among his employees, the history records, was one Emanuel Shultz, then living in Miamisburg -- who by 1882 was serving his one term in Congress (1881-1883) for Ohio's 4th district. The book gives no further detail, but the detail itself is a small window onto Salem's role as a working village: a future congressman learned a trade in its bootshop before making his career a few miles down the road.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · englewood.oh.us · clayton.oh.us · archive.org

Miami Well Field wells by the Great Miami River at Wagner Ford/Needmore Rd and Rip Rap Road Island, north Dayton The water here

• Montgomery County Water Services 270% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (recharged by Great Miami & Mad Rivers)
• Englewood City18% of residentsStillwater Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Union City9% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Dayton Public Water System3% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (recharged by Great Miami & Mad Rivers)
• Brookville Municipality0% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (recharged by Great Miami & Mad Rivers)
• Phillipsburg Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (2)

Public schools (3)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (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.
• Financial Health Indicators (the Auditor of State's 17 measures; critical / cautionary / positive): 2020 0 / 1 / 16; 2021 0 / 1 / 16; 2022 0 / 3 / 14; 2023 1 / 2 / 14; 2024 0 / 1 / 16; 2025 0 / 3 / 14.
• Financial Audit, 2025, released 2026-08-27
• Financial Audit, 2024, released 2025-09-11

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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