Clearcreek Township, Fairfield County

How Clearcreek Township, Fairfield County began

Clearcreek Township occupies the extreme southwest corner of Fairfield County and takes its name from Clear Creek, the stream that drains its northeastern sections. It was settled beginning in 1797 by Jacob Shumaker and John Stepleton, and originally extended over parts of what became Madison and Amanda townships before those were struck off. Its only villages, Stoutsville (laid out in 1854 by Benjamin Stout) and the smaller Oakland, grew up along the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad, whose stations included one plainly named for the Wyandot. The township borders Pickaway County near Tarlton, home to the National Register-listed Cross Mound, a prehistoric earthwork of undetermined origin.

Settled 1797, by Jacob Shumaker and John Stepleton.

Where the name comes from

The township's name was suggested by Clear Creek, a stream running through its northeastern sections, from which it derives its name, according to the 1877 county history; the 1883 history adds that the township formerly embraced Madison township as well, before that territory was struck off.

Before the town

The county's mound survey in the 1883 history records an ancient earthwork on Clear Creek, in Clear Creek township, not far from a landmark called Abbot's store: a square enclosure of two or three acres, skillfully laid out parallel to the four cardinal points, with faint traces of smaller works nearby; no name, culture or age is given for it. By the time the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad was built through the township in the 1850s, one of its stations, listed in the 1912 county history immediately before Stoutsville, was named Wyandotte, and the same source separately describes a 'Wyandotte Junction in Clear Creek township' on a connecting line — a place name that plainly commemorates the Wyandot, though no source consulted describes an actual Wyandot village or camp at the spot. A few miles south, straddling the Fairfield-Pickaway county line near Tarlton, is the Cross Mound (also called the Tarlton Cross Mound), a Greek-cross-shaped earthwork first surveyed by Squier and Davis in the 1840s; archaeologists remain divided over whether it was built by the Hopewell or the Fort Ancient culture, or exactly when. It sits close enough to Clearcreek Township's southern edge that Wikipedia uses it as the township's own representative image, though available sources do not confirm the mound lies inside the township's boundary rather than just across the county line.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Square earthwork near Abbot's store (earthwork) — on Clear Creek, within Clear Creek township, precontact, mound-builder culture not specified by the source (archive.org)
• Wyandotte (railroad station and junction) (other) — Clear Creek township, on the Cincinnati & Muskingum Valley Railroad and at the Columbus & Southern's 'Wyandotte Junction', 1850s railroad era; commemorative place name, not a documented historic-era village (archive.org)
• Cross Mound (Tarlton Cross Mound) (earthwork) — Cross Mound Park, northwest of Tarlton, on the Fairfield-Pickaway county line a few miles south of Clearcreek Township, undetermined; possibly Hopewell (100 BC-AD 500) or Fort Ancient (after AD 1000) (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio, including the future Clear Creek township, to the United States.
2. 1797 — Jacob Shumaker and John Stepleton settle in Clear Creek township; Stepleton marries Shumaker's daughter Magdalena, and the couple raise sixteen children.
3. 1802 — Charles Friend builds the first water-power grist mill on Clear Creek.
4. 1804 — George Stout, from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, settles about a mile north of the future site of Stoutsville.
5. 1813 — The first township election is held at the house of Philip Shandes on April 5, choosing Joseph F. Reynolds as clerk and a full slate of township officers.
6. 1854 — Benjamin Stout, an early settler's son, lays out Stoutsville, naming it for himself, on the line of the future Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad.
7. 1855 — A post office is established at Stoutsville.
8. 1855 — The cornerstone is laid, on October 31, for the joint Lutheran and German Reformed church at Stoutsville.
9. 1856 — The Cincinnati, Wilmington and Zanesville Railroad (later the Cincinnati & Muskingum Valley) is completed, giving Clear Creek township stations including one named Wyandotte.
10. 1970 — The Cross Mound near Tarlton, on the Fairfield-Pickaway county line, is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Two Families, Sixteen Children

Jacob Shumaker and John Stepleton are remembered as the first settlers of Clear Creek township, arriving in 1797 when the land was still unbroken wilderness in the county's far southwest corner. Stepleton soon married Shumaker's daughter Magdalena, and the couple went on to raise sixteen children together, of whom, by the time the 1883 county history was compiled, only two were still living: Sophia, who had moved to Allen County, and Joseph, who remained in Stoutsville. Joseph himself, born in 1815 and married in 1836 to Salome Moyer of Perry County, had eight children of his own, four of them still residing in the township — three generations of the same founding families still on the land eighty-five years after the first cabin went up.

A Junction Named for the Wyandot

When the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad was built through the southwestern townships of Fairfield County in the 1850s, its planners named one of the stations in Clear Creek township simply Wyandotte, and a connecting line to the south had its own junction of the same name. No source consulted describes an actual Wyandot village, camp or burial ground at the spot; the name appears to be a settler-era tribute to the people who had hunted and traveled this part of Ohio a half-century before, rather than a marker of a specific site. The station's name survives today as a historical place name on old maps of the township, one of the few traces in Clear Creek township's own record of the Wyandot presence that the county's Indian Tribes chapter documents more fully around Lancaster and the Hocking valley to the northeast.

Stoutsville's Founding Family

George Stout arrived in Clear Creek township from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1804 and settled a mile north of what would become Stoutsville; he raised seven children, and his son Jonathan, born in 1800, was still living in the village when the county history was written. A second Stout, Benjamin, born in the same Pennsylvania county, reached the township in 1808 and settled a mile and a half north of the future village site with a family that would grow to thirteen children. It was this Benjamin Stout who, in 1854, laid out the village on the new railroad line and gave it his own family's name, a name three of his sons, John, David and Simon, were still living under decades later.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Amanda Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Mounds and earthworks (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 0 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-04-14

Cite this page