Concord Township, Champaign County

How Concord Township, Champaign County began

Concord Township, Town 4 Range 12 in the middle of the tier of townships west of the Mad River in Champaign County, was set off from Mad River Township in 1818. Joseph Hill, its first permanent settler, took up land in section 8 in February 1803. Robert McFarland, who arrived about 1807 and settled his farm in 1811-12, organized the Concord Methodist society in 1818 and the township's first election was held at his house; his log church of 1824 and brick church of 1837-38 were followed by the present building of 1867. The township has never had an incorporated village, only hamlets such as Northville, Heathtown and Scottsburg, and its pioneer histories record Indian huts and an Indian village within its bounds. On the night of March 9, 1967, a TWA jet and a private plane collided over it and fell into its fields, killing 26. The township had 1,387 people in 2020.

Settled February 1803 (Joseph Hill), incorporated 1818 (set off from Mad River Township), by set off from Mad River Township.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains why the township was named Concord. Beers's 1881 history, whose Concord chapter was written by T. S. McFarland, son of a pioneer family, does not say; Concord Chapel, the Methodist church founded in 1818 and named in the same history, may share the name, but the history does not say which came first.

Before the town

Champaign County lay inside the core homeland of the Mad River Shawnee in the second half of the 1700s, with Mingo, Wyandot, Miami and Lenape people also hunting and traveling through, before the Treaty of Greenville (1795) ceded the land. Beers's 1881 history records two traces inside Concord Township itself, both pioneer recollections: when Robert McFarland bought his farm about 1811 the remains of an Indian village were still plainly visible, with fourteen huts in fair preservation, two or three hundred yards southwest of Concord Chapel; and numerous Indian relics, indicating at one time a large Indian village, were found on the Johnson farm on Mad River, while another Indian village stood on William Downs's farm on Muddy Creek opposite Northville. The history does not name the nation, date these villages, or describe any excavation, and gives no site that can be tied to the Shawnee towns known from other sources. The Mac-a-cheek towns at the head of the Mad River, with the Shawnee town Wapatomica near present Zanesfield, lay in what is now Logan County; Gen. Benjamin Logan's Kentuckians destroyed the Mac-a-cheek towns in 1786. The historical place names 'Mackachack' and 'Old Pimtown', sometimes tied to this township by its shared ZIP code, sit near West Liberty in Logan County, not in Concord.

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

• Indian village remains near Concord Chapel (village) — Southwest of Concord Chapel, on the farm Robert McFarland bought about 1811, before about 1811; nation and date not recorded (archive.org)
• Indian village on Muddy Creek (village) — William Downs's farm on Muddy Creek, opposite Northville, date and nation not recorded; relics also found on the Johnson farm on Mad River (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1803-02 — Joseph Hill settles on the southeast quarter of section 8, the first permanent settler of what becomes Concord Township, finding the squatter Isaac Anderson there; Anderson Creek takes its name from him.
2. 1805 — Jesse Harbor and his brother William come from North Carolina; Jesse lives a mile west of Heathtown until his death in 1863 and fathers thirty-two children.
3. 1806 — James Mitchel Sr. and his sons John, James and Samuel settle near Northville.
4. 1809-10-10 — Thomas and William Stretch, constables of Mad River Township, sign a $400 bond to the treasurer, a document preserved in the township's records and printed in Beers.
5. 1811 — Robert McFarland buys Henry Bacome's farm and finds the remains of an Indian village, fourteen huts, southwest of the future Concord Chapel; he moves into his cabin in April 1812.
6. 1812-10 — General William Henry Harrison and his troops march over the military road cut from Urbana toward the Northwest Territory, which passes through the front yard of the McFarland farm.
7. 1818 — Concord Township is set off from Mad River Township; its first election is held at Robert McFarland's house, with Philip Kenton, George Robinson and John Bouseman as trustees and John Daniels as clerk.
8. 1818 — The Concord Methodist society is organized, meeting at McFarland's house until a log church, 24 by 17 feet, is built in 1824.
9. 1820 — The township's first schoolhouse is built about this year on William Harbor's farm, south of the Harbor graveyard.
10. 1838 — Rev. James B. Finley dedicates the brick Concord church begun in 1837, built by the Gearheart brothers; it serves until 1867.
11. 1858-08-15 — Neer Chapel, a Methodist church named for the Rev. Samuel Neer, is dedicated in the northwest corner of the township; the Northville church is built about the same time.
12. 1867-12-15 — The present Concord church, built by William Stover of Urbana for about $7,150, is dedicated.
13. 1869 — John Russell, born in the township, dies; he had been Secretary of State of Ohio and was Senator-elect to the General Assembly.
14. 1881 — The township has seven brick schoolhouses and no incorporated village, then or ever; its post office at Crayon, begun about two years earlier, is the only one.
15. 1967-03-09 — TWA Flight 553, a DC-9, and a Beechcraft Baron collide about 29 miles from Dayton and both fall in Concord Township; all 25 aboard the airliner and the Baron's pilot, 26 people, are killed.
16. 2020 — The census counts 1,387 people on 30.2 square miles.

Stories

The man who promised to name a son for General Harrison

Robert McFarland, a Virginian who had left Kentucky in 1807 to be free of slavery, moved into his cabin on the Concord farm in April 1812. Soon afterward a military road was cut from Urbana to the Northwest Territory, passing straight through his front yard. In October 1812 General William Henry Harrison and his troops rode over it. The general asked whether McFarland meant to settle among such large trees and, told yes, said he was too small a man for such large timber. McFarland answered that if he ever had a son, it would bear the general's name. A son was born in February 1813 and was christened William Harrison McFarland. Twenty-eight years later, during the 1840 campaign, Harrison came back over the same road in a carriage; at Millerstown the general stopped to ask the man who had promised to name a son for him, called him to the stand, and asked after his namesake. He added that once a great many children had been named for him, but since party lines were drawn, some people only named their dogs for him. The story is told by the namesake's brother, T. S. McFarland, who wrote the Concord chapter of Beers's 1881 history.

The fight at Felix Rock's farm, 1819

About the time the township was organized, a family named Foley lived near Concord Chapel: parents and four huge, quarrelsome sons, aged eighteen to twenty-six, who always won their fights. In Salem Township lived Thomas Wilkinson, equally strong but not quarrelsome, who remarked he would like to try one of them. In July 1819, during harvest, the Foleys went to Felix Rock's farm, now Daniel Kizer's, to whip him. Wilkinson asked which of the four was the best man they had, and they fought under a maple in the yard. Daniel Foley fell across the root of the tree with a single blow, and the other brothers called for foul play. Daniel was carried from the yard a ruined man and died nine days later. That fall Wilkinson again beat William Foley at a corn-husking at Joseph Longfellow's, and in 1822 at a general muster in Mad River Township the Foleys were beaten by Reuben Loudenback and Isaac Moody, after which they left the country 'for their country's good'. Beers prints the story without citing a source.

Flight 553 over the fields

On the evening of March 9, 1967, TWA Flight 553, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15 flying from Pittsburgh toward Dayton, was descending through 4,500 feet at 323 knots about 29 miles from Dayton. A Beechcraft Baron flying south on visual flight rules was in the same sky. Dayton radar warned the airliner's crew about 18 seconds before the collision, and the crew acknowledged, but the National Transportation Safety Board found that because of the DC-9's rate of descent its pilots could not have seen the Baron in time. Visibility was six to seven miles. The front right of the DC-9 struck the left side of the Baron. Both aircraft fell in farm fields in Concord Township, northwest of Urbana. All 25 aboard the DC-9 (21 passengers and 4 crew) and the Baron's pilot, 26 people, died. The accident helped bring a 250-knot speed limit for aircraft below 10,000 feet, and influenced the creation of terminal control areas, now Class B airspace, around the busiest airports.

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

Groundwater from wells (described locally as two well fields) feeding two treatment plants -- one near Old Troy Pike (GAC filtration) and one near State Route 29 (pressure filtration for iron/manganese) -- both drawing from the same high-yield buried-valley aquifer… The water here

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Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 2020-03-03, released 2025-12-19. source
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-07

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