Concord Township, Delaware County

How Concord Township, Delaware County began

Concord Township was carved out of Liberty Township on April 20, 1819, its irregular boundary redrawn so many times afterward that, the 1880 county history jokes, residents sometimes woke unsure which township they lived in. George Hill, arriving from Pennsylvania in 1811, is remembered as its first white settler, living among Native neighbors on the Scioto River bottomland he later called home. A 460-foot salt-drilling attempt near Bellepoint struck sulfur water instead, and by 1869 the failed spa built around it had become the State of Ohio's reform school for girls. The Scioto is now dammed at O'Shaughnessy Dam, completed in 1925 in the township's south end, and the township holds part of Delaware, part of Dublin, and the village of Shawnee Hills.

Settled 1811, incorporated April 20, 1819, by George Hill (first settler); erected from Liberty Township.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains why Concord Township carries that name; Wikipedia notes only that it is one of seven Ohio townships with the name. The 1880 county history instead dwells on how unstable the township's boundaries were: formed in 1819 out of Liberty Township, with a strip west of the Scioto having already gone to Union Township in 1809, its lines were redrawn repeatedly by later legislation and petition, including one petition in which southwestern Delaware Township voters asked to be attached to Concord's Bellepoint precinct instead of Delaware -- ostensibly over which was the more convenient voting place, but which the historian says was really about politics, since Bellepoint was Democratic and Delaware was Whig and later Republican.

Before the town

The 1880 county history does not name a specific nation for Concord Township, referring throughout only to 'the Indians,' but its detail is otherwise concrete and specific to the place. George Hill, who settled on the Scioto River in 1811 after arriving on pack-horses from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, is described as having 'settled down among the Indians' from the start. His son Benjamin, interviewed as an old man for the county history, recalled that a poultice made by Indian neighbors cured his brother and, separately, settler George Freshwater, of rattlesnake bites -- a cure the Indians would never explain and 'when they left the country they carried it with them.' As late as 1821, when Hill's mother died in her ninetieth year, 'many Indians were present, and looked on in great wonderment and curiosity' at the Christian burial rites, a notably late date for recorded Native presence this far south in the county. An old military road through the township, used to move supplies to the army at Fort Meigs during the War of 1812, followed a pack-horse trail through Mill Creek's swamps that had itself replaced an earlier Indian trail up the same creek. For the fuller regional record of nations, treaties and removal, see the county file.

Timeline

1. 1809 — Union Township is formed on June 16, taking in the part of the future Concord Township lying west of the Scioto River.
2. 1811 — George Hill, a Revolutionary War veteran from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, arrives on pack-horses and settles on the Scioto River, remembered as the first white settler in what becomes Concord Township.
3. 1819 — Concord Township is formally created on April 20 out of Liberty Township's territory.
4. 1821 — George Hill's mother dies in her ninetieth year, the township's first recorded death and first burial in the Hill family cemetery; many Native people attend the burial.
5. 1823 — A stone house is built on the site of George Hill's original log cabin; it stands for decades afterward as the home of his son Benjamin, the family's last surviving member on the homestead.
6. 1842 — Nathaniel Hart buys the site of an abandoned 460-foot salt-drilling well from Christopher Freshwater and builds a resort around the sulfur water the drillers had struck instead of salt.
7. 1865 — John Ferry buys the White Sulphur Springs resort property and substantially enlarges and refurnishes it.
8. 1869 — Ferry sells the resort to the State of Ohio, which converts it into the State Reform and Industrial School for Girls.
9. 1874 — A fire on February 24 destroys several buildings at the girls' reform school; the state rebuilds and later expands the campus.
10. 1925 — O'Shaughnessy Dam is completed on the Scioto River on June 1 in the southern part of the township, creating a reservoir that supplies Columbus.
11. 1957 — Floodwater spills over O'Shaughnessy Dam, photographed by Matthew Mosbacher Sr. for the Columbus Metropolitan Library.
12. 1990 — O'Shaughnessy Dam is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Settling Down Among the Indians

George Hill made the journey from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania to the Scioto River bottomland of what became Concord Township on pack-horses in 1811, and the 1880 county history says simply that on arrival he 'settled down among the Indians.' The relationship, by his son Benjamin's later account, was practical rather than fearful: when Benjamin's brother 'Josh' and, separately, neighbor George Freshwater were bitten by rattlesnakes -- common enough that their skins reportedly covered driftwood in the river 'like calico' -- Indian neighbors supplied a poultice that cured both men. The settlers tried repeatedly to learn what was in it. They never succeeded; the secret left Ohio with the people who held it. A decade later, in 1821, when Hill's own mother died at about ninety, Native neighbors attended her Christian burial and, Benjamin remembered, watched the unfamiliar rites with open curiosity.

Salt Water That Wasn't

Sometime before the 1840s, drillers named Davis and Richards sank a well 460 feet deep near Bellepoint, hunting for salt brine to make into a business. What came up instead was a heavy flow of sulfur water, and the disappointed men abandoned the well unfinished. In 1842 Nathaniel Hart saw a different opportunity in what they had left behind: he bought the land from Christopher Freshwater and built a hotel and cottages around the spring, hoping to draw health-seeking visitors. The resort changed hands twice more, growing each time, until in 1869 the State of Ohio bought the property outright and turned it into a reform school for girls -- an institution that, under several later names, occupied the site for nearly a century.

A Vote Over Politics, Not Distance

Concord Township's boundaries shifted so often in the nineteenth century that, the 1880 historian wrote, people sometimes woke up unsure which township they were in. One shift came from a petition by voters in southwestern Delaware Township asking to be reassigned to Concord's Bellepoint precinct rather than continue voting in Delaware. The stated reason was convenience. The real reason, the historian was quite sure, was politics: Bellepoint leaned Democratic, following General Andrew Jackson, while Delaware was solidly Whig and later Republican, and the petitioners simply wanted to vote alongside people who thought as they did.

Photographs

Local history sources: archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · ead.lib.virginia.edu · ghmchs.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Del-Co's own raw-water intake on O'Shaughnessy Reservoir (Scioto River) near Rathbone, Concord Township The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.60% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Columbus Public Water System28% of residentsScioto River (Griggs & O'Shaughnessy), Hoover Reservoir on Big Walnut Ck, plus wells
• Delaware City12% of residentsOlentangy River (blended with deep wells)
• Marysville City0% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells

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