Damascus Township, Henry County

How Damascus Township, Henry County began

Damascus Township, on the Maumee River east of Napoleon, was first organized as a voting precinct in 1823, when it covered the whole of Henry County and its polling place stood at Independence, now in Defiance County. General Anthony Wayne's army camped on this stretch of river in 1794, at a place long called Prairie du Masque, a name the county history credits to early French adventurers and traders, a name the township later replaced with Damascus. Timber cut here in the nineteenth century was rafted down the Maumee to Toledo and shipped as far as Liverpool, England; the township's only village, McClure, was platted in 1880 on the line of the Delphos and Toledo narrow-gauge railroad.

Settled 1794 (Wayne's encampment); permanent settlement from the late 1830s and 1840s, platted McClure platted April 15, 1880, by John McClure, incorporated Damascus organized as a voting precinct in 1823; McClure village incorporated in 1886, by Henry County (precinct); John McClure (village).

Where the name comes from

The reason for the name Damascus is not recorded. Before that name was adopted, the site was known as Prairie du Masque, a name the 1888 county history attributes to early French adventurers, traders or missionaries drawn to the Maumee valley.

Before the town

Damascus Township's central documented Native-history connection is indirect but concrete: the riverbank the township now occupies was known before white settlement as Prairie du Masque, and it was here that General Anthony Wayne's army camped in August 1794 on its march down the Maumee toward the Battle of Fallen Timbers -- placing the township squarely within the campaign that broke the Western Confederacy's military position in the region and opened the way to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. No named Native village, mound or Ottawa/Wyandot/Shawnee site within the township's own boundaries is documented; the 1888 county history explicitly frames its account of the township's 'three stages of civilization' as beginning only with the white hunter-adventurer, not with any preceding Native settlement it could identify.

• Prairie du Masque (Wayne's encampment) (camp) — on the Maumee River in what became Damascus Township, August 1794, General Wayne's army en route to the Battle of Fallen Timbers; French-named earlier (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1794-08 — General Anthony Wayne's army camps at Prairie du Masque, on the river ground that becomes Damascus Township, en route to the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
2. 1823 — Damascus is organized as a voting precinct covering the whole of Henry County, with its polling place at Independence, now in Defiance County.
3. 1837 — Only 385 acres of what is now Damascus Township are on the tax duplicate.
4. 1840 — The township, then still combined with Richfield and Flat Rock and covering all of the county south of the Maumee, has a population of 489.
5. 1843 — James Reid and James Fiser, the latter from Virginia, settle in what becomes Damascus Township; Abraham Snyder had come from Virginia in 1840 but first settled in neighboring Washington (then Myo) Township, and Samuel Domer follows in 1849.
6. 1860 — Damascus Township, reduced to its present size, has 761 people.
7. 1870 — The township's population reaches 1,179.
8. 1880-04-15 — John McClure records the plat of the village of McClure, on the line of the Delphos and Toledo narrow-gauge railroad.
9. 1880 — The township's population reaches 1,415.
10. 1886 — The village of McClure is formally incorporated.
11. 1887 — McClure is heated and lighted with natural gas, and the township has two railroads, the Coldwater, Mansfield and Lake Michigan and the Clover Leaf; the county historian says it has more churches and school-houses than any other township in the county.
12. 2020 — The census counts 1,783 people in Damascus Township.

Stories

From the ax to the stave factory

The 1888 county history describes Damascus Township's settlement as passing through three distinct types of people: first the solitary hunter-adventurer, who cleared barely a corn patch and lived by rifle and trap; then the timberman, whose ax and saw-mill felled the giant oaks that were hewed, sledded to the Maumee, rafted to Toledo, and shipped on to Montreal, Quebec and finally Liverpool, England, to be built into vessels; and only then the settled farmer who stayed and built a lasting community. By the time the narrow-gauge 'Clover Leaf' railroad cut through the township in the 1880s, that third wave had produced, in the historian's words, more churches and schoolhouses than almost any other township in the county or, he claimed, 'in most any other county' -- a landscape transformed within two human generations from a wilderness whose only landmark had been a French traders' name for a bend in the river.

Boys who left the farm

The 1888 chapter on Damascus Township is full of opinion, but one passage is concrete. It says that three-fourths of the land was in a high state of cultivation, worth twenty-five to eighty-five dollars an acre, and that several pioneers who had bought government land cheaply, endured the wilderness and cleared it were persuaded in old age by their sons to sell and move to town to keep store, a business neither father nor sons knew. The historian blamed young men's dissatisfaction with farm life on what they saw of their mothers' labor, and urged farmers to give their wives the labor-saving conveniences they gave themselves. It was written while McClure, platted in 1880, was growing into the township's only village.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Napoleon City91% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Northwestern W and SD - Sr 1084% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Florida Village3% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Northwestern W and SD - Co. Rd P2% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-09

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