Darby Township, Union County

How Darby Township, Union County began

Darby Township, in the south of Union County, is named for Big Darby Creek, which runs through it, and is the county's oldest township: it was first formed in 1803 as part of Franklin County and became one of Union County's three original townships in 1820. Lucas Sullivant platted the first town in what became Union County here, North Liberty, in 1797, and the Mitchell colony from Pennsylvania settled on his survey in 1799. Pennsylvanians, Virginians and Germans took the creek valley, Vermonters the Darby Plains to the south, and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis railroad crossed the township from northwest to southeast. The village of Unionville Center, platted in 1847, is its main settlement; the 2020 census counted 2,397 residents.

Settled 1798 (James and Joshua Ewing at North Liberty); 1799 (the Mitchell colony), platted 1797 (North Liberty, by Lucas Sullivant), incorporated 1820, by Formed May 10, 1803 as a township of Franklin County; organized as a Union County township in 1820.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for the Big Darby Creek, which runs through it. Local tradition holds the creek itself was named for a Wyandot chief called Darby who lived near its mouth, though a Columbus library historian has questioned that story for lack of documentation and suggests an English place-name origin instead (see the Plain City file for both accounts).

Before the town

The county history says Native people were numerous when the first settlers took their farms in the 1790s and 1800s; they lived farther north and came down the Big Darby to hunt and fish, camping for months at a time, and the site of North Liberty was one of their favourite tenting grounds. On the old Mitchell farm on the north side of Big Darby, where Union County's earliest white burying ground lies, an Indian burying ground had been in use for many years before settlers began burying there in 1800. The Native camps stayed friendly during the War of 1812: when rumours of a raid sent many families fleeing south, a party of settlers including sixteen-year-old Moses Mitchell walked to the Native villages far to the north, found the people sitting in council with no hostile intent, and stayed the night. The township lies within the land ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795); see the Union County and Plain City files for the wider Wyandot and Mingo use of the Big Darby.

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

• Indian burying ground at Mitchell's cemetery (burial) — old Mitchell farm, north side of Big Darby Creek, Darby Township, before 1800 (archive.org)
• North Liberty tenting ground (camp) — site of North Liberty on Big Darby Creek, c. 1790s-1812 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1797 — Lucas Sullivant, the Kentucky surveyor, lays out North Liberty on the Big Darby, the first town platted in what became Union County; it never had more than three buildings, all belonging to the Ewings, and Sullivant turned to laying out Franklinton.
2. 1798 — James and Joshua Ewing build a log cabin at North Liberty, the first settlement in the township, but soon leave for Jerome Township.
3. 1799 — A colony from Pennsylvania under the Mitchells buys Sullivant's 1,000-acre survey 2,879 on the north bank of Big Darby; Samuel McCullough, who dies in spring 1800 and is buried in a coffin split from a black walnut, is the first burial in what became the county's oldest cemetery.
4. 1800 — Brothers Samuel and James Robinson, who had chain-carried for Sullivant's survey party, plant corn on the 600-acre Robinson survey in the southeast of the township and return with brides from York County, Pennsylvania.
5. 1803 — Darby Township is first formed on May 10 as a subdivision of Franklin County, making it the oldest township of the future Union County.
6. 1805 — The Sager family, Germans from Loudoun County, Virginia, settle on survey 3,272 on the south bank of the Darby about a mile and a half below the future Unionville.
7. 1810 — Vermonters begin to arrive on the Darby Plains south of the Post road, a movement that continues to about 1820.
8. 1819 — Benjamin Tinkham of Connecticut makes the brick for Samuel Robinson's house, the first brick house in Union County (date approximate: he came to the township a year or two after 1817).
9. 1820 — Darby Township is organized as one of Union County's three original townships; the first election is held October 10 with forty-nine votes cast.
10. 1822 — A sickly season on the Darby Plains in 1822 and 1823 leaves scarcely a family untouched by what the county history calls the great epidemic, blamed on malaria from rotting prairie grass.
11. 1840 — German settlers, who got a foothold shortly before 1840, soon hold nearly the entire northern half of the township and build two large Lutheran churches and cemeteries.
12. 2020 — The census counts 2,397 people in the township.

Stories

A walk to the Indian villages

When the War of 1812 opened, rumour after rumour said the Indians to the north had taken up arms and were about to raid the Darby settlements. Many panic-stricken families abandoned their homes and fled south. A party of settlers, among them Moses Mitchell, then a lad of sixteen, instead walked north to the Indian villages to find out whether they had put on the war paint. They found the people sitting in council, with no hostile intent, and the settlers stayed with them overnight before going back to quiet the neighbourhood. The Indians had long come down the Big Darby to hunt and fish, camping for months at a time, and settlers' children, the county history says, were for a while in mortal dread of them. Deer hunters of the time used a different trick on the creek itself: on warm nights the deer stood in the water with only their noses above it to escape mosquitoes, and a hunter in a canoe with a candle on his hat could come within a few feet of a dazzled animal.

The coffin cut from a walnut tree

The oldest burying ground in Union County lies on the old Mitchell farm on the north side of Big Darby Creek, and an Indian burying ground had been in use there for many years before white settlers began to use it. The first white burial was that of Samuel McCullough, who died in the spring of 1800, a few months after the Mitchell colony came out from Pennsylvania. There were no boards to be had and no coffin within reach of the settlement, so his neighbours cut down a black walnut tree and split slabs from it as if making puncheon for a floor, then fashioned the coffin from them. The ground, known as Mitchell's cemetery, took most of the early settlers of Darby Township. Curry, writing in 1915, put its age at 114 years.

The town that never grew

Lucas Sullivant, a young Kentucky surveyor locating warrants in the Virginia Military District, believed a town on the Big Darby would sell well, and in 1797 he platted North Liberty, one of the earliest towns laid out in Ohio. He even claimed that the Darby was navigable as far north as his town site. But no one ever claimed the town had more than three buildings, all held by the Ewing brothers, who bought lots and built a cabin in 1798; when Sullivant made no effort to improve the place, they tired of it and moved on to Jerome Township. Sullivant soon laid out Franklinton on the Scioto instead. The Mitchell colony that settled on his survey in 1799 had met Sullivant on the way and been persuaded by his favourable accounts of the country.

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

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Mill Creek water pumped into and stored in the Marysville Upground Reservoir on Raymond Road, plus groundwater from city-owned wells, treated at the plant on the reservoir site The water here

• Marysville City69% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells
• Mid-ohio WSD - Jackson Street WTP21% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Columbus Public Water System5% of residentsScioto River (Griggs & O'Shaughnessy), Hoover Reservoir on Big Walnut Ck, plus wells
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.2% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Canaan Community MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Milford Center Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Suburbans Community MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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