Deerfield Township, Ross County

How Deerfield Township, Ross County began

Deerfield Township, in the northwestern corner of Ross County, was organized on July 7, 1804 from parts of Concord, Pickaway and Union townships. It is one of the county's smallest townships by area, straddling the line between the fertile, flat Pickaway Plains and the more broken ground typical of the rest of Ross County. Its earliest documented settler is White Brown, a Delaware-born Revolutionary War veteran and surveyor who freed his own slaves, bought 500 acres on Deer Creek in 1801, and built the township's first sawmill and first church building; his descendants include the family the county's Austin Brown Mound may well be named for. Scottish immigrant John Clark's family arrived about the same time, and John's son, Col. William Clark, went on to plat the village of Clarksburg, which sits in the township's northern half.

Settled 1801 (White Brown's family), by White Brown, a Delaware-born surveyor and Revolutionary War veteran remembered as one of the township's first, if not the first, white settlers.

Where the name comes from

The sources checked do not explain the origin of the name Deerfield for this township; it is one of several Ohio townships sharing the name (others sit in Morgan, Portage and Warren counties).

Before the town

Deerfield Township contains the Austin Brown Mound, a documented prehistoric earthwork, though the sources checked gave no further detail on its builders, dimensions or excavation history. A 1917 county biographical history, quoting an 1880 source, traces a White Brown family in the township whose descendants include an Austin H. Brown; whether the mound is named for a member of this family is a plausible but unconfirmed connection, not stated outright in any source checked, and is offered here as a lead rather than a fact. The township's western edge, on the Pickaway Plains, lay within Shawnee territory before the 1795 Treaty of Greenville; no named eighteenth-century village or trail specific to the township turned up. A follow-up pass should check the National Register nomination for the Austin Brown Mound directly.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Austin Brown Mound (mound) — Deerfield Township, Ross County, unspecified prehistoric (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1749 — White Brown, later remembered as one of Deerfield Township's first settlers, is born in Delaware; he becomes a surveyor, making the first plat of Sussex County, Delaware, and serves as a soldier in the Revolution.
2. 1781 — White Brown builds a Methodist meeting house, known as Brown's Chapel, on his home ground in Delaware, before ever coming to Ohio.
3. 1799 — White Brown first visits and explores the Northwest Territory, including Ross County.
4. c.1800 — John Clark, a Scottish immigrant who had first settled in Pennsylvania, brings his family to the part of Ross County that becomes Deerfield Township.
5. 1801 — White Brown returns to Ross County with his sons and forty enslaved people, whom he later frees, and buys 500 acres of forest land in what is now Deerfield Township.
6. 1803 — White Brown builds a log barn on his farm that serves, from 1803 to 1818, as the meeting place of Deerfield Township's pioneer Methodist Episcopal congregation; visiting preachers there over the years include Bishops Francis Asbury, Richard Whatcoat and William McKendree.
7. 1804 — Deerfield Township is organized on July 7, from parts of Concord, Pickaway and Union townships.
8. 1805 — White Brown builds the first sawmill in Deerfield Township, on his farm on Deer Creek, damming the stream by felling a tree across it and filling in with brush.
9. 1816 — Col. William Clark, John Clark's son, lays out the village of Clarksburg in the township's northern section, on his own farm.
10. 1842 — White Brown dies on March 23, aged ninety-three.
11. 1941 — The water treatment plant serving Chillicothe, which supplies parts of the township, opens on Park Street.

Stories

The plains and the hills

Deerfield is one of the smallest of Ross County's sixteen townships, and its shape reflects a boundary that mattered more to nineteenth-century farmers than to modern mapmakers: the county history describes it as sitting on the border between the fertile, level Pickaway Plains to the north and the more broken, wooded terrain typical of the rest of Ross and neighboring Fayette counties to the south. That line shaped what could be farmed and how, and it is part of why the township was carved out in 1804 from three older townships rather than surveyed fresh - its boundary followed the land, not a section grid.

The surveyor who freed his own workers

White Brown was born in Delaware in 1749 and grew into a surveyor of some note, laying out the first plat of Sussex County there, before serving in the Revolutionary War and becoming an early figure in the Methodist Episcopal Church, building a meeting house on his own land in 1781. He first explored Ross County in 1799 and returned in 1801 with his sons and forty enslaved people, whom he later freed, to take up 500 acres of unbroken forest on Deer Creek in what became Deerfield Township. His household built a log cabin in 1802, and by 1803 a log barn that doubled as the township's first Methodist meeting place for the next fifteen years; two years after that he dammed Deer Creek with a felled tree and built the township's first sawmill, keeping the first silver dollar he earned there, a Spanish coin dated 1781 and stamped with his initials and the year 1805, still preserved by the family generations later. He also shipped farm goods down to New Orleans and served on the township's first board of trustees. He died in 1842 at ninety-three, three times married and the father of many children, a founding figure whose full story survives because his descendants recorded it in detail for a 1917 county history.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · history.rays-place.com · en.wikipedia.org · epa.ohio.gov · archive.org

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Clarksburg Village51% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc43% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Williamsport Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Frankfort Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Darbyville Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-20

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