Donnelsville

How Donnelsville began

Donnelsville is a small village in the eastern part of Bethel Township, Clark County, on the National Road (U.S. 40) seven miles west of Springfield. It takes its name from the Donnel family: Jonathan Donnel, a Pennsylvania surveyor who came west in 1795 and with David Lowry made one of the county's first settlements on Mad River, after whom Donnel's Creek is named, and his younger brother James Donnel, who with Abraham Smith platted the village, in 1830 according to a 1908 county history or surveyed it in August 1836 according to an 1881 one. A saw-mill stood there by about 1829, a bridge by 1838 and a post office from 1840. Rev. Peter Smith, author of the first book of medicine published by a resident of the county, is buried there. The village had 195 residents in 1880, peaked at 304 in 2010, and had 255 in 2020. It is separate from New Carlisle, the larger town in the same township.

Settled 1795-97 (Jonathan Donnel and David Lowry in the surrounding township; Donnel's brother James came in 1797), platted 1830 (1908 county history) or August 1836 (1881 county history); additions 1844 (Abraham Smith) and 1859 (John Leffel), by James Donnel (and, in the 1881 account, Abraham Smith).

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history says Donnel's Creek was named in honor of Jonathan Donnel, the early settler and surveyor, and that the village 'is supposed to have been so named also,' while noting that public records show it was surveyed by James Donnel and Abraham Smith in August 1836 and 'it may be that it was named on account of the latter Donnel.' The 1908 county history says the village was first platted in 1830 by James Donnel, 'from whom no doubt it received its name.' The 1922 history says David Lowry named the creek for his friend Jonathan Donnel.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or trail specific to Donnelsville itself was found in the sources consulted. But the surrounding township carries real weight: on August 8, 1780, General George Rogers Clark led about 970 Kentucky militia against Piqua (Pekowi), the principal Shawnee town on the Mad River, defended by Shawnee under Chief Black Hoof with Lenape, Wyandot, and Mingo support. Clark's forces used artillery from the river bluffs to break the town's stockade and afterward burned an estimated 500 acres of the Shawnee's cornfields; the battle is described as the largest fought west of the Alleghenies during the Revolutionary War. The defeat forced the Shawnee to abandon the Mad River valley for the Great Miami River, where they built a new town they called Peckuwe (the modern city of Piqua, Ohio, took this name). That battle site sits in Bethel Township itself, the same township as Donnelsville, some miles to the west near the Mad River — making this one of the township's most consequential events, even though it predates the village's platting by half a century or more and no source ties it to the exact ground Donnelsville occupies. The Mad River and Great Miami valleys more broadly served as Shawnee and Miami hunting grounds and travel corridors through the eighteenth century. County-level native history also includes the Adena/Hopewell mound-building era. White settlement of the township began right after the Treaty of Greenville (August 3, 1795): David Lowry came down the Ohio that spring with a boat-load of locust timber and met the surveyor Jonathan Donnel near Cincinnati, and the two took up land on Mad River, Donnel's on Section 33 of what became Bethel Township; the 1922 county history says Greenville was followed by immediate land purchases.

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

• Piqua (Pekowi) / Battle of Piqua site (battle) — Bethel Township, Clark County, on the Mad River, roughly 7 miles west of Springfield, destroyed August 8, 1780 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. August 8, 1780 — General George Rogers Clark's Kentucky militia destroy the Shawnee town of Piqua on the Mad River in what is now Bethel Township, burning the cornfields; the 1922 county history says the township's history 'begins with' the battle.
2. 1795 — The surveyor Jonathan Donnel, born in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, comes west, meets David Lowry near Cincinnati and joins him in the first known settlement in this part of the county; Donnel selects part of Section 33 of what is now Bethel Township.
3. 1797 — Jonathan Donnel returns to Pennsylvania and brings out his brother James, then eight years old, whom he raises.
4. about 1804 — Jonathan Donnel builds the first mill in Bethel Township, a log saw-mill on Donnel's Creek, which a freshet later sweeps away; David Lowry's grist-mill follows in 1808, and Donnel wins a damages suit over Lowry's dam, the two remaining friends.
5. about 1815 — Jonathan Donnel dies by his own hand in a spring-house in Springfield Township, after losing money supplying the army in the War of 1812; the 1881 history dates it 1815 or 1816, the 1922 history 1812.
6. December 31, 1816 — Rev. Peter Smith, author of The Indian Doctor's Dispensatory (1813), dies and is buried at Donnelsville.
7. about 1829 — Major Abraham Smith builds a saw-mill in Donnelsville, where a mill still stood in 1881.
8. 1830 — James Donnel platts the village with lots 1-36 on both sides of the National Road (date from the 1908 history).
9. August 1836 — The 1881 county history says the town was surveyed by James Donnel and Abraham Smith in this month.
10. 1838 — A bridge is built at Donnelsville.
11. 1840 — A post office named Donnelsville is established.
12. 1844 — Abraham Smith makes an addition of lots 38-54 north of the first plat; John Leffel platts more lots in 1859.
13. 1850 — The village records 196 residents in that year's federal census.
14. 1870s — The Clark County Pomona Grange is first organized at Donnelsville; a Lutheran congregation that had met since about 1830 builds its church in the village.
15. 1880 — The census bulletin counts 195 residents in Donnelsville village, within Bethel Township's 3,133.
16. 2010 — Village population reaches its recorded peak of 304.
17. 2020 — The census records 255 residents.

Stories

Jonathan Donnel and David Lowry

The creek and the village at Donnelsville carry the name of Jonathan Donnel, who came west from Lycoming County, Pennsylvania in the spring of 1795, the year of the Treaty of Greenville. Near Cincinnati he met David Lowry, a Scot's son who had come down the Ohio with a boat-load of locust timber, and the two went north together to Mad River; Lowry gave the creek on their claims Donnel's name. Donnel, an able surveyor and farmer who even made wine from his grapes, built the township's first mill, a log saw-mill, about 1804, and when Lowry's dam backed water onto it, Donnel sued, won damages in Urbana, and stayed Lowry's friend. After the War of 1812, in which he supplied the army, he lost much of his property, and ill health and exposure led to a fit of despair in which he took his own life in a spring-house. His gravestone lay in the loft for eighty years until it went to the Clark County Historical Society.

Father Smith and the Indian Doctor's Dispensatory

Rev. Peter Smith, born in Wales in 1753 and educated at Princeton, lived along Mad River as a minister and herb doctor and is buried at Donnelsville; he died on December 31, 1816. In 1813 he had a book printed for himself in Cincinnati, The Indian Doctor's Dispensatory, Being Father Smith's Advice Respecting Diseases and Their Cure, the oldest publication by a resident of what is now Clark County and, in Dr. John Uri Lloyd's judgment, the first materia medica published in the West. By the 1890s no copy seemed to survive. Lloyd, the Cincinnati pharmacist and antiquarian, learned in a casual conversation at Middle Bass Island that General J. Warren Keifer of Springfield, Smith's grandson, owned one, and Lloyd republished the book in 1898.

Photographs

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

No water-system data is linked to Donnelsville's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-12-23

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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