Dover Township, Union County

How Dover Township, Union County began

Dover Township, in the eastern part of Union County, was set off from Mill Creek Township in December 1838 and formally organized in 1839. Its one village, laid out in 1854 by William Richey, Adam Richey, Thomas Aplin and B. F. Benton along what is now U.S. Route 36, was first called Dover and later New Dover once a post office of that name was needed to avoid confusion with other Ohio towns named Dover. By the late 1870s New Dover had a church, a school, a harness shop, a blacksmith shop and several stores; today it survives as an unincorporated crossroads, and Marysville's southwestern edge now reaches into the township's western corner.

Platted 1854, incorporated 1839, by William Richey, Adam Richey, Thomas Aplin and B. F. Benton (New Dover village).

Where the name comes from

Sources give the platting date and founders of the township's village but not why either the village or the township took the name Dover; it is one of several Dover townships and towns across Ohio, a name likely carried from Dover, England by way of earlier American settlement rather than anything local. The township itself was organized out of the eastern part of Mill Creek Township in 1838-39.

Before the town

No source found records a Native American site, village or trail specific to Dover Township. The township was not organized until 1838-39, decades after Native American land title in this part of Union County had passed to the United States. As with the rest of the county, the ground lay within territory used by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Miami and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) before removal; the Greenville Treaty Line of 1795, which separated land ceded to the United States from land the Ohio nations still held, crosses Union County, and Jonathan Alder, held captive as a boy by the Mingo and Shawnee, later settled nearby in Jerome Township in the same county.

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

Timeline

1. 1813-12 — Two discharged soldiers of the War of 1812, David Mitchell and James Mather, trying to get home on foot from Fort Meigs, are caught by a flooded Mill Creek near the site of New Dover; Mitchell collapses with a chill and Mather keeps him alive through a freezing night.
2. 1815 — Jonathan M. Burroughs, a young man from New Jersey, leases 400 acres on Mill Creek in what is now Dover Township and strikes the first blow clearing its forest; his cabin has no furniture but a pole bedstead and a slab for a table.
3. 1818 — William Badley, John Hannaman, Stephen Dysert, Isaac Dodd and Lancelot Maze all settle on Mill Creek in the same season, the township's first wave of settlers.
4. 1819-02 — William Richey Sr., born in Pennsylvania, moves his family from the Darby Plains (where he settled in 1813) to Mill Creek in Dover's future territory; his son William, 18 at the time, later serves a term in the legislature (1845-46) and as justice of the peace for twenty-one years.
5. 1819-12-14 — Arthur Badley, 28, dies and is the first burial in what becomes the Buxton Cemetery on the west bank of Mill Creek.
6. 1838-12 — Dover Township is constituted out of Mill Creek Township; on March 5, 1839 the commissioners add Survey No. 3,007 (John Graham's tract) to it from Mill Creek.
7. about 1838 — The first class of the Mount Herman Methodist Episcopal Church meets at the house of the settler Ebenezer Mathers; a frame church is built in 1840.
8. 1842-06-07 — Corinth Presbyterian Church is organized at the New Light Church with thirteen founding members; it builds its own frame church in 1847-48 near the Leesburg Township line and lasts about twenty years.
9. 1852 — The Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad is built through the township in 1852-53, which encourages the laying out of New Dover.
10. 1854-05-11 — William and Adam Richey, Thomas Aplin and B. F. Benton have New Dover surveyed into lots, streets and alleys by William B. Irwin; the plat is recorded July 4, 1854, and Adam Richey builds the first house that fall.
11. 1856 — The New Dover post office was established on February 5, the village having taken the name New Dover to distinguish its mail from other Ohio towns called Dover.
12. 1867 — The Methodists build their frame church in Dover for about $1,200 and dedicate it on February 9, 1868, after the old Mount Herman society is divided in two.
13. 1871-04 — Dover Regular Baptist Church is organized by Rev. Daniel Bryant with fifteen members; it takes over a frame church built earlier by a branch of the Mill Creek Baptist Church at Ostrander.
14. 1877 — By this date New Dover did a considerable manufacturing business and held one church, a school-house, a harness shop, a blacksmith shop and several other stores.
15. 1882 — New Dover has about 150 people, two general stores, three blacksmiths, a harness shop, two tile factories (the first about 1874), a heading and chair-round factory built in 1870, and a railroad station with a telegraph operator.
16. 1935 — The New Dover post office was discontinued on April 30.

Stories

Four men and a crossroads village

On May 11, 1854, four Dover Township residents — William Richey, Adam Richey, Thomas Aplin and B. F. Benton — took a piece of ground along what would become U.S. Route 36, about three miles east of Marysville, and had it surveyed into lots, streets and alleys for a town they called Dover. A post office followed in 1856 under the name New Dover, chosen to keep the mail straight from the many other Doversin Ohio. The little village grew steadily through the 1860s and 1870s: by 1877 it supported a church, a school, a harness shop, a blacksmith shop and a run of general stores, along with what the county history called a considerable manufacturing trade for a place its size. New Dover never incorporated and its post office closed in 1935, but the crossroads survives today as an unincorporated community within the township that carries its shortened name.

"We'll make it yet"

In the fall or winter of 1815 Jonathan M. Burroughs, a New Jersey-born man of twenty-one, leased 400 acres on Mill Creek and moved his bride into a mud-daubed log cabin in the midwinter forest. They owned a bedstead of poles, a feather bed and one blanket, a slab table, a broken skillet, one broken plate and a fork with a missing tine. When sugar-making season came he rented three kettles, made his own troughs, tapped about two hundred maples and boiled sap day and night. Then he carried all the sugar he could on his back to James Ewing's store near Plain City, ten miles off along blazed paths, and came home with half a dozen each of plates, knives, forks and cups, a tin teapot and a quarter pound of tea. His wife washed the dishes and he split a slab for a shelf. Years later Burroughs told the county historian he tapped her on the shoulder and said, "We'll make it yet," and that he felt prouder at that moment than if he had been handed $10,000. Within seven years he owned two horses, a wagon, oxen, milch cows and forty hogs.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · remarkableohio.org · uccogs.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

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 City100% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.0% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Milford Center Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2025: 1 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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 2025-12-30

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