Eagle Township, Hancock County

How Eagle Township, Hancock County began

Eagle Township was erected December 3, 1832, when Hancock County commissioners cut original surveyed township one south, range ten east, off Van Buren Township and organized it as a separate civil township. Its first settlers, Adam Woodruff and John Woodruff, entered land on sections 25 and 26 on June 1, 1829, several years before the township existed as a government. It takes its name from Eagle Creek, which runs through it. The township remains rural farmland today, with no incorporated municipality inside its boundaries.

Settled 1829, incorporated 1832-12-03, by Adam Woodruff and John Woodruff (first land entries, 1829); organized as a township by the Hancock County commissioners, December 3, 1832.

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history says the township 'takes its name from the creek of the same name which runs through it', Eagle Creek, and records that the commissioners erected the township on December 3, 1832.

Before the town

No named village, documented camp or mound is recorded for Eagle Township. The one concrete, geographically specific item is that 'Hull's Trail' — the military road General William Hull's army cut in 1812 from Fort Necessity to Fort Findlay during preparations for the War of 1812 — followed the west bank of the east branch of Eagle Creek and then the west side of Eagle Creek through this area on its way to the fort, meaning the trail crossed what is now Eagle Township. Beyond that, the record is county-wide rather than township-specific: Wyandot families kept a small village and cornfields at the site of Findlay and another at 'Indian Green' downstream, and the Wyandot held a reservation twelve miles square around Upper Sandusky (established by the Treaty of the Maumee Rapids/Fort Meigs, September 29, 1817, and enlarged September 17, 1818) until they ceded their remaining Ohio lands in March 1842.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee.

• Hull's Trail (trail) — War of 1812 military road from Fort Necessity to Fort Findlay, following the east and then west branch of Eagle Creek through what is now Eagle Township, 1812 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1829 — Adam Woodruff (June 1) enters 240 acres on sections 25 and 26, and John Woodruff enters an adjoining 240 acres the same day, the first documented land entries in what became Eagle Township.
2. 1830 — George Bishop builds a saw mill on Eagle Creek, and John Decker, Benjamin Whitman, Conrad Line, Jacob Zoll and R. W. McClellon settle in the township this year.
3. 1831 — Jacob, Peter and John Powell of Fairfield County enter land on Sections 5, 6 and 8 on Tiderishi Creek, and John D. Bishop, Elias Decker and Amos Crum arrive.
4. 1832 — On December 3 the Hancock County commissioners set off township one south, range ten east, from Van Buren Township and organized it as Eagle Township.
5. 1833 — The township holds its first election, with barely enough voters to fill the offices, and George Bishop adds a flouring mill known as Bishop's Mill.
6. 1834 — The first school house in Eagle Township is built on section 24, with Rachel McBride as the first teacher; the Bishop, Whitman, Line, Sharp, Crum and Woodruff families send their children.
7. 1835 — An Evangelical congregation, the first church recorded in Eagle Township, is organized.
8. 1840 — The United Brethren build the township's first church building, a small hewed-log church on John Woodruff's farm east of Eagle Creek.
9. 1845 — Henry Bishop, who had edited and published the Hancock Courier (Findlay's first newspaper) since 1839 and served two terms in the Ohio legislature after his election in 1851, sells the paper and retires to a farm in Eagle Township.
10. 1850 — Clement post office is established with Amos Crum as postmaster, on the Bellefontaine road about six miles south of Findlay; it is discontinued in 1864.
11. 1854 — John D. Bishop adds steam power to Bishop's Mill, then removes it after a few years' trial and goes back to water power.
12. 1855 — Henry Bishop drowns in Eagle Creek in June, on or near his Eagle Township farm.
13. 1880 — The population is 1,309 and nine school districts enrol 458 children.
14. 2020 — The census counts 1,084 people in Eagle Township, which has the University of Findlay equestrian complex on U.S. Route 68.

Stories

The editor who retired to Eagle Creek and drowned in it

Henry Bishop was born and raised in Franklin County, Ohio, and in January 1839 he bought the Findlay Courier, Hancock County's first newspaper and the first in northwestern Ohio, founded in 1836 by Jacob Rosenberg. Bishop ran the paper — by then renamed the Hancock Courier — for more than six years, printing it on an 18-by-26-inch sheet with no steam press, hauling paper stock in by mud wagon from the nearest mill at Delaware over roads that were often no roads at all. In 1851, while still connected to the county, he was elected to the Ohio legislature and served two terms. In July 1845 he sold the Courier to William Mungen and moved to a farm in Eagle Township to farm it himself. Ten years later, in June 1855, he drowned in Eagle Creek, the stream that runs through the township whose land he had chosen to retire to.

Bishop's Mill and the milk sickness

The first mill in Eagle Township was Decker's hand mill, where a great deal of muscle could grind corn fine enough for mush. In 1830 George Bishop built a saw mill on Eagle Creek and in 1833 a flouring mill, still known as Bishop's Mill when the county historian wrote in 1881; he called it perhaps the most useful mill in the county in the years when mills were most needed, patronized by people from a distance. John D. Bishop put steam power into it in 1854 but was dissatisfied and went back to the creek. The settlers had a worse problem than slow milling. Parts of the township were, and some still were, subject to the 'milk sickness', a disease whose cause was never found; the county historian says it appeared only on uncultivated or unreclaimed land and never on cleared fields, which led him to suppose that some wild plant was responsible.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Findlay City87% of residentsFindlay's two upground reservoirs, filled by pumping from the Blanchard River
• Rawson Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026 edition (Directory of Officials): county board of elections.

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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-08

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