Eden Township, Seneca County

How Eden Township, Seneca County began

Eden Township was organized in 1821, one year after Seneca County was created, and covers 36.4 square miles in the county's southern edge, bordering Crawford and Wyandot counties. Its only real settlement is Melmore, platted in 1824 at the center of the township on Honey Creek and named by combining the Latin 'mel' (honey) with '-more,' a reference to the creek it sits on; Melmore kept a post office from 1825 until 1993. No incorporated village lies within the township today, and it remains rural farmland typical of southern Seneca County.

Platted 1824 (Melmore), incorporated 1821 (organized), by organized by Seneca County.

Where the name comes from

One of three Eden townships in Ohio (the others in Licking and Wyandot counties). Lang's 1880 county history reports that fellow historian Consul W. Butterfield attributed the name to the township's remarkable soil fertility, but notes this is hard to square with the fact that the township's own early records spell the name 'Eaton' rather than 'Eden,' leaving the true origin unsettled. Melmore, the township's center, was named by combining the Latin 'mel' (honey) with the suffix '-more,' referencing Honey Creek, on which the town sits.

Before the town

The one Native place recorded in Eden Township is the Van Meter Reserve on Honey Creek. By the 1817 treaty at the rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie the United States reserved 1,000 acres on Honey Creek for John Van Meter, a white man captured as a child by the Wyandot in Virginia in 1778 and long a resident among them, who had married a Seneca woman, and for his wife and her three Seneca brothers, Thomas, Isaac and Paulus Brandt; the 1911 county history calls them the last of a family descended from the Mohawk leader Brant, a claim the source gives without proof. The Brandts lived on the reserve until 1829, when, about twenty-five families in all, they joined other Indians and left Ohio; Van Meter had died and was buried on the reserve. The Seneca reservation proper lay to the north and east, the scene of the 1831 removal.

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

• Van Meter Reserve (treaty) — on Honey Creek in Eden Township, 1,000 acres reserved by the 1817 treaty, 1817 to about 1829 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1778-03 — John Van Meter, then five years old, is captured by Wyandot near West Liberty, Virginia, while two older boys escape; the Wyandot burn the family house and kill his mother and sister.
2. 1817 — A treaty at the rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie reserves 1,000 acres on Honey Creek for John Van Meter and for his wife and her three Seneca brothers; the tract becomes known as the Van Meter Reserve.
3. 1821 — Eden Township is organized, a year after Seneca County's creation.
4. 1821-06-04 — The first township election is held at the house of John Searles; Eden's population then exceeds that of any other township in the county.
5. 1824 — Colonel Kilbourn surveys and plats Melmore at the center of the township, where the Kilbourn road crosses Honey Creek; Case Brown is the principal proprietor and John C. Jones puts up the first dwelling on the plat (Jones dies in the village in 1828). Around this time Eden is the most populous township in the county.
6. 1825 — A post office opens at Melmore under first postmaster Buckley Hutchins; it remains in operation until 1993.
7. 1829 — The Brandt family and their neighbors leave the Van Meter Reserve with other Indians for the West, ending the Native residence on Honey Creek in the township.
8. 1836-05-30 — A notice runs in the Tiffin Gazette opening stock subscription books at Melmore, Republic and Tiffin for a proposed Melmore and Republic Railroad, signed by local men including Thomas J. Baker, Buckley Hutchins, P. J. Price and Dr. Selden Graves; the line was never built for lack of subscribers.
9. 1836-07-16 — While raising the Methodist Episcopal church building in Melmore on a Saturday, a piece of falling timber kills an Eden settler of the Butterfield family, father of eight children including future historian Consul W. Butterfield and his sister, later Mrs. Hyacinthe of Paris.
10. 1843-07-04 — General Gibson delivers a Fourth of July speech beneath an elm at Melmore that brings him national fame as an orator.
11. 1911 — Melmore, which failed to win the Mad River & Lake Erie railroad, is a quiet inland town on a high bank of Honey Creek; the 1911 historian visited in April 1910 and stood beneath the old elm.
12. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 2,042 residents in Eden Township.

Stories

The schoolteacher who went to China

Before he became one of the 19th century's best-known American diplomats, Anson Burlingame taught school in Eden Township, according to Lang's 1880 county history, which recalls him among the notable people connected to the township alongside the Butterfield family (whose son Consul W. Butterfield became a celebrated historian) and a Union general, Gibson, who was raised on the banks of Honey Creek in Eden. Burlingame went on to serve as U.S. minister to China and later negotiated the 1868 Burlingame Treaty governing Chinese immigration to the United States, a career the county history's writer clearly took local pride in, noting that even a hardened Union general grew visibly moved recalling Eden's pioneer settlers. John Gibson's barn, the history separately notes, was the first barn raised anywhere in Seneca County, and fellow Eden settler Thomas Baker introduced the county's first Merino sheep, brought from Steuben County, New York.

The captive boy who stayed with the Wyandot

John Van Meter was five years old in March 1778 when he went with two older brothers to help arrange brush at a chopping near West Liberty, Virginia, while neighbors gathered to build a fort against Indian attacks. A Wyandot party seized him; the older boys escaped, and the raiders burned the Van Meter house and killed his mother and sister before disappearing into the wilderness with the boy. He lived among the Wyandot, forgot his English and learned it again, and when relatives persuaded him to visit he refused to stay, saying he preferred the Indian life. He married a Seneca woman, and at the 1817 treaty the United States reserved 1,000 acres on Honey Creek for him, his wife and her three brothers. Van Meter died and was buried on the reserve, and after his death a suit by Virginia Van Meters argued that he and his wife had never been legally married; his son answered with testimony that his father had brought in venison and his mother corn, and that she cooked them and the two ate together before witnesses, which he held to be their marriage.

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

Mostly Sandusky River water, supplemented by 5 wells (both listed in EPA SDWIS); the production split between them is not given. The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Tiffin96% of residentsSandusky River
• Sycamore Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Bloomville Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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