Elizabeth Township, Miami County

How Elizabeth Township, Miami County began

Elizabeth Township was one of Miami County's first five townships, organized in 1807 and named simply "Elizabeth" by the county commissioners at their first meeting. Settlement began around 1799-1800 with Michael Carver and the Knoop brothers, migrants from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Virginia drawn by good springs, white-oak timber, and maple sugar groves. It remains a rural township of farms and a handful of stone and brick 19th-century farmhouses now on the National Register, with no incorporated village of its own beyond the small crossroads of Miami City, platted in 1858.

Settled c. 1799-1800, incorporated 1807 (township organized), by Miami County Commissioners, at their first meeting; early settlers included Michael Carver and Benjamin and Christopher Knoop.

Where the name comes from

The township was named "Elizabeth" directly by the Miami County Commissioners at their first organizational meeting, when the county was divided into townships; the 1880 county history quotes the commissioners' order creating "the fourth township to be known and called by the name of Elizabeth," but does not explain whom or what it honored.

Before the town

The 1880 county history records that Pottawatomie people camped throughout Elizabeth Township in the settlement era and were generally described as peaceable, occasionally visiting settler cabins to ask for bread and whiskey. It also recounts the killing of Dilbone and the Gerards, after which the whole community prepared for action: women and children were gathered at John M. Dye's house while the men searched the country for the killers. No mound, earthwork, treaty line, or named village specific to this township is recorded; the county's broader Native history includes the Shawnee towns at Upper Piqua and the Treaty of Greenville line.

Nations recorded here: Potawatomi.

Timeline

1. 1799-1800 — Michael Carver, from Pennsylvania, moves into the township with Benjamin and Christopher Knoop; John and Jacob Mann and Michael Shidecker are among the settlers who follow.
2. 1804 — The area's first Baptist meeting is held on November 3 at the house of Stephen Dye, in neighboring Staunton Township.
3. 1806 — Jacob Prillman operates a powder mill on Indian Creek, an early industrial venture in the township.
4. 1807 — Elizabeth Township is formally organized as Miami County's fourth township.
5. 1811-1813 — John M. Dye builds the township's first grist mill at the Lost Creek crossing.
6. 1815 — A "New Lights" church is built near Cold Springs.
7. 1822 — McKendree Chapel, a Methodist Episcopal church, is built after the congregation first met at Samuel Mitchell's house.
8. 1858 — Miami City, the township's only village, is laid out by M.G. Carr, Levi Hart, and William Vandeveer along the Troy-Springfield pike.
9. 1983 — The John Minor Dye Stone House, at 9 South Children's Home Road east of Troy, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (July 7).
10. 1987 — The Callahill and Priscilla Weddle House, at 5710 LeFevre Road, is listed on the National Register (June 18).
11. 1988 — The Andrew Sheets House, at 6880 LaFevre Road, is listed on the National Register (February 1).

Stories

Springs, sugar maples, and a name no one explains

When the Miami County Commissioners divided the new county into townships in 1807, they simply ordered that "the fourth township" be "known and called by the name of Elizabeth," without recording why. Settlement was already several years old by then: Michael Carver had arrived from Pennsylvania around 1799-1800, and families with him and after him were drawn by the same things every early account of the township repeats — good springs, white-oak timber for building, and maple groves for sugar. By 1830 the log cabins of the first generation were giving way to frame houses, and the 1880 county history sums up the intervening decades as a story of steady, unremarkable prosperity: mills, distilleries, and eight brick schoolhouses by the time of its writing.

A stone house east of Troy

John Minor Dye built a stone house on Children's Home Road east of Troy that survives as one of Elizabeth Township's few individually landmarked buildings, added to the National Register in 1983. Dye's family were also early millers in the township: John M. Dye put up the first grist mill at the Lost Creek crossing between 1811 and 1813. The house, and two more nineteenth-century farmhouses nearby on LaFevre/LeFevre Road (the Andrew Sheets House and the Callahill and Priscilla Weddle House), are the only structures from Elizabeth Township's farm-building boom now individually protected; nothing else in the township beyond a scatter of churches and the small settlement of Miami City was ever built up enough to leave a comparable record.

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

Every historic place in Miami County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Troy City82% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Carlisle City7% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Clark County Park Layne6% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Miami Co-camp Troy2% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• NAWA1% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Honey Creek Village MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Miami Co-n25a Extension1% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Christiansburg Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Brookwood MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-22

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