Elk Township, Noble County

How Elk Township, Noble County began

Elk Township sits in the southeastern corner of Noble County and, like the rest of the county, was carved out of Monroe County territory when Noble County was organized on April 1, 1851 (the township's two northern sections had come from Franklin Township and its four southern sections from Washington County). German families were among its early settlers, arriving from 1836. William Crum platted a village called Fredericktown (named for Frederick Miller, and known informally as Crum Town) just south of Cliffyville in 1854; when a post office was established there under the name Elk in 1873, the community took that name. The township's own name is older: Elk Township appears on the Monroe County records in 1822. In the township's western reach, Moses T. Spencer laid out Harriettsville in 1839, naming it for his daughter Harriett; the German Catholic parish organized there in 1868 built the Gothic Revival stone church of St. Henry, the township's only National Register-listed site. Elk Township remains rural and unincorporated, with a 2020 population of 303.

Settled 1830s (German settlers from 1836; Moses T. Spencer's family, c. 1830), platted 1839 (Harriettsville); 1854 (Fredericktown/Crum Town, later Elk), by township organized with Noble County, April 1, 1851.

Where the name comes from

No source read explains the name 'Elk'. The township is older than the village of Elk inside it: the 1887 county history finds Elk Township on the Monroe County records in 1822, while the village, laid out in 1854 on William Crum's land as Fredericktown (named for Frederick Miller, and also called Crumtown), took the name Elk only when its post office opened under that name in 1873.

Before the town

No mounds, earthworks, villages, trails or treaty lines specific to Elk Township are recorded in the sources consulted. The 1887 county history's chapter on Elk Township, according to its table of contents, covers taxes, boundary changes, and the township's pioneer families (Davis, Pryor, Enoch, Gray, Crum and the first German settlers of 1836) but its heading does not mention Native encampments, mounds, or trails the way the neighboring Stock Township chapter does. Nothing site-specific to Elk Township was found.

Timeline

1. 1839 — Moses T. Spencer, who had settled in the area from Allegany County, Maryland around 1830 with his siblings Rebecca Chamberlain and Amos Spencer, lays out the village of Harriettsville, naming it for his daughter Harriett; a post office opens the same year and runs until 1964.
2. 1851 — Noble County is organized on April 1; Elk Township, previously divided between Franklin Township (its northern two sections) and Washington County (its southern four), is transferred into the new county.
3. 1854 — William Crum plats a 19-lot village just south of Cliffyville on what is now State Route 260, first called Fredericktown or Crum Town.
4. 1868 — St. Henry's Catholic parish, serving the township's German settlers, is organized at Harriettsville; a small frame church, 25 by 40 feet and costing $1,800, is completed the same year.
5. 1873 — A post office opens at the former Fredericktown/Crum Town under the name Elk; the community becomes known by that name and remains in operation until 1910.
6. 1894 — St. Henry's parish replaces its original frame church with a stone Gothic Revival building designed by Chicago architect Adolphus Druiding, the only stone building in Harriettsville.
7. 1982 — St. Henry's Catholic Church and Rectory is added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2.

Stories

A stone church for a German parish

German families began arriving in Elk Township from 1836, and by the late 1860s enough Catholic households had settled around the Spencer family's village of Harriettsville that a parish was organized in 1868, dedicated to St. Henry. The first building was modest: a frame church just 25 by 40 feet, built for $1,800. The parish grew, and in 1894 it replaced the frame building with a stone church in the Gothic Revival style, designed by Adolphus Druiding, a Chicago architect known for German Catholic parish churches across the Midwest. The stone church stood out immediately as the only stone building in Harriettsville, a rural crossroads of frame houses and barns, and it remains the township's most architecturally distinguished structure. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 2, 1982, and is the only NRHP-listed property actually located within Elk Township.

From Crum Town to Elk

In 1854, William Crum platted a nineteen-lot village on what is now State Route 260, just south of the older postal hamlet of Cliffyville in neighboring Stock Township. It was named Fredericktown, for Frederick Miller, and was known informally as Crum Town, after William Crum, on whose land it was laid out. The name that stuck came almost by accident: when the community applied for a post office in 1873, the office was granted under the name Elk rather than Fredericktown or Crum Town. The post office ran until 1910, but the name outlasted it.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Washington County on the full map

No water-system data is linked to Elk Township, Noble County's ZIP codes yet.

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