Fairfield Township, Madison County

How Fairfield Township, Madison County began

Fairfield Township occupies the eastern edge of Madison County next to Franklin County and was erected much later than most of the county's townships, on 2 June 1835 by the county commissioners. Enoch Thomas, John Phebis and David Dennison settled on Opossum Run in 1807, and a number of the first settlers were squatter-hunters drawn by the herds of deer on the Darby Plains. It holds part of the village of Mount Sterling, the crossroads of Kiousville and the railroad town of Lilly Chapel, which grew from a Methodist church built on Wesley Lilly's land in 1850. Drainage tile made the wet prairie farmland, and the township had 1,452 residents in 2020.

Settled 1807 (Enoch Thomas, John Phebis and David Dennison on Opossum Run), incorporated Township erected 2 June 1835, by Enoch Thomas.

Where the name comes from

The county commissioners named the township Fairfield in their order of 2 June 1835; Fairfield is a name used for seven townships in Ohio and the 1883 county history does not say why this one was chosen.

Before the town

No village, mound or trail is recorded in Fairfield Township. The 1883 county history says only that the county was 'occupied by savages in their paint and wigwams' less than a hundred years earlier, and that herds of deer drew hunters and squatters in the early years; it places Native camping grounds and trails elsewhere in Madison County. The land lay on the Darby Plains, hunted by Shawnee and Wyandot before the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1807 — Enoch Thomas of High Knob, Virginia, settles on Opossum Run (he builds a brick house said by some to be the first in the county and organizes the Thomas Chapel church); John Phebis and David Dennison settle the same year.
2. About 1810 — William Ware, later county sheriff, settles on the land where the village of California later stands; Isaac and Daniel Long settle on the Fitzgerald land about 1808.
3. 1830 — Wesley Lilly settles north of the later Lilly Chapel; Edward O. Fitzgerald comes in 1829.
4. 2 June 1835 — The Madison County commissioners, Burton Blizzard, Thomas Jones and Jacob Garrard, order a new township named Fairfield cut from surrounding townships, much later than most others in the county; a line with Union Township is altered in December 1841.
5. Spring 1849 — Thomas Chappel, Robert Thomas and William D. Pringle lay out the village of California during the gold rush; its post office is called Big Plains because another office already bore the name California.
6. 1850 — A Methodist church is built on land donated by Wesley Lilly and named Lilly Chapel, drawing settlers from the neighborhood.
7. 1867 — A German Lutheran congregation is organized at Lilly Chapel with twenty or more members; it lapses and is reorganized in 1878.
8. 1870-1872 — The first pike in the township, from London to California and Mt. Sterling, is built.
9. 28 August 1871 — Henry Gilroy and Henry Lilly platt a town named Gilroy near the chapel, according to Wikipedia and the 1915 county history (the 1883 history says they laid it out in 1874).
10. 1873 — The Short Line railroad from Springfield to Columbus is completed and a station is named Lilly Chapel; Henry Lilly's petition for a post office of that name is granted, with Thomas Horn the first postmaster.
11. 14 February 1874 — Lilly Chapel Grange No. 583 is instituted with twenty-six charter members.
12. 1874-1881 — A post office opened at Warnersville in fall 1874 is discontinued in 1879 and re-established in spring 1881 under the name Kiousville.
13. 1876 — Farmers Henry Lilly, John Horn, Thomas Horn and Thomas Gorby build a corn-sheller and elevator, which succeeds enough to spur larger elevators built by Pringle Brothers (fall 1877) and the Farmers' Association.
14. 1878 — A steam-powered tile factory is built at Lilly Chapel and does a large business supplying drainage tile for the flat, wet Darby Plains farmland.
15. 1881 — Lilly Chapel ships 508 full carloads in the year, including 232 of corn, 44 of hogs and 18 of cattle.
16. 2020 — Census recorded 1,452 residents in the township.

Stories

A chapel that named a town

In 1850, well before any village existed in this corner of Madison County, a Methodist congregation built a church on land given by a farmer named Wesley Lilly. Out of gratitude they called it Lilly Chapel. For two decades it stood alone, drawing worshippers from as far as neighboring Union County, until 1871 when two men, Henry Gilroy and Henry Lilly (Wesley's relative), platted a proper town nearby in anticipation of a new railroad, and named it Gilroy. When the Columbus-to-Springfield short line was finished in 1873, the depot took the name everyone already used for the place: Lilly Chapel. The church had outlasted its own founders' choice of name for the town around it.

Tile drained the plains

The flat ground of eastern Madison County was naturally wet prairie, and turning it into productive farmland took drainage as much as plowing. Lilly Chapel's answer arrived in 1878 with a steam-powered tile factory that immediately did a booming trade, supplying the clay drainage tile that farmers laid under their fields to carry water away. Two years earlier, four local farmers had already built a corn-sheller and grain elevator at the same crossroads; between the two, Lilly Chapel briefly became a genuine industrial node for a township that was, and remains, mostly farms.

Opossum Run and Lubbergut Creek

Fairfield's creeks were named by its settlers. Opossum Run was once called Plum Run until John Phebis and Isaac McHenry, coming up the creek from Yankeetown in Fayette County to look for land, startled a large opossum with a brood of young clinging to her; they killed her, and on the way back killed another, and the name stuck. Lubbergut Creek is named for a man named Mantle, who weighed 480 pounds and crossed the creek daily on a foot-log. Two neighbors sawed the log nearly through from underneath for fun, and the next time Mantle tried to cross, log and man went into the water. The 1883 county history records both stories in its Fairfield chapter, along with the fact that the township had no grist mill and only a few sawmills.

California, Big Plains and the gold rush town

In the spring of 1849, when the gold strike had everyone in Ohio talking about California, Thomas Chappel, Robert Thomas and William D. Pringle laid out a village in the rich prairie country of Fairfield and gave it the suggestive name of California. Since another post office already had that name, the Post Office Department called it Big Plains, after the large prairies near the town. Dr. Holmes built the first house and was the first postmaster and physician; James Parks kept the first store and William Riley was the first blacksmith. By 1883 the village had three general stores, three blacksmiths, three physicians, a steam tile factory and sawmill, a Methodist church and a brick town house built in 1877.

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

Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Mid-ohio WSD - Chrisman Avenue WTP62% of residentsLocal glacial sand-and-gravel wells (Madison County)
• West Jefferson Village22% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Choctaw Utilities, Inc.10% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mount Sterling Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Green Meadows Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Jefferson Lodge Mobile Home0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Picket Fences MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Sunset Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Power plants (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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