Farmersville

How Farmersville began

Farmersville was platted in 1832 by store and tavern owner Oliver Dalrymple, who named it for the farmers who worked the surrounding land; the village was incorporated by special act of the Ohio legislature on March 7, 1845 (one later source gives 1849), and a post office opened in 1833 and ran for over a century and a half. It grew slowly through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a farm-trade town in Jackson Township, with the usual small-town mix of grocers, blacksmiths, shoe shops and hotels, and later a spoke-and-handle factory and a chicken-and-steer-feed mill. Its best-known landmark was never a building but a field: from the 1930s to the 1950s, resident Winter Zellar 'Zero' Swartsel turned his farm outside the village into the 'Bottle Farm,' a folk-art attraction of glass, bells and found objects that drew visitors from across the country. Farmersville remains a small village of under a thousand people southwest of Dayton.

Platted 1832, incorporated 1845-03-07 (Village of Farmersville website; Wikipedia gives 1849), by Oliver Dalrymple, store and tavern proprietor.

Where the name comes from

Dalrymple named the village 'in honor of his friends and neighbors who were tillers of the soil' -- the farmers of the surrounding district.

Before the town

No mound, village, trail or treaty site specific to Farmersville was found in the sources checked. The village's own history page notes only that early farming families such as the Gables and the Hoops 'shared the region with Shawnee Indians,' without naming a specific site, encounter or date.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1832 — Oliver Dalrymple platted the village of Farmersville.
2. 1833 — A post office opened at Farmersville; it remained in operation past 2000.
3. 1845-03-07 — Farmersville was incorporated as a village by special act of the Ohio General Assembly.
4. 1880 — The village's population reached 794 at that year's count, its high point in the nineteenth century.
5. 1900 — Farmersville's census recorded 440 residents; the village's business district that era included four grocers, three carriage shops, three blacksmiths, four shoe shops, two hotels, a restaurant and two cigar manufacturers, and around this time a spoke-and-handle factory was built.
6. 1920 — A mill producing chicken and steer feed began operating in the village.
7. 1930s-1950s — Farmersville native Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel built the 'Bottle Farm,' a folk-art landscape of glassware, bells and found materials on his property outside the village, drawing visitors from every U.S. state except Delaware.
8. 1953 — Swartsel died and willed his land to the community, becoming the Farmersville-Jackson Township Joint Recreation Park.
9. 2008 — A state historical marker for the Bottle Farm and Swartsel was erected by a local Boy Scout Eagle project (Troop 409) with the Ohio Historical Society.

Stories

Winter Zero's Bottle Farm

Winter Zellar Swartsel, born in Farmersville in 1876 to a family descended from the township's original settlers, spent his later years turning his farm on the edge of the village into a folk-art spectacle known as the Bottle Farm. He covered the property in sculptures built from glass bottles, bells, iron bed frames, wood scraps and whatever else came to hand, giving his largest bottle-glass works titles like 'Kindly Light' and 'Full Measure.' On Sundays, loudspeakers on the farm played 'The Old Rugged Cross' out over the fields, and bells hung on grazing sheep added to what Swartsel called the restful noise of the place. Word spread well beyond Montgomery County, and by the account preserved on his historical marker, visitors came from every state except Delaware to see it. When Swartsel died in 1953, he left the land to the community, and it became the Farmersville-Jackson Township Joint Recreation Park -- a playground and ballfields now standing where the bottles once hung.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · farmersville.us · remarkableohio.org · findagrave.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Farmersville Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-03-11

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