Franklin Township, Clermont County

How Franklin Township, Clermont County began

Franklin Township, the county's southeast corner on the Ohio River, holds one of Clermont County's earliest, if faintly recorded, settlements: a ferry keeper remembered only as Logston, said to have worked the crossing at the mouth of Bullskin Creek as early as 1795 and reputed to be the first settler anywhere between Marietta and Columbia. Edward Salt, an English immigrant who had eloped to America against his parents' wishes, took over the same ferry in 1796 and ran it until his death in 1812. In 1758 the region nearly became the site of Ohio's first organized Protestant mission, when the Moravian missionary Christian Frederick Post considered settling near Bullskin Creek before choosing Tuscarawas County instead. The township today holds the Bullskin Creek Site, a National Register-listed prehistoric archaeological site near the creek's mouth.

Settled 1795, incorporated 1818-05-23 (organized from Washington Township), by Logston, ferry keeper and reputed first settler (by 1795); Edward Salt, second ferry keeper (1796).

Where the name comes from

No source consulted here states directly why the township is named Franklin; the common assumption for Ohio townships carrying this name is a connection to Benjamin Franklin, but no source found confirms this or gives the township's organization date.

Before the town

In 1758 the Moravian missionary Christian Frederick Post, traveling the Ohio Valley on behalf of the government of Pennsylvania to draw the Delaware, Shawnee and Mingo away from French influence, came close to founding a mission near Bullskin Creek in what is now Franklin Township, before a minor circumstance diverted him to Tuscarawas County instead, where the Moravian missions later flourished. Near Smyrna graveyard, a short distance from Felicity, an unnamed Native woman remembered as "Sweet Lips" was executed by tomahawk in 1786 by her own chief on an accusation of witchcraft and sorcery said to have hurt her people's success in hunting and war; the spot was later marked and its story explained to surveyor John O'Bannon, working in Franklin and neighboring Washington townships in the fall and winter of 1787-88, by a Native guide who had witnessed the execution. In 1791, Cornelius Washburn, employed as a government scout watching for Indians crossing the Ohio to raid Kentucky, fought and killed several pursuing warriors near the village of Cedron, on Bullskin Creek about three miles from its mouth, in a running fight later recounted in detail by county historians. The Bullskin Creek Site, a National Register-listed prehistoric archaeological site on a terrace above the creek near its mouth, was also recorded here; no nomination form was opened for it, so its culture and period beyond "prehistoric" could not be confirmed.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

• Bullskin Creek Site (other) — Franklin Township, on a terrace above Bullskin Creek near its mouth on the Ohio River, prehistoric, unspecified (en.wikipedia.org)
• Sweet Lips execution site (other) — Franklin Township, near Smyrna graveyard, a short distance from Felicity, 1786 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1758 — The Moravian missionary Christian Frederick Post nearly settles a mission near Bullskin Creek before choosing Tuscarawas County instead.
2. 1786 — Near Smyrna graveyard by Felicity, a Native woman remembered as "Sweet Lips" is executed by her own chief on a charge of witchcraft; the site is later marked and explained to surveyor John O'Bannon by a Native guide.
3. 1791 — Scout Cornelius Washburn fights and kills several pursuing Native warriors near the village of Cedron on Bullskin Creek, about three miles from its mouth.
4. 1795 — A ferry keeper remembered only as Logston is said to be operating the crossing at the mouth of Bullskin Creek, reputedly the first settler anywhere between Marietta and Columbia.
5. 1796 — Edward Salt, an English-born immigrant who had eloped to America against his parents' wishes and farmed for years in Virginia and Kentucky, moves to the mouth of the Bullskin and takes charge of the ferry.
6. 1799 — Samuel Walraven settles on Bear Creek north of his father-in-law James Sargent; Sargent had a hand mill, with irons brought from Maryland, in operation before 1800.
7. 1805 — Hopewell, the first church in the township and the first Methodist meeting house for four townships, is built of logs on Hugh McKibben's land a little more than a mile southwest of the future Felicity.
8. 1812 — Edward Salt dies at the mouth of the Bullskin, having run the ferry there for sixteen years.
9. 1816-05-01 — Robert Bagby lays out the river village of Chilo, then called Mechanicsburgh, with 208 lots; it becomes the shipping port for Felicity.
10. 1818-05-23 — Franklin Township is organized from Washington Township, with Joseph McKibben, John Sargent and William Fee as its first trustees and Lemuel Stephenson clerk.
11. 1842 — James Waterfield, at Chilo, cultivates the first tobacco for the market in the township, about 3,000 pounds delivered at Augusta, Kentucky; the first tobacco warehouse is built at Rural in 1849.
12. 1844 — Judge Wade Loofborough buys 1,140 acres on the Ohio for the Fourierite Association of Clermont County, a community of more than a dozen families that is dissolved in 1846.
13. 1845-11-24 — Lindley Broadwell and Abraham Durrell lay out the river hamlet of Rural at the mouth of the Bullskin, 60 lots, where Logston's ferry had stood.
14. 1847-08-03 — Henry Jernegan lays out Utopia, 84 quarter-acre lots at $15 each, on land that came to him in the division of the Fourierite property.
15. 1847-12-13 — At night in a flood, the new three-story building of a Spiritualist community under John O. Wattles collapses on a dance, killing seventeen people; the disaster ends the community.
16. 1851-01-16 — Zachariah M. Lansdown lays out the hamlet of Cedron, 11 lots, on the Bullskin near the Brown County line.
17. 1852-04-20 — The township trustees establish a special school district for Black and mulatto children covering the entire township.
18. 1880 — Franklin Township raises about 2,000,000 pounds of tobacco a year and is called the first tobacco-growing district for its size in the United States.
19. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 3,604 residents in Franklin Township.

Stories

A water-drinking dare, and the long road back

John Salt, the young son of ferry keeper Edward Salt, was about fourteen when he and another Franklin Township boy fell into a contest to see who could drink the most cold water. Salt drank two quarts and was thrown into convulsions -- more than three hundred spasms in a row, by the county historian's count, without a moment's rest between them. When the spasms finally eased, his memory was so damaged that his education was entirely gone; he had to relearn his letters as if starting childhood over. The spasms did not go away, recurring unpredictably for years, and when Salt grew old enough to fall in love with a young woman named Mary Donovan while teaching school in Kentucky, he put off proposing rather than risk binding her to an invalid. Hearing of a man in North Carolina reputed to cure such conditions, Salt set out on horseback anyway, on evidence he admitted was thin, suffering another spasm en route but managing to dismount in time to ride it out safely. He found his healer in jail for debt, struck a deal on the spot, and returned home with two vials of a tasteless, colorless liquid; following the stranger's instructions, Salt endured two more spasms and was, from that point on, completely cured. He married Mary Donovan, settled a large tract of land in neighboring Tate Township, and went on to make fifty-two flatboat trading trips down the Mississippi to New Orleans, walking home through dangerous Indian country thirteen of those times -- a far cry from the sickly boy who had once had to relearn his own alphabet.

The Phalanx and the falling house

In 1844 Judge Wade Loofborough bought 1,140 acres on the Ohio for a Fourierite association in which more than a dozen families agreed to pool their labor and property; members paid $25 a share in yearly installments and ate at a common table. Debt and disaffection broke it up and in 1846 the property was divided. A Spiritualist community of nearly a hundred, led by John O. Wattles, took over the main tract, took down the brick building the Phalanx had put up and rebuilt it, three stories with a basement, on the riverbank, hurrying to occupy it by fall 1847. In December a flood came: the area around the house filled with water and boats were needed to reach it. Thirty-four people were inside on the evening of December 13, some of them young people attracted by the moving and a dance, when about eight o'clock the walls fell, crushing many and drowning others. Seventeen died, including a Mr. Cornell and his family of five, and the county history called it the most tragic event that had ever occurred in the county.

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

Eleven vertical wells and one collector well in the Ohio River valley aquifer at Clermontville and Moscow The water here

• Tate-monroe Water Association64% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Felicity Village20% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Bethel Village14% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Georgetown Village2% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Mount Orab Village0% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2016: 3 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

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 2026-02-17

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