Franklin Township, Tuscarawas County

How Franklin Township, Tuscarawas County began

Franklin Township, in the northwest corner of Tuscarawas County, was the last township the county organized (December 6, 1854), cut from Wayne Township. Its northern edge is the Greenville treaty line of 1795, and Sugar Creek runs through a valley of maple and fertile bottoms; squatters and school-land lessees farmed the sandy 'plains' from before 1809, and Pennsylvania and Maryland families such as Deardorff, Kohr and Knappenberger entered land after 1811. Milton (1816) failed, and Strasburg, laid out by Jonathan Folck in February 1828, became its only village. The township had 4,846 residents in 2020.

Settled before 1809 (squatters and school-lot lessees; John Burris, William Smoyer, Jonas Bair in 1807 and others), platted 1828 (Strasburg, laid out by Jonathan Folck in February); an earlier town, Milton, was laid out in 1816, incorporated December 6, 1854 (township organized from Wayne Township), by Jonathan Folck, proprietor of Strasburg; Christian Deardorff and James Clark, founders of Milton.

Where the name comes from

Franklin is a common Ohio township name, usually given for Benjamin Franklin; it is one of twenty-one Franklin townships in the state. The 1884 county history gives no local reason for the choice and says only that the township was the last organized in the county.

Before the town

The 1884 county history records two prehistoric earthworks, both being plowed away by the 1880s. About sixty rods above Sugar Creek Falls, on the north side of the creek, a raised earthwork extended across the plains, with a large white oak on its top near the north end; and about three-fourths of a mile south of Strasburg on the Hartline farm, near the edge of the plains, was a fort enclosing about half an acre, with an embankment three or four feet high and a gateway at one corner. The writer gives no culture or date. The township's northern boundary is the Greenville treaty line of 1795, north of which lay Stark County and the Native lands: the township itself is south of the line, in the Delaware (Lenape) country of the Tuscarawas valley, and early settler John Burris is remembered as a hunter and Indian fighter of the War of 1812.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Raised earthwork above Sugar Creek Falls (earthwork) — north side of Sugar Creek about sixty rods above the falls, northwest part of the township, prehistoric; culture and date not given (archive.org)
• Hartline farm enclosure (earthwork) — about three-fourths of a mile south of Strasburg, near the edge of the plains, prehistoric; culture and date not given (archive.org)
• Greenville treaty line (treaty) — the township's northern boundary, with Stark County beyond, 1795 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1807 — Jonas Bair, from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, settles near Winfield and lives there sixty-three years; squatters and lessees of the school lots had farmed the plains before him.
2. 1809 — Rev. James B. Finley, a Methodist circuit rider, preaches at Sugar Creek Falls, on a stump in a clearing, to a congregation that hides behind the plum thickets.
3. 1811 — Michael Kohr of Maryland enters the east half of Section 8 and builds a cabin; he starts the township's first distillery in 1818.
4. 1816 — Christian Deardorff and James Clark lay out the town of Milton above Sugar Creek Falls with 56 lots; it is ruined when Wilmot is founded two miles upstream in Stark County. A round-log schoolhouse is built the same year, with Mr. McCarter as first teacher.
5. 1818 — Jehiel Savidge of Connecticut settles on the plains a mile north of Strasburg, against the ridicule of neighbors who thought the plains too poor to farm.
6. 1828 — Jonathan Folck lays out Strasburg in February with 47 lots on Main Street; Christian Metzgar builds the first house and Frederick Harbaugh is the first postmaster.
7. 1831 — The school lands of the southwest part of the township are sold, mostly not to the lessees who had cleared them.
8. 1833 — A union church, shared by United Brethren, Methodists and Lutherans, is built half a mile north of Strasburg.
9. 1853 — The United Brethren build a frame church in Strasburg for $1,200 (about this year).
10. 1854 — On December 6 the county commissioners organize Franklin Township from Wayne Township, the last township erected in Tuscarawas County; St. John's Lutheran Church is built the same year on the union church site.
11. 1874 — Rudolph Kapitzky adds eight lots to Strasburg.
12. 1881 — Strasburg builds a two-story brick schoolhouse with four rooms at a cost of $5,000.
13. 1884 — The Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railroad connects Strasburg with Dover, New Philadelphia and Uhrichsville; the village has about 200 residents.
14. 1980 — The Garver Brothers Store at 134 N. Wooster Ave., Strasburg, is listed on the National Register on November 26; the building was later destroyed by arson in October 2010.
15. 2020 — The census counts 4,846 residents over 23.4 square miles.

Stories

Strasburg and a township of repeated names

Franklin Township sits against the Stark County line in the northwest corner of Tuscarawas County, sharing a boundary with two different Sugar Creek Townships — one in Tuscarawas County to its southwest, one in Stark County to its northwest — a reminder of how often the same handful of township names (Franklin, Sugar Creek, Washington) were reused across early Ohio. Its only incorporated place, Strasburg, was laid out in February 1828 by Jonathan Folck. Outside the village the township is Sugar Creek farmland; the creek itself, a tributary that also lends its name to the township directly south, drains most of the area on its way to the Tuscarawas River. The Garver Brothers Store on Strasburg's main street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, stands as one of the few documented historic structures inside the township's boundaries.

The preacher and the invisible congregation

In 1809 the Methodist circuit rider James B. Finley, whose circuit was very extended, made an appointment to preach at Sugar Creek Falls. When he arrived he found a clearing among plum thickets and mounted a large stump for a pulpit. His audience, whether from shyness or suspicion, would not come out from behind the bushes, and the minister found himself, in the words of the county history, speaking apparently to the open air. He made a second appointment, and this time the settlers came forward and faced him. The sermon did not make a class of Methodists on the spot, but a society formed in the southwest part of the township a few years later and by about 1820 had a log meeting house on John Casebeer's farm; it was abandoned after twenty years and has vanished.

Milton, the town that Wilmot drowned

Sugar Creek Falls, a natural drop of several feet that a dam doubled, made a place for mills and for summer visitors; Christian Deardorff ran a carding and saw mill there for many years and a hotel stood close by. In 1816 Deardorff and James Clark laid out Milton just above the falls, fifty-six lots and six outlots. For a short season it prospered and held perhaps ten houses. Then Wilmot was founded about two miles upstream in Stark County, and its growth drew the trade away, and Milton disappeared. Strasburg, on higher ground to the east, was laid out twelve years later and took over as the township's village, though in the early days it gained notoriety as a place where the rough and rollicking element gathered.

Photographs

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

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Strasburg Village68% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Dover City21% of residentsSugar Creek Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (Dover wellfield)
• Tcmsd-wilkshire Hills4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Beach City Village4% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Bolivar Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Winesburg Area Development Corporation0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Tcmsd-dundee0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mount Eaton Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Wilmot Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-08-21

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