German Township, Auglaize County

How German Township, Auglaize County began

German Township is home to New Bremen, founded in 1833 by Hanoverian German Protestant immigrants organized in Cincinnati as the 'City of Bremen Society.' Scouts sent by the society's 33 investors picked a portage site on the route of the Miami and Erie Canal, which reached the settlement by 1845 and quickly made it a busy trading stop between Cincinnati and Lake Erie. New Bremen incorporated as a village in 1837. The township, like neighboring Jackson Township, kept a strongly German Protestant identity distinct from the German Catholic settlements around Minster to its south.

Settled 1833, platted 1833, incorporated 1837-03-23, by the City of Bremen Society, Hanoverian German Protestant immigrants organized in Cincinnati.

Where the name comes from

New Bremen was named for the German port city of Bremen by the Hanoverian settlers who founded it, organized in Cincinnati as the 'City of Bremen Society.'

Before the town

The site chosen for New Bremen lay on an old portage across the divide along the Auglaize Trail, a route used before white settlement; the same crossing was later chosen for the Miami and Erie Canal. No named Native villages, mounds or burial sites within German Township specifically were found in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

• Auglaize Trail portage (trail) — crossing later used by the Miami and Erie Canal near New Bremen, pre-1825 (newbremenhistory.org)

Timeline

1. 1832 — The City of Bremen Society, 33 investors gathered in Cincinnati, sends scouts F. H. Schroeder and A. F. Windeler to select a site for a new German settlement in Ohio and Indiana.
2. 1833 — New Bremen is founded on the chosen site, a portage crossing on the old Auglaize Trail.
3. 1833 — The Bremen plat of 102 lots, each 66 by 300 feet, is recorded in Mercer County on June 11; the Society bought ten acres from the government at a dollar an acre and Robert Grant, Mercer County surveyor, laid out the town.
4. 1833 — Newcomers raise a building for $40 to serve as both church and school; Rev. L. H. Meyer is the settlers' first Protestant minister, and families from Bavaria (Maurer, Paul, Braun) arrive that summer.
5. 1835 — A post office opens and the town is renamed New Bremen to distinguish it from another Bremen in Ohio; Rev. L. H. Meyer also organizes the Lutheran church and the first public school in the township is taught in the log church.
6. 1835 — Many German Township settlers go to Indiana to work on the Wabash canal, and some save enough to buy farms; J. H. Kuenning's horse mill, a mile and a half north of the village, is the only mill in the neighborhood.
7. 1837-03-23 — New Bremen is incorporated as a village.
8. 1839 — The township's first elected officers serve: J. H. Kuenning, David Cotterling and Gustave Garnold as trustees, Wheatley Heilfield as treasurer.
9. 1845 — Construction of the Miami and Erie Canal, begun in 1825, is completed through New Bremen, bringing freight and passenger boat traffic to and from Cincinnati.
10. 1848 — Auglaize County is erected; German Township, until then in Mercer County, becomes part of it, and Judge Leigh of Virginia buys 3,200 acres in the Mercer County negro settlements for the freed slaves of John Randolph of Roanoke.
11. 1849 — Asiatic cholera strikes along the Miami and Erie Canal; out of a township population of 700, 150 die.
12. 1850 — A warehouse and water mill are established at New Bremen.
13. 1851 — The township is divided into two election precincts, for Minster and for New Bremen; in 1858 the erection of Jackson Township reduces German Township to eighteen square miles.
14. 1866 — The Boesel Bank is established at New Bremen; by 1903 its deposits are $500,600.
15. 1876 — A union school building is erected at New Bremen at a cost of $17,000 after the township is organized as one union school district in 1875.
16. 1888 — St. Paul's Lutheran Church is built at a cost of $25,000; it burns about 1895 and is rebuilt in 1896.
17. 1903 — New Bremen's industries include the Klanke Furniture Company, Backhaus and Kuenzel's woolen and flouring mills, a broom company, the Rabe Manufacturing Company, a handle and lumber company and a brick company.
18. 2020 — The census counts 3,751 people in German Township.

Stories

Scouting a site for the City of Bremen Society

In 1832, thirty-three German investors who had gathered in Cincinnati organized themselves as the City of Bremen Society and sent two scouts, F. H. Schroeder and A. F. Windeler, out to find land for a new settlement. The pair explored across Ohio and into Indiana before settling on a spot along the old Auglaize Trail portage, the same natural crossing the state would soon choose for the Miami and Erie Canal. The society's Hanoverian Protestant settlers founded New Bremen there in 1833 and incorporated it in 1837. When the canal reached the village in 1845, after twenty years of construction statewide, it turned a young farming settlement into a busy stop, with freight boats moving through constantly and passenger packets carrying people up from Cincinnati.

The Randolph freedmen turned back at New Bremen

In 1848, the 1905 county history says, Judge Leigh of Virginia bought 3,200 acres in the Mercer County negro settlements for the freed slaves of John Randolph of Roanoke. The freedpeople came up from Cincinnati by canal boat in midsummer and were carried as far as New Bremen, where the villagers refused to let them land. Every adult male citizen of the village served on a picket line for two days, at the end of which the boats returned to Cincinnati with their four hundred passengers. The freedpeople then separated into parties and settled in Shelby, Miami and Warren counties. In 1903 the heirs of the Randolph negroes petitioned the Mercer County Court of Common Pleas to recover the Leigh lands, and the county history notes that the case had not come to trial by 1905.

The man who stopped to ask the way to Bremen

The German settlement at New Bremen was so small in its first years that when Charles Boesel arrived he asked a wood chopper how far it was to Bremen and was told he was already in the town; there were six houses, though thirty-five families lived within five miles. Unimpressed, Boesel went on to Fort Wayne. Nineteen months later he came back and found a school and a church in separate buildings and the colony much advanced, though some farmers were still discouraged to see deer eating their crops. The settlers had to fetch supplies from twenty-three miles away and sometimes grated their own flour; one of them, George Garver, walked to Piqua and back in a day carrying a number seven plow the whole way.

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

Every historic place in Auglaize County on the full map

Groundwater wells (6 wells) The water here

• New Bremen Village93% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Minster Village7% of residentsGroundwater wells (8 wells)
• West Lake Village MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Shelby County Water and Sewer0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Lake View Village MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-18: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 1 of 1 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-07-16

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