German Township, Montgomery County

How German Township, Montgomery County began

German Township surrounds, but is legally distinct from, the city of Germantown in southwestern Montgomery County, in the valley of Little and Big Twin Creek (the 'Twin Valley'). The township was described in an 1833 county history as home to seven gristmills, nine sawmills, two fulling mills, five tanneries and sixteen distilleries, showing an early rural-industrial economy built on the creeks. Germantown itself, inside the township, was founded in 1804 by German-speaking settlers from Berks County, Pennsylvania, with Philip Gunckel laying out the town plan in 1814 around his gristmill; that city was incorporated in 1833 and is a separate unit from this township file. Outside the city limits, German Township remained (and largely remains) farmland, with a scatter of mills, farmsteads and rural churches along the Twin Creeks. As of the 2020 census the wider township (city included) had 8,747 residents.

Settled 1798 (squatter period begins; the first permanent colony, twenty-four Pennsylvania-German families under Philip Gunckel, reached Twin Creek on August 1, 1804).

Where the name comes from

The township takes its name from the German-speaking families, chiefly from Berks County, Pennsylvania, who settled the area beginning in the early 1800s and founded the town of Germantown within it in 1804; no known source gives a separate, distinct naming event for the township boundary itself. The 1882 History of Montgomery County addresses the naming question head-on for the township's principal town: it states that Howe's 'Historical Collections of Ohio' claims Germantown was named after Germantown, Pennsylvania, but calls Howe 'mistaken' and asserts the name was instead given simply because the people who built and lived in the town were Germans. No comparable direct statement was found for the township boundary itself, which is presumed to take its name from the same fact.

Before the town

The 1882 History of Montgomery County records that 'as late as 1804, the Shawnees had a town on Shawnee Creek, on land now adjoining Sunsbury' (the township's oldest settled point, immediately south of Germantown), and that the stream itself takes its name from the tribe. It names one resident of that town, rendered in the source as 'Tommy Whitbuck' (the surname is hard to read in the scanned 1882 text), who for years refused to leave the land of his birth, built himself a hut on the west side of Big Twin Creek near the later site of Conover's Mill, and when he at last yielded to removal did so, in the historian's words, 'with great reluctance only,' leaving 'very sad and afflicted.' This is the most specific, site-tied Native American record found for any township in this county so far: a named town on a named creek, occupied until the same year German Township's permanent settlers arrived, with a named resident and a described departure. At the broader scale, the Twin Creek and Great Miami valleys that the township sits within lay inside the roughly two-thirds of Ohio ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, 1795 at Fort Greenville (present-day Greenville, Ohio, in neighboring Darke County), ending the Northwest Indian War. Shawnee leaders Blue Jacket and Black Hoof and Miami leader Little Turtle were among the signers on the Native side. That cession opened the Great Miami valley, including the land that became Montgomery County and German Township, to American settlement.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

• Shawnee town on Shawnee Creek (village) — on Shawnee Creek, on land adjoining Sunsbury, German Township, documented occupied to 1804 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes the Great Miami and Twin Creek valleys, including the future German Township, to the United States, opening the area to American settlement.
2. 1798-1804 — A first wave of squatters, not actual land purchasers, occupied parts of the future township; the 1882 county history names more than twenty of them (including Benjamin Smith, James Griffith, Robert Hardin and Samuel Hawkins, a Revolutionary War colonel), most of whom sold out or moved on once the land was offered for sale rather than becoming permanent residents. Daniel Lyon was the only one of this first group who stayed for the rest of his life.
3. 1804 — German-speaking settlers from Berks County, Pennsylvania found the town of Germantown within the township, on Little Twin Creek.
4. 1804-08-01 — Twenty-four Pennsylvania-German families, led by miller Philip Gunckel, reached Twin Creek after a journey by wagon to Pittsburgh, flat-boat down the Ohio to Cincinnati (arriving June 20), and overland through the Miami Valley by way of Hole's Station, where they met and were glad to find a German-speaking farmer, Alexander Nutz. They camped in the woods for about two weeks before Gunckel chose the Twin Creek site for its mill potential and the colony settled around him.
5. 1818 — A post office was established at Germantown in October, with Peter Schaeffer as the first postmaster.
6. 1814 — Philip Gunckel, founder of Germantown, lays out the town's original street plan around the site of his gristmill.
7. 1825-03-18 — Sunsbury, immediately south of Germantown, was formally platted -- though the 1882 county history describes it as already 'a very old place, being the first point settled in German Township,' and for years the only village or place of business in the Twin Valley before Germantown grew past it.
8. 1833 — An 1833 description of German Township records seven gristmills, nine sawmills, two fulling mills, five tanneries and sixteen distilleries operating in the township; the town of Germantown is incorporated the same year.

Stories

The last Shawnee resident of Shawnee Creek

The stream that still runs past Sunsbury, immediately south of Germantown, carries its name from the people who lived along it. The 1882 History of Montgomery County records that as late as 1804 -- the very year Philip Gunckel's colony of Pennsylvania Germans reached Twin Creek to found Germantown -- the Shawnee still had a town on Shawnee Creek, on land that came to adjoin Sunsbury. One resident, remembered in the county history by a name rendered there as Tommy Whitbuck, held out longest. He built himself a hut on the west side of Big Twin Creek, near where Conover's Mill later stood, and for a long time no persuasion could induce him to abandon the country of his birth. When at last he accepted that he had to go, the historian writes, he did so 'with great reluctance only,' and left the valley 'very sad and afflicted.' It is one of the few Montgomery County accounts, of any we found, that names an individual Native resident and describes his departure rather than treating removal only as a regional abstraction.

A township of mills and stills

In 1833 an observer counted, within German Township, seven gristmills, nine sawmills, two fulling mills, five tanneries and sixteen distilleries -- an extraordinary concentration of small water- and grain-powered industry for a rural township. The gristmills and sawmills ran on Little and Big Twin Creek, the same streams that gave the valley its local name, the Twin Valley. The John Stump House and Mill, southwest of Germantown at the junction of Sigel and Oxford Roads, is one surviving trace of that milling economy and is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The sixteen distilleries reflect the same grain surplus that fed the mills: township farmers converted corn and rye into whiskey as a way to store and ship a bulky crop. Little else about any individual mill or distillery is recorded.

Photographs

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

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Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Germantown City95% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Southwest Regional Water District4% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Farmersville Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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Money issues on the ballot since 2025: 2 of 3 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 2.

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Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-05

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