Gorham Township, Fulton County

• The Toledo WarThe 1835-36 Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute over the Toledo Strip: a bad map, a 3 a.m. court, one stabbing, no deaths, and the Upper Peninsula trade.

How Gorham Township, Fulton County began

Gorham Township occupies Fulton County's northwestern corner along the Michigan border and holds the village of Fayette at its center, along with Harrison Lake State Park. Its land lay in the strip Michigan claimed until December 1836 and passed through the Michigan townships of Logan, Medina and Mill Creek before Lucas County commissioners organized Gorham on March 6, 1838. Hiram Farwell settled in the fall of 1834 at the place later called Ritter's Station, and the Coffin and Cottrell families from Worthington and Williamsburg, Massachusetts, built the Cottrell Settlement near the future Fayette in 1835. Fayette took its name about 1852, became the terminus of the Chicago and Canada Southern railroad in 1872, and was known as the Old Normal Town for its normal colleges of 1881 to 1905. It is the only Gorham Township in Ohio.

Settled 1834, incorporated Organized March 6, 1838, by Hiram Farwell (first settler).

Where the name comes from

Two accounts disagree. Aldrich (1888) says the township was named for Elisha Gorham, one of the first settlers and a leading petitioner for its organization; no Elisha Gorham appears in Aldrich's own lists of Gorham settlers. Reighard (1920), quoting Coffin family records, says the settlers first agreed on Worthington, the Massachusetts birthplace of Gorham Cottrell, but when Erastus Cottrell went to the county seat to confirm it and learned Ohio already had a place of that name, he proposed his father's first name, Gorham, instead. The first election and the first post office, named Gorham, were both at Erastus Cottrell's house. It is the only Gorham Township in Ohio.

Before the town

Aldrich (1888) writes that the land was inhabited long before white settlement by the Potawatomi and a small fragment of the Ottawa, whose last Ohio home was on the Maumee, but that no Indian camping grounds had been found in the township and that the soil was used for hunting. The Coffin family records quoted by Reighard (1920) disagree, saying the settlers of 1835 often received visits from a camp of Indians on what later became the Hosea Ford farm near the Cottrell Settlement. No mounds or earthworks are recorded. The land lies inside the tract ceded at the 1807 Treaty of Detroit.

Nations recorded here: Potawatomi, Ottawa (Odawa).

• Indian camp on the later Hosea Ford farm (camp) — near the Cottrell Settlement, east of the site of Fayette, about 1835 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1807-11-17 — The Treaty of Detroit cedes the tract of northwest Ohio that includes the future township's land.
2. 1826 — The land north of the Fulton line is organized by Michigan Territory as part of Logan Township, Lenawee County, with its seat at Tecumseh.
3. 1834 — Hiram Farwell and his wife settle in the fall on the east side of section 10, the place later called Ritter's Station on the Canada Southern railroad; he builds the township's first cabin and later its first ashery.
4. 1834-12-31 — David and Esther Severance arrive on section 36 of the Mill Creek strip, the first settlers of old Mill Creek Township, Williams County, later part of Gorham.
5. 1835-07-10 — Freeman Coffin's family takes possession of the first house built by the Coffin and Cottrell party, near the site of Fayette; Gorham Cottrell's family follows that fall, founding the Cottrell Settlement.
6. 1836-05 — Lucinda Rogers opens the township's first school in the Cottrell district, beginning it under Michigan's jurisdiction and finishing under Ohio's.
7. 1837-02-28 — After Congress awards the strip to Ohio in December 1836, the Ohio legislature extends its jurisdiction over it, attaching the land to Lucas and Williams counties.
8. 1838-03-06 — Lucas County commissioners meeting at Toledo organize Gorham Township from Chesterfield's towns nine and ten south, range one east.
9. 1838-04 — The first township election is held on the first Monday of April at the house of Erastus Cottrell, who becomes the first justice of the peace.
10. 1839 — Gorham post office is established at Erastus Cottrell's house, with Cottrell as postmaster; it is later moved to Fayette and renamed.
11. 1845 — Rensselaer S. Humphrey begins clearing the land where Fayette stands, building its first log cabin and cutting the brush for what became Main Street.
12. 1848 — The township's first cemetery is laid out on the northeast corner of section 17, at the Snow schoolhouse.
13. 1850-04-01 — With the creation of Fulton County, two tiers of sections of Mill Creek Township, Williams County, west of the Michigan meridian, are attached to Gorham.
14. 1852 — Henry Boyd of Maumee opens Fayette's first general store, and the place takes the name Fayette.
15. 1853 — The township's first church is built and dedicated by the Methodist Episcopal society at Cottrell's Corners; it is later moved to Fayette.
16. 1853 — Reported manifestations of Spiritualism draw large crowds of visitors to the township for weeks.
17. 1856 — Rensselaer S. Humphrey and Dr. Joseph O. Allen open a steam grist and saw mill at Fayette, still running in 1888.
18. 1872 — Fayette, the township's only incorporated community, incorporates as a village when the railroad reaches the site.
19. 1872-07-04 — The Chicago and Canada Southern Railway runs its first cars to Fayette, which remains the line's terminus.
20. 1881 — The Fayette Normal, Music and Business College opens; it closes in 1888 and is followed that September by the Fayette Normal University, which closes in 1905.
21. 1920 — The preliminary census count gives Gorham Township 2,070 people and Fayette 936.

Stories

Seventeen days to the Cottrell Settlement

In the spring of 1835 Freeman and Clement Coffin and their families left Williamsburg, Massachusetts, with Gorham Cottrell and his eldest son Erastus. They traveled by stage to Albany, by the Erie Canal to Buffalo, by lake to Monroe and by stage to Adrian, seventeen days in all. Leaving the families at Palmyra, Michigan, the four men bought government land and built Freeman Coffin's house of unhewn logs with a shake roof and hewn plank floor, the first house in the township. Coffin brought his family by ox wagon, cutting the road the whole way, and took possession on July 10, 1835. Cottrell gave each grown son 160 acres nearby, and the neighborhood was long called the Cottrell Settlement. Forty-five acres cleared on the Coffin farm that first summer yielded a large wheat crop the next year, though the nearest grist mill was at Tecumseh.

A school in two jurisdictions

Lucinda Rogers opened the first school in Gorham in May 1836 in a log schoolhouse built for the Cottrell district, on the southwest corner of the northwest quarter of section 21. When she began, the land was governed by the Territory of Michigan; before she finished, Congress had given it to Ohio. Because teachers were then paid by a rate bill collected from the parents of the pupils, the change of government did not affect her wages. The log building served as both school and church for about fifteen years and was still standing in 1862.

The Old Normal Town

Fayette's residents raised money in the early 1880s for a large building with boarding facilities to house the Fayette Normal, Music and Business College, which opened in 1881. It ran for several years before its managers moved it to Wauseon, and the empty building was eventually taken off its foundations and sold for junk. In September 1888 the townspeople opened a second school, the Fayette Normal University, with J. E. Dodds as its first president. Mikesell wrote in 1905 that it flourished for years but that residents came to believe it hurt their graded schools, withdrew their support, and let it close that year. Charles L. Allen wrote that the new building the villagers put up after the first college left became the Fayette High School.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Fayette Village97% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• West Unity Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Williams Co/hillside Country Living1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Power plants (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 6 of 6 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 3 of 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-14
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-13

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