Goshen Township, Auglaize County

How Goshen Township, Auglaize County began

Goshen Township, formed in 1836 out of Allen County territory, has been described as the smallest of Auglaize County's fourteen townships by both population and area, though we could not confirm this, occupying the county's southeastern edge; two of Ohio's major rivers, the Miami and the Scioto, both head within its boundaries. Its only community is New Hampshire, laid out by John Kindle in 1836 on sixteen acres and named by his wife; the county's better-known Fryburg, sometimes associated with this area, actually sits in neighboring Pusheta Township. The J. H. Manchester Round Barn, east of New Hampshire, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Part of the township's southeast corner falls within the Virginia Military District, the wedge of Ohio reserved for Revolutionary War land bounties rather than surveyed under the standard federal township grid.

Settled 1832-1836, incorporated 1836.

Where the name comes from

No source specific to this township's naming was found; 'Goshen' was a common Ohio township name, drawn from the fertile Biblical land of Goshen in Egypt.

Before the town

The 1905 county history says that Goshen Township was 'only a few years' before its writing the habitation of Indians and wild animals, and that 'numerous mounds, inclosures and curiously formed earth-works' remained in the township as evidence of former Indian occupation; it names no site, and no Native village, mound or treaty site specific to the township was located in the sources checked. The township's eastern prairie is the head of the Scioto and Muchinippi Creek the head of the Great Miami, and nineteen original claims in the township were Virginia Military District land. The land lies in the area ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795); the wider Auglaize County record includes Shawnee and Miami presence, the Wapakoneta and Lewistown reservations and the treaties that ended Native title across the county.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. 1832 — Early settlers including Bazil Day, John C. Hurley, Joseph Cline, William and Daniel Black, R. L. G. Means, John McLean and Alanson Earl take up land in what becomes Goshen Township.
2. 1833 — Eli E. Corson and Alexander Templeton enter land in sections 33 and 25; Alanson Earl, who came in 1832 from Clark County, marries Rachel Day this year and farms his forty acres in section 8 until his death in 1867.
3. 1836 — Goshen Township is formed as part of Allen County; the same year John Kindle lays out the village of New Hampshire on a sixteen-acre plat in the northwest quarter of section four, naming it at his wife's suggestion.
4. 1836 — On February 9 Robert Lee Gilmore Means enters eighty acres in section 30 on borrowed money; he builds a cabin that spring and by his death in 1885 owns 1,600 acres.
5. 1836 — On November 16 John McLean enters 160 acres in section 6; he later serves as an associate judge of the county until the new state constitution abolishes the office.
6. 1836 — On December 5 the Allen County commissioners grant Bazil Day's petition for a township struck off Wayne Township, numbered sixteen and named Goshen; the first election is called for December 17 at Eli E. Corson's house.
7. 1868 — Jason H. Manchester's father, a Massachusetts-born merchant of Frederickstown, settles on a 500-acre unimproved farm in the township and adds to it until he holds 1,000 acres.
8. 1888 — A boundary adjustment exchanges part of Stokes Township (Logan County) for part of Goshen Township.
9. 1889 — About this year a township high school is built in New Hampshire for the upper grades from the country schools; the 1905 history says no village in the county attended more earnestly to education.
10. 1903 — New Hampshire has two hotels, two stores, two blacksmith shops, a grocery, a grist mill, a sawmill, and Methodist Episcopal and Baptist churches.
11. 1980-04-17 — The J. H. Manchester Round Barn, about three miles east of New Hampshire, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
12. 2020 — The census counts 472 residents in Goshen Township.

Stories

A township named by a founder's wife

When John Kindle laid out New Hampshire village in 1836 on sixteen acres in the northwest quarter of section four, the name came not from him but from his wife. The settlement grew slowly around Hiram North's first store and his brother Orin's steam mill, then J. J. Hutchinson's general store, until it became what the county's own historians called the center of population for a township otherwise given over to prairie and farmland, where the Miami and Scioto rivers both rise within a few miles of each other. A century and a half later, the township's most photographed structure is not in the village at all but three miles east of it: the J. H. Manchester round barn, a distinctive enough piece of agricultural architecture to earn its own listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Eighty acres, seventy-five cents and a debt

Robert Lee Gilmore Means, orphaned at two, married Sarah North in 1833 and paid the minister two dollars, leaving the couple with seventy-five cents and a debt of twelve to fifteen dollars. He split rails at thirty-three cents a hundred and rented land until he had cleared his debts and saved sixty-five dollars, then borrowed forty more and came to Allen, now Auglaize, County. On February 9, 1836 he entered eighty acres in section 30 of the future Goshen Township and moved into a cabin that spring. The county history says he cleared one of the best farms in the township, welcomed any itinerant preacher to his table, and was a Baptist; at his death on September 11, 1885 he owned sixteen hundred acres, and ten children had been born to the family.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Wapakoneta City60% of residentsTeays River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Lakeview Village23% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Waynesfield Village9% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Russells Point Village6% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Holiday Shores MHP2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Lakeside Estates Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Superfund sites (1)

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

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-10-02

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