Green Township, Mahoning County

How Green Township, Mahoning County began

Green Township was established in 1806 in Columbiana County's northern row of townships, settled chiefly by German-ancestry farm families, and was added to Mahoning County only in 1846 along with four neighboring former-Columbiana townships -- it was never part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. Its farms and coal mines supported a scattering of one-room schools -- twelve of them across the township by 1844 -- and churches of several denominations; Greenford, its central community, took its name simply from the township and has held a post office since 1829 (Wikipedia's date; the 1882 county history says 1831). Washingtonville, laid out in 1832 and incorporated in 1844, straddles the Mahoning-Columbiana county line in the township's southeast. Green Township remains a small, rural farming community, its surviving one-room schoolhouses, including the Number 4 school, among its few standing links to that early settlement.

Settled 1803-1804 (Samuel Davis, Henry Beard, Henry Pyle, Michael Durr, Peter Weikert and others, chiefly Germans from Pennsylvania), platted Green Village laid out by Lewis Baker, Jacob Wilhelm and Jacob Cook; Washingtonville laid out about 1832 by Michael Frederick, incorporated June 3, 1806 (township erected within Columbiana County; reduced from 36 to 32 square miles by Perry Township in 1832); added to Mahoning County in 1846, by Henry Beard, Henry Pyle and Michael Durr among the first German settlers.

Where the name comes from

Ohio has fifteen other Green townships. Greenford, its central community, takes its name directly from the township; a Greenford post office has operated since 1829 (Wikipedia's date; the 1882 county history says 1831).

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, or site specific to Green Township is documented in the sources consulted. Like Beaver, Goshen, Smith and Springfield townships, Green was never part of the Connecticut Western Reserve; it belonged to Columbiana County until 1846.

Timeline

1. 1803 — Samuel Davis enters section 33 (his deed, signed by Thomas Jefferson, is dated March 10, 1807), and Baltzer Roller enters section 36; Henry Pyle and Henry Beard come from Germany about 1804, and Michael Durr enters section 7 with his two sisters.
2. 1804 — Peter Weikert and John Carr of Adams County, Pennsylvania, ride west on horseback to find homes; Weikert enters section 27 at Steubenville, and the Weikert family still holds it in 1882.
3. 1806 — Green Township is erected on June 3 within Columbiana County's northern row of townships, with thirty-six square miles.
4. 1808 — Lewis Baker, a native of Kentucky, settles section 15, where Green Village later grows, and Elisha Teeter enters section 20 for his sons.
5. 1816 — Joshua Calvin's sons arrive from New Jersey on April 27 to settle sections 13 and 24.
6. 1819 — John Briggs builds a grist-mill on Beaver Creek on section 33; Aaron Holloway builds a second one soon after.
7. 1822 — Wilson Teeter builds what Williams calls the first steam mill in that part of the country, at the place later called New Albany.
8. 1827 — District schools open in the township, replacing the scattered log schools such as Henry Pyle's on the New Lisbon road, where Samuel McBride taught in 1814.
9. 1829 — A post office called Greenford is recorded from this year (Wikipedia); Williams's 1882 history instead says Green Village's first post office was established in 1831, with William Van Horn as postmaster.
10. 1832 — Perry Township is organized and cuts Green from thirty-six to thirty-two square miles; Michael Frederick lays out Washingtonville about this time and opens its first hotel about 1833.
11. 1836 — A post office is established at Washingtonville, with Jacob Stoffer as postmaster; its first store stands where the Railroad Tavern later stood.
12. 1844 — By this year the township supports twelve one-room schools and churches of several denominations; Washingtonville incorporates as a village the same year.
13. 1846 — Green Township, previously part of Columbiana County, is added to the newly organized Mahoning County.
14. 1882 — Williams's history lists in the township the Niles and New Lisbon Railroad with stations at Loveland, Green Village and Washingtonville, and Lutheran, German Lutheran, Swedenborgian, Baptist, Disciple, Presbyterian and Evangelical Association churches.
15. 1969 — Greenford High School merges with North Lima High School to form South Range High School, ending Greenford's status as an independent school district.

Stories

Twelve schools for one small township

Green Township's early economy was built on farms and coal mines worked chiefly by families of German ancestry, and by 1844 the township had built an unusually dense network of one-room schoolhouses to serve them: twelve schools spread across the township, alongside churches representing several denominations, at a time when the whole township's population would have been a small fraction of what even a single modern elementary school serves. Several of these numbered schoolhouses -- the Number 4 and Number 5 buildings among them -- survive today as physical reminders of that era of dispersed, walkable rural education, before consolidation in the twentieth century pulled Green Township's children into larger, centralized districts. Greenford High School itself did not survive as an independent school past 1969, when it merged with North Lima High School, in neighboring Beaver Township, to form South Range High School -- a small, telling sign of how thoroughly the automobile and school consolidation reorganized rural Mahoning County life in the mid-twentieth century.

Two neighbors ride west to find a farm

In 1804 two neighbors in Adams County, Pennsylvania, Peter Weikert and John Carr, set out on horseback to look over the country to the west for places to bring their families, where both soil and climate were good. Weikert was pleased with section 27 of what became Green Township and entered it at the land office in Steubenville; Carr went on farther west. Weikert's family stayed on that section, and by 1882 it was still in the family, one of whose members, Dr. Andrew Weikert, was practicing medicine in Green Village. The same township produced Colonel Jacob B. Roller of Washingtonville, who served twenty-one years as state representative and, with Harrison's army at Fort Meigs, once had a ball from an Indian's rifle graze the back of his head as he stooped to drink at a spring, then fired at the retreating man and missed.

Photographs

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

Mostly surface water: three active SDWIS surface intakes (Spring Valley Reservoir, Cold Run Creek intake, Salem Reservoir intake), plus 4 active groundwater wells (Wells 0001, 0002, 0003 and 0004; two older wells are inactive). The water here

• Salem City52% of residentsEast Cold Run Reservoir & Spring Valley Reservoir (Cold Run Creek)
• Canfield City25% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)
• Youngstown City11% of residentsMeander Creek Reservoir + Berlin Reservoir (Mahoning River basin)
• Washingtonville Village10% of residentsEast Cold Run Reservoir & Spring Valley Reservoir (Cold Run Creek)
• Aqua Ohio - Struthers1% of residentsEvans Lake (Yellow Creek impoundment)
• Deer Run Mc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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