Hamden

• Maude CollinsPerson · 1894-1972

How Hamden began

Hamden grew from land entered in 1820 by Nathaniel Richmond in Clinton Township. Charles Robbins and J. K. Wilson laid out the village, first called Charleston after Robbins; the 1883 county history dates the plat to 1834, while the 1916 history's scan appears to read 1829. It was renamed Hamden about 1852-53, when the Marietta and Cincinnati and Portsmouth railroad branches met there, and its post office ended up as Hamden Junction. Iron furnaces (1854), a foundry, the Puritan Brick Company (1908-09) and a bank followed; the village incorporated in 1876, reached 1,019 people in 1910 and 727 in 2020.

Settled 1814 (Clinton Township; Nathaniel Richmond entered the village land in 1820), platted 1834 per the 1883 county history; the 1916 county history's scan appears to read 1829 (plat recorded the day after Christmas), incorporated 1876, by Charles Robbins and J. K. Wilson, surveyed by O. M. Tyson, on land entered by Nathaniel Richmond.

Where the name comes from

The village was first Charleston, for Charles Robbins, who owned the land east of Main Street; about 1852 or 1853 it was renamed Hamden, and neither the 1883 nor the 1916 history says why. Its post office began a mile north as Reed's Mill, moved to town as Hamden, and was renamed Hamden Junction to avoid confusion with another Hamden in Ohio.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound or trail specific to this place is recorded in the sources checked (the 1883 and 1916 county histories and Wikipedia). The land lay within the roughly two-thirds of Ohio opened to settlement by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Timeline

1. 1814 — Nathaniel Richmond, David Paine, Robert Elders and other families make the first settlements in what becomes Clinton Township.
2. 1820 — Nathaniel Richmond enters the land in section 19 on which Hamden is later laid out.
3. 1834 — Charles Robbins and J. K. Wilson lay out Charleston, surveyed by O. M. Tyson; William Barlegin and Augustus Frazee are its first merchants and Jervis Leach keeps the first hotel. The 1916 history's scan appears to give 1829 for the plat.
4. 1838 — The first Methodist class is formed at Charleston; Robbins had given land for a schoolhouse in which both Methodists and United Brethren met.
5. 1852 — The village is renamed Hamden (the 1883 history says 1852 or 1853, the 1916 history 1853).
6. 1853-1854 — A foundry is built by a joint stock company with $5,000 capital.
7. 1854 — Hamden Furnace is established near the village by L. C. Damarin and others.
8. 1854-10-26 — Mineral Lodge, F. & A. M., is organized with charter members D. D. T. Hord, John Arnold and Franklin Redd.
9. 1855-1856 — The Methodists build a house of worship on the site of their later church.
10. 1861 — A schoolhouse is built at a cost of $2,000.
11. 1871-1872 — A frame Presbyterian church is built; Rev. Dr. Tenney had organized the congregation several years earlier.
12. 1872-07-17 — Hamden Lodge No. 517, Odd Fellows, is organized with eleven charter members.
13. 1874 — J. W. Bowen starts the Hamden Leader, succeeded in 1880 by the Hamden Enterprise.
14. 1876 — Hamden is incorporated as a village and J. M. Thomas is elected its first mayor.
15. 1882 — A two-story brick city hall is built, costing $2,200.
16. 1908 — The Citizens Bank of Hamden opens in November; the Puritan brick plant is begun in September.
17. 1909 — The Puritan Brick Company's plant and its mile of railroad are completed in the fall.
18. 1910 — Census population is 1,019, the village's peak until 1960.
19. 2020 — Census population is 727.

Stories

The town that renamed itself twice

Nathaniel Richmond entered the land in 1820, but it was Charles Robbins and J. K. Wilson who laid out the village, splitting the new Main Street between them: Robbins took the east side, Wilson the west. They named it Charleston after Robbins, and it kept that name for about twenty years. Around 1852 or 1853 the town became Hamden, and its post office had names of its own: first Reed's Mill, for an office a mile to the north, then Hamden when the office moved into town, then Hamden Junction, to avoid confusion with another Ohio place of the same name once the railroads met there. The two county histories do not agree on the year of the first plat, 1834 in the 1883 book and, by the scan, 1829 in the 1916 book.

Puritan Lake and the brick company

In April 1908 capitalists from Detroit, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Massachusetts inspected ground east of Hamden for a combined brick works, iron furnace and cement plant, with a railroad from the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern. Within a year the Puritan Brick Company, headed by William L. Holmes of Detroit, had bought land, turned the first earth for its railway, and finished a brick plant and a mile of electric-locomotive line in the fall of 1909. A dam across the valley made Puritan Lake, a reservoir of about twenty acres, and two coal mines fed the kilns with fuel from just above the white shale used for the brick. When the 1916 history was written the company's holdings of 980 acres, plant and railways were valued at more than $540,000, and the county historian called it by far the most extensive industry in Vinton County.

Where two railroads met

Hamden's rise rested on the Raccoon Valley furnaces and on the railroads. The Marietta and Cincinnati line ran through Vinton County in 1856, and the Portsmouth branch, a descendant of the failed Scioto and Hocking Valley project, reached the hamlet of Hamden and joined it there, giving the place its later name of Hamden Junction. In 1883 the combined lines became the Cincinnati, Washington and Baltimore under the Baltimore and Ohio. In the 1880s the furnace company owned several whole sections of Clinton Township, and Hamden Furnace stood on the south half of Section 21.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Hamden Village83% of residentsTeays River Buried Valley Aquifer (own wells)
• Mcarthur, Village Of17% of residentsGroundwater wells (7 wells)
• Wellston City1% of residentsLake Rupert + Lake Alma (Little Raccoon Creek reservoirs)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 2 of 2 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2026-02-05

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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