Hamer Township, Highland County

How Hamer Township, Highland County began

Hamer Township lies in the western part of Highland County, Ohio, and was organized in 1849, one of the later of the county's seventeen townships to be formed. It was named for General Thomas L. Hamer of neighboring Brown County, a teacher-turned-lawyer and congressman remembered nationally for nominating the young Ulysses S. Grant to West Point and for dying in service during the Mexican War. The township's only settlement is the small unincorporated community of East Danville, also called Winkle, in its southeastern corner. Hamer Township remains rural, with 679 residents at the 2020 census, and is the only township of that name in Ohio.

Incorporated 1849.

Where the name comes from

Hamer Township was named in honor of General Thomas L. Hamer of Brown County, a teacher and lawyer who rose to brigadier general in the Mexican War and died in service; he is remembered for nominating young Hiram Ulysses Grant to West Point, mistakenly recording his name as Ulysses Simpson Grant.

Before the town

No named Native village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Hamer Township is recorded in the sources checked. The township's land lay within the roughly two-thirds of Ohio ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, signed by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa and other nations, which opened this part of southern Ohio to settlement. The Hopewell-period Fort Salem earthwork lies in neighboring Salem Township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1805 — Highland County is organized from parts of Ross, Adams and Clermont counties, initially divided into just four townships; the future Hamer Township's land is not yet separately organized.
2. 1806 — Philip Roush clears a farm in the north part of what becomes Hamer Township.
3. 1811 — David Welty comes from Kentucky to what is now Hamer Township.
4. 1817 — Lutheran and German Reformed families of Hamer, among them the Shaffers, Wilkins, Roushes, Leamons and Caileys, join in building a church; a schism about 1855 produces the Mount Zion church and a Lutheran church at Danville.
5. 1819-08-19 — Salem Township is set off from New Market Township, taking in what are now Salem, Hamer and Dodson townships, with Danville as the voting place.
6. 1835 — Daniel P. March plats the village of Danville.
7. 1842 — A Methodist church is built at Danville, where David Sullivan had been the pioneer Methodist; a new church replaces it in 1859.
8. 1849 — Hamer Township is organized and named for General Thomas L. Hamer of Brown County, one of the last of Highland County's seventeen townships to be formed (only Washington Township, in 1850, and Penn Township, in 1852, came later).
9. 1880 — A post office is established at East Danville, in the township's southeast, under the name Winkle.
10. 1900 — The census counts 918 people in Hamer Township.
11. 1969 — The Winkle/East Danville post office closes after 89 years of operation.
12. 2020 — The census counts 679 people in Hamer Township.

Stories

The township named for the man who named Grant

When Highland County's commissioners organized its third-to-last township in 1849, they named it for a man who had never lived there: General Thomas Lyon Hamer, a lawyer and Democratic congressman from neighboring Brown County. Hamer had begun as a schoolteacher, was admitted to the bar in 1821, served as Speaker of the Ohio House, and sat in Congress from 1833 to 1839. In 1839, as a favor to a constituent, he nominated that man's son, Hiram Ulysses Grant, for an appointment to West Point — and, working from memory, wrote the nomination under the name Ulysses Simpson Grant. The Military Academy's roster could not be changed, and the name stuck for life, turning Hiram Ulysses Grant into Ulysses S. Grant. Hamer himself went on to volunteer as a private when the Mexican War broke out in 1846; popular with the troops, he was made a brigadier general the next day, and he died in the field at Monterrey that December, months before his own election to a new term in Congress was to take effect. Highland County's Hamer Township, formed three years after his death, carries his name to this day; it is the only township so named anywhere in Ohio.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Hillsboro City64% of residentsClear Creek (via Selph Road & Liberty Park Reservoirs)
• Highland County Water Company, Inc.22% of residentsSand-and-gravel aquifer wells (Ross/Highland Co. well fields; local wells)
• Lynchburg Village14% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-29

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