Harmony Township, Morrow County

How Harmony Township, Morrow County began

Harmony Township was established in 1820 out of territory that had belonged to Delaware County, one of the later-settled townships in what became Morrow County. It sits in the center of the county between the villages of Marengo and Fulton and has no incorporated village of its own. The township remains agricultural, with roughly 2,600 residents.

Settled 1820s, incorporated organized as a township in 1820.

Where the name comes from

No source specific to the township's name origin was found; 'Harmony' was a common township name across the Ohio frontier, often chosen aspirationally by organizing settlers rather than for a person or place. Not independently verified for this township.

Before the town

The swamps of Harmony Township had a real attraction for the Indians in the early day, according to the 1911 county history: wild fruits and wild flowers grew there in abundance, and certain game the Indians favored for hunting was drawn to the same ground. 'Rosy' swamp, on what was later Mr. Meredith's farm, was said to take its name from the profusion of wild flowers the Indians noted there, while 'Wild Cat' swamp, near the township center, was named from Indian tradition after the wild cats of great size once found there. Separately, the same source records that a party of settlers chasing horse thieves through the county at daybreak came upon Indians encamped near the Long Swamp in Harmony Township, where the horses -- some evidently stolen -- were recovered without violence. The township was formed from Delaware County land, part of the broader area the 1911 county history and Ohio History Central describe as Shawnee hunting territory before white settlement, and near the Owl Creek Trail corridor used by Wyandot and Delaware (Lenape) travelers through Mount Gilead.

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

• Long Swamp Indian encampment (camp) — Long Swamp, north-central Harmony Township, before c. 1820s removal (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1820 — Harmony Township was set off, on June 5, from the larger township of Sunbury, initially including parts of Bennington, Peru and Lincoln townships as well as territory north to the Crawford County line; it was reduced to its present bounds in 1828 with the erection of Lincoln Township.
2. 1824 — William Davis, a Knox County resident, writes to Chillicothe for information and enters the first congressional land within the township's present limits, near the bend of the South branch of Owl Creek.
3. 1826 — Samuel Hayden, who had come from Pennsylvania as a child in 1808, settles on the Cardington and Chesterville road on the boundary between Chester and Harmony townships.
4. 1827 — Jeremiah Smith, who had settled at Berkshire in 1824, enters 250 acres in the northeast part of the township; he does not build his cabin until late that year, moving his family in by March 1828, on land that included the thirty-acre 'Feather Bed' swamp, a beaver dam so soft a twenty-foot pole found no solid bottom.
5. 1831 — Jeremiah Smith lays out a quarter-acre cemetery and buries his first wife there in August; he later donates a building site to the Methodists, leading to the construction of Harmony chapel.
6. 1848 — The township became part of the newly organized Morrow County.
7. 1850 — Harmony chapel, a Methodist Episcopal church, is built on the site Jeremiah Smith donated.

Stories

A township between two villages, with none of its own

Harmony Township, laid out in 1820 in what was still Delaware County, has never had an incorporated village inside its own lines. It sits between Marengo to the south and Fulton to the west, both in neighboring townships, and its roughly 2,600 residents have always depended on those and on the county seat at Mount Gilead for a post office, churches and trade. That pattern, common across rural Morrow County, is why so much of Harmony's documented history lives in the records of its neighbors rather than in a village history of its own.

The swamps that gave the land its names

Before it was drained and farmed, much of Harmony Township was a network of named swamps -- Long swamp in the north-center, the Prairies and Feather Bed swamps to the south and east, Wild Cat near the middle of the township, and Rosy a little further on. The 1911 county history preserves why: Rosy swamp took its name from the wild flowers that once brightened its damp ground, a favorite Indian gathering spot, while Wild Cat swamp was remembered, by Indian tradition passed down to settlers, for the outsized wild cats once found in its recesses. On Jeremiah Smith's farm, the Feather Bed swamp was a thirty-acre beaver dam so soft that a pole thrust twenty feet into it never touched firm ground -- a hazard for coon-hunting dogs, and a fair measure of how much work lay between the swamps of 1827 and the 'excellent farming land' the same tract became within a generation.

A horse chase ends peaceably at Long Swamp

When a settler named Buck discovered horses missing, he armed himself, gathered two neighbors, and set out late in the day tracking the thieves -- slow going, since the trail was already old by the time they started. Just after nightfall the party came upon a band of Indians encamped near the Long Swamp in Harmony Township, and, deciding against a night raid, waited until daybreak. At first light Buck's companions wavered, but Buck announced he meant to have his horses back whether or not they backed him, which settled the matter. The Indians, confronted, explained by signs that they had simply caught the horses running loose -- 'Me catch! me catch!' -- and the party found seventeen horses hobbled with rawhide thongs at the camp, several likely taken the same way from other settlers. The settlers, in their hurry, proposed cutting the thongs rather than untying them, which alarmed the Indians more than the original demand for the horses had.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · morrow.ohgenweb.org · en.wikipedia.org · hmdb.org · archive.org

Del-Co's East Knox wellfield at Bryant and Lucerne Rds, Wayne Twp, about 5 miles WSW of Fredericktown The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.84% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Cardington Village12% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mt Gilead Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Candlewood Lake Association Inc1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-01: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2018: 2 of 3 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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