Harrison Township, Van Wert County

How Harrison Township, Van Wert County began

Harrison Township was set off March 27, 1839, on a petition to the county commissioners, and settled through the late 1830s by families with names -- Johnson, Germann, Showalter, Kreischer -- that still mark the township's German Lutheran and Evangelical congregations today. It borders Indiana on the county's western edge, has no incorporated village of its own, and holds one of the county's National Register listings: a 65-foot round barn built in 1910 by Clayton Hoover, one of a documented cluster of round barns that once dotted the drained Black Swamp farmland of northwest Ohio.

Settled 1836 (first arrivals), incorporated organized as Harrison Township March 27, 1839, by Van Wert County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted documents a specific reason for the name; Harrison is a common Ohio township name (19 statewide) and was frequently chosen in this period in honor of William Henry Harrison, hero of the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe and the 1813 Battle of the Thames and later U.S. president, though we could not confirm that link with a source specific to this township.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to Harrison Township was located in the sources consulted. One documented encounter survives from the township's settlement period: Davis Johnson, an early settler, recorded a hunting-ground meeting with a Native man who tracked and identified a deer thief through observed physical evidence -- boot-prints, pipe-ash marks, a dog's tail-print in snow -- a story the 1906 county history preserves under the heading 'An Indian Sherlock Holmes.'

Timeline

1. 1836 — The township's first settlers arrive, including Joseph Johnson, Davis Johnson, Abel Johnson and Jesse Foster.
2. 1837 — William Johns, J. W. Johns, James Foster, Robert Manley, Allen Walters and H. A. Lords are among the settlers who join the first Harrison Township families of 1836.
3. 1838 — Peter Hertz, M. F. Richey, J. R. and Clark Glenn, Jacob and Eli Bauserman and others settle; Peter Hertz, born in Germany, comes with his parents and lives briefly in a log house in Van Wert before taking land in the township.
4. 1839-03-27 — A petition to the county commissioners leads to the formal organization of Harrison Township, with an organizing election ordered for April 11 at the house of Henry A. Lords.
5. 1839 — The H. G. Germann family and other German settlers arrive, laying the groundwork for the township's later Lutheran and Evangelical congregations.
6. 1840-10-13 — Thirty-three electors are recorded in the Harrison Township poll book for the October election.
7. 1841 — The first Methodist Episcopal class in the township is organised in the fall by Rev. Simeon Alderman at the log cabin of M. F. Richey; the society disbands after about twelve years as members move away.
8. 1846 — German Lutheran services, held since 1839 in private homes by preachers riding from Fort Wayne, are being held in a log schoolhouse.
9. 1853-03-12 — Harrison Baptist Church is constituted at the Harrison schoolhouse, with delegates from six churches; thirteen are added by baptism in the meeting that followed.
10. 1858 — St. Thomas Lutheran Church builds a one-story frame church 20 by 40 feet, and the Harrison Baptist congregation builds its meeting house during the summer.
11. 1898-09 — The cornerstone of a new brick St. Thomas Lutheran Church, 32 by 72 feet with a 102-foot steeple, is laid; it costs $6,232.
12. 1902 — The Harrison Baptist congregation builds a new church, furnished at a cost of $2,500, because the old one is too small.
13. 1910 — Clayton Hoover builds a 65-foot-diameter, 55-foot-tall round barn in the township, one of a regional cluster of round barns later documented together on the National Register.
14. 1980-04-17 — The Hoover round barn is added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of a multiple-property listing of round barns in the Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio.

Stories

The squire who could not wait to gloat

William Rear arranged with the justice of the peace at Willshire to marry him and Mary Johnson on a Sunday -- the squire's first wedding to perform -- and word got around before he even left home. Half a dozen neighbors fell in alongside him on the ride out, needling him the whole way. He arrived at the Johnson place, threw his bridle rein over a post, strode in and demanded, 'Where is that couple that want to get married?' -- found them sitting on the floor with their feet down on the hearth, told them to stand up, and pronounced them man and wife on the spot, 'by the power granted me by the State of Ohio.' Then, unable to resist, he added, 'By G--, didn't I come it over the boys,' walked straight back out to his pony and rode off while his tormentors were still hitching their horses -- getting, in the end, the last laugh on the men who had ridden out to have one at his expense.

Wayne's bullets under Van Wert

Peter Hertz, who came from Germany to Harrison Township in 1838, lived for a few months that year in a log house in Van Wert before taking up his land. His daughter, who later married Henry Showalter, found some bullets buried on a town lot, and Hertz and others dug up about 100 pounds of bullets and some silver plate. The county historian of 1906 supposed them to have been buried by men of Wayne's army on its march from Fort Adams to Fort Defiance. On the township farm the Hertzes cleared an acre and sowed wheat that did not come up until spring, then threshed eighteen bushels from it, and gathered what the coons and squirrels left of a corn crop from a second acre.

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

Every historic place in Van Wert County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Van Wert City40% of residentsTown Creek via two impounding reservoirs
• Convoy Village39% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Ohio City Village21% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 3 of 3 passed.

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, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-07-16

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