Jackson Township, Clermont County

How Jackson Township, Clermont County began

Jackson Township, in the county's northeast along the Brown County line, is the site of Clermont County's one documented pitched battle: the April 10, 1792 fight at Grassy Run between Simon Kenton's Kentucky frontiersmen and a Shawnee camp that included the young Tecumseh, and later the site of a Wyandot camp that stood until 1811, the last Native settlement recorded within the county. Its first settlers, Robert Dickey and William Hunter, arrived from Pennsylvania by way of Pittsburgh and the Ohio River in the fall of 1798, six years after the battle and three after the Treaty of Greenville had opened the region to settlement; Dickey himself had already fought in two earlier campaigns against Ohio Indian towns before ever reaching Clermont County. The township's ground also holds several prehistoric mounds recorded in the 1880 county history, including the largest sacrificial mound described anywhere in the county.

Settled 1798, by Robert Dickey and William Hunter, first settlers (September-December 1798).

Where the name comes from

No source consulted here states directly why the township is named Jackson; the common assumption for Ohio townships carrying this name is a connection to Andrew Jackson, but no source found confirms this or gives the township's organization date.

Before the town

Jackson Township holds Clermont County's one documented pitched battle between Native nations and American settlers: the April 10, 1792 fight at Lime-Kiln Ford near the mouth of Grassy Run, in which a 24-man party led by Simon Kenton and Cornelius Washburn attacked a Shawnee camp of about 100 that included several named chiefs, among them the young Tecumseh. After the Treaty of Greenville ended the fighting, a Wyandot camp of nine wigwams and 43 people stood on the Hartman farm near the same Grassy Run site from at least 1795 until 1811, hunting, fishing and trapping and trading furs peaceably with settlers -- the last documented Native settlement within present Clermont County; an earlier, separate Shawnee camp had stood farther up the East Fork until the Shawnee left in 1805, and Wyandot chief Logan, later killed in the War of 1812, is remembered as one of the camp's leaders. The 1880 county history also records several prehistoric Mound-Builder works in the township: the largest sacrificial mound described anywhere in the county, on John Hadly's farm (twelve feet high); the largest sepulchral mound in the county, on Benjamin Johnston's farm near the East Fork (fifteen feet high, with limestone slabs originally set upright at its apex); six low mounds with stone-lined burial cists on Geary Hutchinson's farm; a circular stone-lined burial depression on Ezekiel Hutchinson's farm; and a four-foot-high crescent-shaped earthen wall, thirty rods long, on the farm of Mrs. Elizabeth Hartman. None of these works is tied by any source to a named historic nation. The township's first settler, Robert Dickey, had personally fought Ohio Indian towns twice before ever reaching Clermont County: he was wounded in the shoulder in Col. Bowman's 1779 expedition against Old Chillicothe, and later served in Gen. Harmar's 1791 campaign.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot.

• Grassy Run village and battle site (battle) — Jackson Township, at Lime-Kiln Ford near the mouth of Grassy Run, battle April 10, 1792; Wyandot camp 1795-1811 (archive.org)
• Hadly and Johnston mounds (mound) — Jackson Township, on the farms of John Hadly and Benjamin Johnston, prehistoric, Mound-Builder sacrificial/sepulchral (archive.org)
• Hutchinson cist mounds (mound) — Jackson Township, on the farms of Geary and Ezekiel Hutchinson, prehistoric, Mound-Builder (archive.org)
• Hartman crescent wall (earthwork) — Jackson Township, on the farm of Mrs. Elizabeth Hartman, prehistoric, Mound-Builder (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1792 — April 10: the Battle of Grassy Run is fought in what becomes Jackson Township, between Simon Kenton's frontiersmen and a Shawnee camp that included Tecumseh.
2. 1795 — By this date a Wyandot camp of nine wigwams and 43 people has settled near the Grassy Run battle site; it remains, peaceably trading with settlers, until 1811.
3. 1798 — September: Robert Dickey, his brothers Hughey and Andrew, and brother-in-law William Hunter set out from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania for the Miami country, building a boat at Pittsburgh; William Hunter arrives overland at Williamsburgh on November 1, while the Dickeys' boat reaches the mouth of Bullskin Creek later that month.
4. 1798 — December: Robert Dickey purchases 300 acres from Gen. William Lytle in what becomes Jackson Township.
5. 1799 — February 22: William Hunter settles permanently on his own farm in the township.
6. 1811 — The Wyandot camp near Grassy Run is abandoned as its residents leave to join Wyandot relatives farther north, marking the last recorded Native settlement within Clermont County's present borders.
7. 1834 — April: Bernard Conn lays out the community of Lerado, originally named Brownsville, on the Newtonsville and Brownsville free turnpike (now State Route 131); a post office follows in 1876.
8. 1988 — The Grassy Run Historical Arts Committee forms in Williamsburg to prepare for the battle's upcoming bicentennial and to hold an annual heritage rendezvous educating the public about the 1792 battle.

Stories

A soldier twice over before he was ever a settler

Robert Dickey, who became one of the first two settlers of Jackson Township in 1798, had already fought Ohio's Native nations twice before he ever saw the land he would settle. As a young man from Franklin County, Pennsylvania, he joined Col. Bowman's 1779 expedition against Old Chillicothe, a Shawnee town, and was wounded in the shoulder in the fighting there. He recovered and eventually made his way to Louisville, Kentucky, where in 1791 he volunteered for Gen. Josiah Harmar's campaign against the Indian towns of the Maumee valley -- one of the same disastrous expeditions that, elsewhere in Ohio, ended in the near-destruction of Harmar's advance militia. Dickey survived that campaign too and returned home to Chambersburg, only to set out again seven years later, in September 1798, this time not to fight but to settle: with his brothers and his brother-in-law William Hunter, he built a boat at Pittsburgh, floated down the Ohio to the mouth of Bullskin Creek, and by December had purchased 300 acres from Gen. William Lytle in the township that became his permanent home. He never married, and died in 1840 at the age of eighty-five, having spent the last four decades of his long life farming the same ground the Wyandot and Shawnee had only recently, and often violently, contested with men very much like his own younger self.

Lerado: the town that never was

In April 1834, Bernard Conn laid out a new community on the Newtonsville and Brownsville free turnpike, in the same township where the Battle of Grassy Run had been fought forty-two years earlier. He first called it Brownsville; it later became Lerado. For a time it looked like it might amount to something: a hotel went up, along with a general store and two blacksmith shops, and a post office opened in 1876 to serve the crossroads trade. But the growth anticipated for Lerado never fully arrived, and the community never developed into the significant town its early boosters expected, remaining instead one of Jackson Township's smaller crossroads settlements alongside Marathon (once Cynthiana) to its east.

Local history sources: archive.org · livingplaces.com · clermontsun.com · en.wikipedia.org

Five wells in the sand-and-gravel aquifer of the Little Miami River valley at Miamiville, Miami Township The water here

• Clermont Public Water System46% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Williamsburg Village28% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Western Water Company12% of residentsLittle Miami River valley wells (51%) plus Cincinnati Ohio River water (49%)
• Mount Orab Village8% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)
• Tate-monroe Water Association6% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Fayetteville Village0% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (5)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 1 of 1 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 2025-12-30

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