Jennings Township, Van Wert County

How Jennings Township, Van Wert County began

Jennings Township was continued as a civil township at the county commissioners' June 5, 1837 meeting, its first settlers -- the Harter family -- having arrived in 1825, among the earliest recorded settlement dates anywhere in the county. Its shape changed sharply in 1848, when the new Auglaize County took 18 of its 36 sections and nine more sections were added from Mercer County, leaving a narrower township that today holds the county's most southerly point. Jennings holds part of Venedocia, a close-knit Welsh farming settlement founded in April 1848 that is one of the most distinctive communities in the county's history, and lies along the route General Anthony Wayne's army marched across the county in August 1794 on its way to the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

Settled 1825 (Harter family), incorporated continued as Jennings Township June 5, 1837 (previously existing as an unorganized survey township), by Van Wert County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted documents the specific reasoning behind the name 'Jennings'; the township's name predates its formal 1837 organization, since the commissioners' order that year describes it as being 'continued' under that name rather than newly assigned.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to Jennings Township was located in the sources consulted. The township's documented record begins with the Harter family's 1825 settlement, among the earliest dated Euro-American settlements recorded anywhere in the county, only seven years after the 1818 land cession. A state historical marker at Venedocia, however, places specific military history in this immediate area a generation earlier still: in August 1794 the U.S. Legion under Major General Anthony Wayne, some 2,800 men, marched across the eastern third of the future Van Wert County -- camping west of the marker's location, near a present-day cemetery, on the night of August 4 -- on its way toward a major village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers (present Defiance). Finding that village abandoned, Wayne continued down the Maumee and was attacked by a Native force on August 20; his victory seventeen days later at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and the Treaty of Greenville that followed in 1795 between Wayne and representatives of twelve tribes, opened much of Ohio to American settlement, including the land that became this township.

• Anthony Wayne's 1794 march route (Van Wert County / Venedocia) (other) — eastern third of Van Wert County, including the Venedocia area shared by Jennings and York townships; the marker itself stands at 14904 OH 116, Venedocia, August 1794 (remarkableohio.org)

Timeline

1. 1794-08-04 — General Anthony Wayne's army of about 2,800 men, marching across the future Van Wert County toward the Auglaize-Maumee junction, camps for the night near the site later marked at Venedocia.
2. 1825 — John K., William, George and Peter Harter settle in what becomes Jennings Township, among the earliest documented Euro-American settlements in the county.
3. 1837-06-05 — The county commissioners order that township 3 south, ranges 3 and 4 east, be continued and known as Jennings Township, then a full 36-section congressional township.
4. 1847 — Governor William Bebb of Ohio and a cousin of the same name travel to Van Wert County in the fall to buy land for a planned settlement of Welsh immigrants.
5. 1848 — Auglaize County organizes from surrounding territory, taking 18 sections off Jennings Township's east side; nine sections are added from Union Township, Mercer County, leaving Jennings a narrower 27-section township.
6. 1848-04 — Three families recently arrived from North Wales -- the Bebbs, the Jervises and the Morrises -- travel by the Miami and Erie Canal to establish Venedocia; wolves, panthers and other wild animals are frequent visitors to the new settlement, scratching at cabin doors at night according to one settler's account.
7. 1895 — The Venedocia Presbyterian Church is organized; until this point, all of the settlement's regularly scheduled church services had been conducted in Welsh.
8. 1898 — Venedocia's Welsh congregation dedicates a new $20,000 church building marking the settlement's 50th anniversary; the Salem Presbyterian Church building, visible from the Anthony Wayne/Venedocia historical marker, is itself built in 1898.
9. 1917 — The Salem Church's annual reports, printed in Welsh since the congregation's founding, are printed in Welsh for the last time.

Stories

Eight men fall forty feet, and all of them live

The Welsh settlers who built up Venedocia and the farmland around it were, by the county historian's own description, unusually devoted to church-building, and their determination once nearly cost several of them their lives. During the raising of an early frame church -- a building later repurposed as Cambrian Hall, home of the celebrated Venedocia Male Chorus -- workers were lifting heavy roof timbers into position when the beams they stood on gave way. Eight men went down together, tangled with plank, pike-poles and loose timber, and fell forty feet to the joists below. 'If the eight had been instantly killed,' the county's 1906 historian wrote, 'the surprise would have been less than to know that all recovered.' Two of the men, David M. Jones and John Breese, suffered broken ribs and a broken thigh and hung between life and death for weeks, but every one of the eight eventually recovered -- a near-disaster remembered a generation later less as a tragedy than as a kind of local miracle, retold precisely because of how close it came to being much worse.

A Welsh cousin follows a governor west

The three families who founded Venedocia in April 1848 -- William Bebb, Thomas Morris and Richard Jervis, all recently arrived from North Wales -- were not entirely strangers to America's promise when they chose Van Wert County. The William Bebb among them was a first cousin of Governor William Bebb of Ohio, himself the son of Welsh immigrants, and the county's 1906 historian speculated that the family connection to a sitting Ohio governor may well have been what steered the little colony to Ohio in the first place rather than to one of the other Welsh settlements scattered across Pennsylvania or New York. A state historical marker at Venedocia confirms the outline independently: in the fall of 1847 Governor Bebb himself, together with a cousin of the same name, traveled to the county to buy the land, and the three families arrived the following April by way of the Miami and Erie Canal. Whatever drew them, the community they founded held together with unusual tenacity: Welsh-language Sunday and midweek services continued without interruption for 58 years by the time the county history was compiled, annual church reports were still printed in Welsh as late as 1917, and the settlement's Venedocia Male Chorus went on to win music competitions across several states, carrying the sound of a North Wales chapel choir into the heart of the old Black Swamp. The Welsh Gymanfa Ganu, a hymn-singing festival, was still one of the community's biggest annual events as of the historical marker's writing.

A Revolutionary War general's army passes through

Long before Welsh families or the Harters arrived, the ground that became Jennings Township saw one of the pivotal military campaigns of the early republic pass directly across it. In early August 1794, Major General Anthony Wayne led the roughly 2,800 men of the U.S. Legion across the eastern third of what would become Van Wert County, camping for the night of August 4 near a site later chosen as a cemetery, not far from present-day Venedocia. Wayne's army was marching on a major Native village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers, hoping to force a decisive confrontation; finding the village abandoned, he pushed on down the Maumee and was attacked by a Native force on August 20. His victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Northwest Indian War of the 1790s, and the Treaty of Greenville he signed with representatives of twelve tribes the following year opened much of Ohio, including this township's own ground, to the wave of American settlement that would not reach it in earnest for another three decades.

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

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