Jerome Township, Union County

How Jerome Township, Union County began

Jerome Township holds some of Union County's earliest documented white settlement: brothers Joshua and James Ewing settled there in 1798, more than twenty years before the county itself was organized, two years after Jonathan Alder. It is also the place, in the valley the settlers called Pleasant Valley, where Jonathan Alder — captured as a boy by Shawnee raiders and raised by a Mingo family — built his cabin after returning to live among white settlers following the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. The township, a few miles north of Plain City, stayed agricultural through the nineteenth century and lies in the southeastern corner of Union County, the part closest to Columbus, and holds parts of Plain City and Dublin.

Settled 1798, by Joshua and James Ewing (first settlers); township organized under Union County after 1820.

Where the name comes from

It is the only Jerome Township in Ohio. The county history gives the township's organization date (March 12, 1821) and says the village of Jerome was also known as Beachtown, Pleasant Hill or Frankfort, but offers no naming story.

Before the town

The county history describes Jerome Township, especially the banks of Big Darby Creek, as a favourite Native hunting ground whose trails and wigwam marks were still plain when pioneers arrived; just north of Plain City there was an Indian town of large numbers in bark-covered wigwams that lasted until about 1800, and a sugar camp stood on the old Kent farm on Sugar Run where Native families made maple syrup. Traders came from Chillicothe to swap goods for their raccoon skins and other furs. Relations were friendly: Indians came with sacks of corn to Frederick Sager's mill, and in the War of 1812 a party of settlers that visited the Native council to learn their intentions found no hostile plan. Jonathan Alder, captured in 1782 and raised by a Mingo family, lived in the township on the west side of the Darby just north of Plain City, and the county history credits him with settling a quarrel over a dog James Ewing had killed for attacking his sheep.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Wyandot.

• Jonathan Alder's Pleasant Valley cabin site (other) — Jerome Township, about 5 miles north of Plain City, 1796-1806 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Indian town north of Plain City (village) — just north of Plain City on the Big Darby, Jerome Township, until about 1800 (archive.org)
• Sugar camp on the Kent farm (camp) — Sugar Run, old Kent farm, Jerome Township, before the 1800s settlement (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville, ceding most of Ohio south and east of the Greenville Treaty Line to the United States, ends the general war between the United States and the Ohio nations and allows Jonathan Alder to leave the Mingo and return to white settlement.
2. 1796 — Jonathan Alder settles in Pleasant Valley, in what is now Jerome Township, after leaving the Mingo community.
3. 1798 — Joshua and James Ewing settle in what will become Jerome Township, two years after Jonathan Alder's arrival in its Pleasant Valley.
4. 1800 — Henry Shover, a Revolutionary War veteran, settles in the township; Colonel James Curry, an officer for seven years in the Virginia Continental line, receives a thousand acres here in part payment for his service.
5. 1805 — Frederick Sager builds the township's first mill on Darby Creek (date approximate: he settled in the early years after 1800); its burrs are chiselled from a boulder found on John Taylor's farm, and before it settlers pounded corn in a mortar like the Indians' or rode to Lancaster or Chillicothe with a pack-horse.
6. 1806 — Alder, long since separated from his first wife Barshaw, marries Mary Ann Blont in Virginia on January 6 and builds a cabin along the Big Darby Creek.
7. 1810 — James Ewing, later the county's first sheriff, buys a stock of goods at Chillicothe and opens a country store on his farm, the first merchant in the township and, with his post office there, the first in Union County.
8. 1812-15 — During the War of 1812, Alder commands a roughly 70-man militia company that builds a blockhouse on Mill Creek north of Marysville, the only fort ever raised in Union County.
9. 1812 — The Methodist Episcopal society at Pleasant Valley is organized; its church building later stood in Union County, on the Plain City side of the line.
10. 1820 — Union County is organized and Jerome Township becomes one of its original townships.
11. 1821-03-12 — Jerome Township is organized and holds its first election on May 10, when Clark Provin receives all fifteen votes for justice of the peace.
12. 1846 — William B. Irwin, county surveyor, plats the village of Jerome (Beachtown, Pleasant Hill or Frankfort) for Henry Beach, the only family living there; the post office opens April 17, 1848 with Joel A. Converse as postmaster and closes December 15, 1905.
13. 1853 — The hamlet of New California is platted; it becomes the live stock center of southern Union County, with droves of hundreds of hogs weighed on its scales and driven to Worthington or Pleasant Valley for shipment to New York.
14. 1873 — Dr. Ballinger and Richard Woodruff build the flouring mill, later U. D. Beard's, on the west bank of the Darby; it is the last water-powered mill in the township.
15. 1893 — A station and village on the Toledo & Ohio Central Railroad, on land of Mrs. George Arnold, is first called New California and renamed Arnold when a post office is sought; the office runs from 1896 to March 1, 1910.
16. 1990 — The township's population is 3,462, rising to 3,950 in 2000, 7,541 in 2010 and 9,504 in 2020.

Stories

The captive who came home to Pleasant Valley

Jonathan Alder was eight years old in 1782 when a small party of Shawnee caught him and his brother David searching for stray horses near the family's home in Wythe County, Virginia, killed David, and carried Jonathan off. He was adopted into a Mingo family led by the chief Succohanos and his wife Whinecheoh and grew up largely as one of them, learning their language and ways over roughly fourteen years. After the 1795 Treaty of Greenville brought an uneasy peace, Alder chose to rejoin white society and, in 1796, settled in the valley Union County settlers called Pleasant Valley, in what is now Jerome Township a few miles north of Plain City. He later moved to a cabin on the Big Darby, married, and during the War of 1812 led a company of local militia that built the county's one and only wartime fort. Alder died in 1849 in neighboring Madison County.

Peace over a dead dog

James Ewing brought the first sheep into Jerome Township and kept them in a high log pen to keep the wolves out. One day a party of Indians called at his cabin and one of their dogs jumped into the pen and went for the sheep, and Ewing took his rifle and killed it. The Indians were enraged and trouble rose in the settlement until Jonathan Alder, who had lived among the Indians for many years and fully understood their ways, stepped between the parties and made peace. Alder himself, the county history says, lived on the west side of the Darby just north of Plain City and had at first spoken only the Indian dialect; he kept a fear all his life that his first wife, who had left with her people for the far north, might make trouble for him, and once she did return while he was away and tore up his white wife's clothes before leaving for good. His tombstone gives his birth as September 17, 1773 and capture in 1781; he is buried in Madison County.

Saturdays at the singing school

Before the Civil War the young people along Darby Creek and Sugar Run were noted far and near for their music. Every winter the singing schools and literary societies furnished the main entertainments, held in neighbourhood schoolhouses and on special occasions in the old Seceders' church at New California or one of the Jerome churches. Until about 1850 the old square 'buckwheat' notes were used, and the first book with round notes was the Carmina Sacra. There was fierce rivalry between the choruses of Jerome and Darby townships, and in the summer of 1860 the singers of Jerome, Darby and Milford Center held an all-day concert in a grove on Michael Sager's farm at Unionville, each chorus backed by its own teacher, with, the county history says, considerable feeling among the factions. Debating societies filled other winter evenings, and the best farmers took two or three weekly papers, one of them a church paper such as The Watchman of the Valley.

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

Mill Creek water pumped into and stored in the Marysville Upground Reservoir on Raymond Road, plus groundwater from city-owned wells, treated at the plant on the reservoir site The water here

• Marysville City46% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells
• Mid-ohio WSD - Jackson Street WTP33% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Columbus Public Water System16% of residentsScioto River (Griggs & O'Shaughnessy), Hoover Reservoir on Big Walnut Ck, plus wells
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.3% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Canaan Community MHP2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Suburbans Community MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Public EV charging (2)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (12)

Money issues on the ballot since 2025: 1 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

Auditor of State record

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• OP&F Examination, 2023, released 2025-04-15

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