Liberty Township, Henry County

How Liberty Township, Henry County began

Liberty Township, in Henry County's north, holds some of the earliest documented white settlement anywhere in the county: traders and settlers were camped at Prairie du Masque on the Maumee by 1814, six years before the county itself existed, and Samuel Vance's log tavern there, built by 1820, was the only house of public accommodation between Defiance and the Maumee Rapids. The 1888 county history calls it one of the county's best-settled and most historically interesting townships. Liberty Center, platted along the Wabash Railway starting in 1863, grew into the township's principal village and the second in the county to incorporate.

Settled 1814, at Prairie du Masque on the Maumee River, platted Liberty Center platted from June 4, 1863, by Alpheas Buchanan, by Alpheas Buchanan and later additions by Calvin C. Young, E. T. Coon, G. P. Parrish, Ward Woodward, Orle Buchanan and Daniel Ehrgood.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains why Liberty Township was given its name; the 1888 county history calls it 'one of the best, one of the earliest settled and first improved townships in the county' and 'possesses more intrinsic historic interest than any of the thirteen,' but does not address the origin of the name itself, which is shared by twenty-five other Liberty Townships across Ohio.

Before the town

Liberty Township's own documented Native history is thinner than its white-settlement record, but the township sits immediately downriver from Prairie du Masque, a place the 1888 county history says was named by early French traders or missionaries drawn to the Maumee valley, and which served as a camping ground for General Anthony Wayne's army on its 1794 march to the Battle of Fallen Timbers -- placing the township's earliest documented human landmark within the same landscape the Ottawa, Wyandot and other nations were using and leaving at that same period. No named Native village, mound or treaty tract specific to Liberty Township's own boundaries was found in the sources reviewed; the Ottawa reservation lay in neighboring Washington Township.

• Prairie du Masque (Wayne's encampment) (camp) — on the Maumee River, on land later divided between Liberty and Washington townships, General Wayne's army camped here in 1794 en route to Fallen Timbers; French-named before that (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1814 — John Butler, David and Jacob Delong, Charles Gunn, George Chilson, David Bucklin and Samuel Vance settle at Prairie du Masque, among the earliest white settlement anywhere in what becomes Henry County.
2. 1818 — Elisha and Edwin Scribner arrive; Edwin, who died in 1887, was the last survivor of the Prairie du Masque pioneers.
3. by 1820 — Samuel Vance builds a double log house on the Maumee, the only tavern between Defiance and the Rapids, its cellar still visible in 1888 near the site's old orchard, the first planted in the county.
4. 1826-11-17 — John Patrick settles on the river three miles east of Napoleon and later opens what becomes the main tavern on the canal route between Defiance and Toledo.
5. 1843 — Canal navigation and packet travel begin on the newly completed Miami and Erie Canal, bringing brisk trade through the township until the Wabash Railroad is built.
6. before 1843 — Edwin Scribner builds a 'thunder gust' saw-mill on Dry Creek, the first saw-mill in the county.
7. 1847 — The tax duplicate lists 66 personal-property taxpayers and 18,442 acres valued at $38,764.95, with $1,316.66 in tax.
8. 1858 — A post office opens at Liberty Centre.
9. 1859-12-05 — A plat of seventeen lots at Damascus, the canal village on section twelve, is recorded, any earlier plat having been destroyed in the courthouse fire of 1847.
10. 1860 — Liberty Township has 1,119 people.
11. 1863-06-04 — Alpheas Buchanan records the first plat of Liberty Center, twelve lots on the south side of the Wabash Railway.
12. 1870 — The township's population reaches 1,766.
13. 1880 — The township's population reaches 1,946.
14. 1887 — Outside Liberty Center the township has eight school-houses, most of brick, and three churches, two Christian Union and one United Brethren.
15. 2020 — The census counts 2,442 people in Liberty Township.

Stories

The tavern at Prairie du Masque

Long before Henry County existed, French traders or missionaries drawn to the Maumee valley had already named a stretch of riverbank Prairie du Masque, and General Anthony Wayne's army camped there in 1794 on its march toward the Battle of Fallen Timbers. It was on this same ground that Samuel Vance, one of a handful of settlers who arrived in 1814, built a double log house sometime before 1820 and hung out a sign offering 'accommodation for man and beast' -- the only house of public entertainment between Defiance and the Rapids of the Maumee. Its brick cellar, still visible when the county history was written in 1888, sat near what the historian called the first orchard planted in the county, the bricks themselves having been boated up from Toledo on pirogues. A town was laid out at the spot and, for a time on the strength of the new canal's trade, was ambitious enough to challenge Napoleon for the county seat -- before the railroad era reduced it, in the historian's words, to 'a magnificent farm.'

The canal town that lost to the railroad

After the Miami and Erie Canal opened in 1843, Burlin and Taylor started a mill at Damascus, on section twelve of the township, and opened what the county historian called the first general store in the county. They also ran Samuel Vance's old tavern. A town was laid out, but any earlier plat was destroyed in the courthouse fire of 1847, and in 1859 the assessor recorded a new one of seventeen lots, fifteen north of the canal and two south. In its early days it was the county's most promising business point on the canal and ambitious enough to rival Napoleon for the county seat. The historian wrote that the canal's inability to compete with the railroads had ruined Damascus as a town and converted it into a magnificent farm.

Photographs

Local history sources: archive.org · archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · postalhistory.com

Mostly private wells The water here

• Napoleon City49% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Liberty Center Village46% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Northwestern W and SD - Sr 1082% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Florida Village2% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)
• Northwestern W and SD - Co. Rd P1% of residentsMaumee River (with Wauseon reservoirs as backup/blend storage)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

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 2026-01-13

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