Liberty Township, Logan County

How Liberty Township, Logan County began

Liberty Township, in southern Logan County, lies in the Mad River valley, with McKee's Creek in its northeast and Muddy Run near West Liberty. Settlers from Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas took up its land from about 1808, and in 1814 a Christian congregation of families largely from the Cane Ridge country of Kentucky built the Bethel, or Muddy Run, meetinghouse half a mile west of the future West Liberty, the first church in that part of the country. The township was sliced from Union Township in 1831 by the account of both county histories (Wikipedia gives 1836) and takes in most of West Liberty and part of Bellefontaine. From the 1850s Amish Mennonite families from Union Township built churches here, including South Union on the road between Bellefontaine and West Liberty; the township had 3,891 residents at the 2020 census.

Settled about 1808 (Samuel Newall and others), incorporated 1831 (cut from Union Township, per the 1880 and 1903 county histories); 1836 per Wikipedia and the 1880 county table, by cut from the eastern side of Union Township.

Where the name comes from

Liberty Township carries one of the most common township names in Ohio, a patriotic name adopted by many townships statewide rather than one referring to a specific local person or event; no Logan County-specific naming account was found in the sources consulted, though it shares the name of West Liberty, laid out in 1817.

Before the town

McKee's Creek, which enters the township at its northeast corner, is named for Colonel Alexander McKee, the British Indian agent; Henry Howe, citing Major Galloway's recollection of about 1800, places McKee's Town, then a trading station, on McKee's Creek about four miles south of Bellefontaine, a location that may fall in this township or in Union Township. The Shawnee towns on the Mad River called the Mac-a-cheek or Mac-o-chee towns stood nearby: Howe puts the first of them near West Liberty on the farm of Judge Benjamin Piatt, and the Mac-o-chee towns were destroyed in 1786 by Kentuckians under General Benjamin Logan. The Piatt family's later stone houses stand one to one and three-quarter miles east of West Liberty; earlier research placed that site in adjoining Monroe Township, and no source consulted places a named Native site with certainty inside Liberty Township's lines. The 1880 history adds that in 1831 the Lewistown Shawnee and Seneca still depended on the West Liberty market for their flour and whiskey.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• McKee's Town (village) — on McKee's Creek about four miles south of Bellefontaine (Liberty or Union Township; not confirmed), about 1800, a trading station (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1786 — Kentucky troops under General Benjamin Logan destroyed the Shawnee Mac-o-chee towns on the Mad River, the first of which stood near the later West Liberty.
2. 1808 — About this year Samuel Newall came from Kentucky, among the first settlers with Thomas Baird and his two sons, the Shields, Blair, Snoddy, McBeth and Dunn families and others.
3. 1814 — Rev. Richard Clark organized the Christian church at Bethel, known as the Muddy Run Church, half a mile west of the later West Liberty; its large log meetinghouse stood on the ground of the Muddy Run graveyard.
4. 1815 — John Enoch built the first dwelling at the site of West Liberty and a grist mill near the Mad River, to which people of Logan and Champaign counties traveled through thickets of hazel, plum and thorn; it was still grinding in 1880.
5. 1817 — West Liberty was laid out on section 27 by Aaron L. Hunt, surveyor of Champaign County.
6. 1831 — Liberty Township was sliced from the eastern side of Union Township; among its first officers were Peter Stipp, Judge William McBeth, David Williams and Charles Hildebrand.
7. 1834 — West Liberty was incorporated by an act of the legislature dated February 21, 1834.
8. 1836 — Liberty Township was organized within Logan County.
9. 1844 — The Muddy Run Christian congregation divided, one part building at Glady Creek in Champaign County and the other in West Liberty; the old meetinghouse had burned.
10. 1849 — The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad was completed through West Liberty, which became the shipping point for grain and stock from the southern part of the county.
11. 1857 — About 1857-58 the Amish Mennonites built their first church building in Logan County, in Liberty Township half a mile from the Union Township line on John Kenagy's farm.
12. 1876 — The Amish Mennonites built South Union church in Liberty Township on the Bellefontaine-West Liberty pike, one of two churches built in 1873 and 1876 that served a single congregation.

Stories

The Muddy Run meetinghouse

In 1814 Rev. Richard Clark organized a Christian church at Bethel, better known as the Muddy Run Church, half a mile west of where West Liberty was growing. Its members signed a covenant taking the word of God as their doctrine and discipline; most of them had come from near Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and some from North Carolina. The congregation met in a large log meetinghouse on the ground now the Muddy Run graveyard, and held camp meetings in the grove nearby, where husbands walked as far as twenty miles beside a horse carrying their wives and children. Among the preachers was Joseph Thomas, called the White Pilgrim because he wore only white clothing; he traveled on foot and horseback through several states, refused pay, and died at Johnsonburg, New Jersey, in 1835 at forty-four. In 1844, after the old house had burned, the church divided, part building at Glady Creek in Champaign County and part in West Liberty; by 1880 nearly all who had joined at Muddy Run were dead.

The Amish Mennonites come to the Mad River

Peter Yoder and his family, from Wayne County, Ohio, were the first members of a Mennonite church to settle in Logan County, locating in northern Union Township in the spring of 1840; others followed from Holmes County and from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. A church was organized in the summer of 1843 by ordaining two ministers, and services were held in private houses until about 1857 or 1858, when the first church building was put up in Liberty Township on John Kenagy's farm, half a mile from the Union line. A Sunday school begun there in the 1860s struggled for years; the 1903 county history, in an account written by church members, claims it as the oldest successful Mennonite Sunday school in the United States. In 1873 and 1876 two churches were built, Walnut Grove in Union Township and South Union in Liberty Township, serving one congregation with services each Sunday; the members, some 350 in the county in 1903, were nonresistant and settled disputes within the church.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Bellefontaine City55% of residentslocal wells (shallow carbonate aquifer)
• West Liberty Village45% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Community health centers (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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 2026-02-12

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