Liberty Township, Wood County

How Liberty Township, Wood County began

Liberty Township's first white settler, Collister Haskins, bought land and built a cabin on Portage Creek in 1825, with local Native people helping his crew and camped nearby; he built the first sawmill in southern Wood County soon after. The township itself was established in 1835 (per Wikipedia; the county's own 1897 history gives May 1836), one of nineteenth-century Ohio's many townships carrying patriotic names -- twenty-five Ohio townships share the name Liberty. It holds the unincorporated community of Rudolph along with the northeastern edge of the village of Portage, and remains farm country in a county still shaped by the nineteenth-century drainage of the Great Black Swamp.

Settled August-September 1825, by Collister Haskins, incorporated township established 1835 (the 1897 county history also gives May 1836), by Wood County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

The township is one of twenty-five Liberty Townships in Ohio, part of the common early-19th-century practice of giving new townships patriotic names; no township-specific naming story was found in the sources consulted.

Before the town

The best-documented Native site is a stockade on the bank of the West Branch on the Knaggs farm, which settlers could not explain until D. W. H. Howard wrote to the Sentinel on April 18, 1891: he had camped by its walls as a boy and thought it an old French traders' fort, but older Native people told him General Hull had left some sick and foot-sore soldiers there in 1812. He also described an old trail and canoe route from the villages at the mouth of the Portage to the large Ottawa town of chief Gein-jo-i-no on the Maumee opposite the mouth of Beaver Creek, a longer but easier route than the rapids of the Maumee. When Collister Haskins built in 1825, a few Indians living or camped nearby worked with his crew from Waterville. Soon after the gang was examined (about 1837), three men from a gang of counterfeiters and horse thieves who had operated in the township were arrested for the murder in Henry County of the Wyandot chief Sumundewat, his daughter and son-in-law, who lived on the Upper Sandusky reserve.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa, Wyandot.

• Stockade on the West Branch (Knaggs farm) (camp) — Knaggs farm, on the West Branch within Liberty Township, War of 1812 era, per Native oral tradition recorded in 1891 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1819 — Samuel and Alexander Holmes survey the exterior lines for the United States; I. T. Worthington surveys the section lines in 1821.
2. 1825-03 — The first county road in the township is cut from the northeast corner of Section 1 to the southwest corner of Section 18; surveyor Neptune Nearing walks sixteen miles in five days and charges $7.50 for the plat.
3. 1825-08 to 1825-09 — Collister Haskins buys land on Section 12 (August 9) and builds a cabin (September) on the south bank of Portage Creek, becoming the township's first white settler by the county history's corrected dating (tradition had placed it a year earlier, in 1824); Native people camped nearby helped his white assistants from Waterville with the building.
4. 1829 (about) — John B. McKnight, J. M. Jaques, and the Cox and Decker families arrive, giving Haskins his first neighbors; Haskins soon dams the stream and builds a sawmill, the first manufacturing enterprise in the south part of Wood County.
5. 1831-04 — Henry Dubbs locates on Section 19; James Birdsall is the only family west of him, and William Lathrop, the Hutchinsons, Morrison McMillen and Samuel Barton follow that year.
6. 1833 — Collister Haskins builds a cabin in the northern part of the present village of Portage for his hired man; it serves as the school in 1835-36 and down to about 1842.
7. 1834-spring — Dr. Eli Manville arrives and distributes calomel and quinine across a radius of some twenty miles, in a settlement racked by summer and fall malarial fevers.
8. 1835 — Treasurer Hugh Arbuckle sells partnership stock, pockets the money and the township's $28 and leaves; his bondsmen John McMahan and Henry Dubbs make it good, and John Sargent, elected next, serves over twenty years.
9. 1835-03-02 — The county history's Liberty chapter dates the township's establishment to this day, with the first election at Henry Groves's house in April; its county chapter gives May 1836 for the same order.
10. 1836-05 — Liberty Township (Congressional Townships 3 and 4, Range 10) is established, the meeting place fixed at Henry Grove's house, per the Wood County commissioners' record.
11. 1837-1838 — A wave of land speculation and 'wild-cat money' draws new settlers, but also a organized gang of counterfeiters, burglars and horse thieves who set up headquarters in the township, their confederates strung in a line west through Sandusky, Wood, Henry and Williams counties.
12. 1840 — The census counts 215 residents; 635 in 1860; 965 in 1870; 1,292 in 1880; 2,013 in 1890.
13. 1844 — The last known members of the band of horse thieves and counterfeiters are driven out of the area.
14. 1859-03-24 — C. W. Simon, Adam Waltman and W. S. Ferguson petition for a 35-mile ditch along the Portage from Section 13 of Jackson Township to Pemberville; built for $50,000, it drains 8,000 acres of the Liberty prairie and is called the county's first great ditch.
15. 1889-06 — The trustees accept a $433.10 bid from E. E. Householder to build a town hall.
16. 2020 — The census finds 1,690 people living in the township.

Stories

A stockade remembered only by the Indians who told of it

For decades, an old stockade stood on the bank of the West Branch on the Knaggs farm in Liberty Township, and no settler could say where it had come from. Not until April 18, 1891, did D. W. H. Howard write to the local paper with what he had pieced together as a boy from older Native people who remembered it. He recalled a well-worn trail and canoe route connecting the villages at the mouth of the Portage River to the large Ottawa town of chief Gein-jo-i-no on the Maumee, opposite the mouth of Beaver Creek -- a route longer than the Maumee itself but easier, since it avoided eighteen miles of nearly continuous rapids. As for the stockade, Howard had always assumed it was an old French trader's fort, but the older Indians told a different story: that General Hull, marching north in 1812, had left some of his sick and foot-sore soldiers behind in a small stockade in the swamp, who recovered and later returned south along the same trail. Whether trading post or army shelter, the structure had vanished by the 1890s, 'removed,' the county historian wrote, by progress rather than time.

The gang that preyed on Liberty and was cleared out by its neighbors

The boom of 1837-38, with its wildcat bank notes, brought new settlers to Liberty and neighboring townships, and also an organized band of counterfeiters, burglars and horse thieves headquartered on a farm later called the J. Z. Smith place, with accomplices in a line from Huron County west through Sandusky, Wood, Henry and Williams counties to Indiana. About 1837 their boldness led honest men of Liberty, Portage, Center, Plain and Milton to pledge themselves to clean out the band or be whipped, among them Collister Haskins, John McMahan, Henry Dubbs, Judge Carothers, Morrison McMillen and Lee Moore. With the Perrysburg prosecutor Willard V. Way they set up a court of examination at James Bloom's house, with three justices of the peace, and constables Rex Tracy, G. Cook and J. H. Carothers brought in ten or twelve outlaws. The examination ran fifteen days, Sundays included, and sent the leader and four accomplices to jail. Three of the band were arrested soon after for the murder in Henry County of the Wyandot chief Sumundewat, his daughter and son-in-law. The last known members were driven out in 1844.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Northwestern W and SD - Weston55% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Northwestern W and SD - Portage45% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 3 of 3 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-05

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