Marseilles Township, Wyandot County

How Marseilles Township, Wyandot County began

Marseilles Township, in southwestern Wyandot County, was organized in 1824 from parts of Grand Township, Marion County, and Goshen Township, Hardin County, and took its present eighteen-plus-six-section shape when Wyandot County's commissioners fixed its boundaries on April 28, 1845, naming it for its chief village. It is the only township of that name in Ohio and contains the village of Marseilles in its southern part. On March 5, 1967, a commercial airliner flying between Columbus and Toledo crashed in a field near the Wyandot/Hardin county line near the village, killing all 38 people aboard, after propeller fatigue caused a blade to separate in flight.

Settled 1821, incorporated 1824, by organized in 1824 from part of Grand Township (Marion County) and part of Goshen Township (Hardin County); boundaries fixed by Wyandot County's Commissioners on April 28, 1845.

Where the name comes from

Named, like the village within it, for the French port city of Marseille.

Before the town

No Wyandot village, trail, or treaty-cession site specific to Marseilles Township is documented in the sources checked, though the 1884 county history records Indian camp remains in Sections 8 and 17 (at the village of Marseilles) and states that the exact spot where Simon Kenton was made to run the gauntlet by Wyandot captors lies a little northeast of the village. The township borders the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, a large prairie/wetland tract along the Sandusky headwaters that would have been travelled and hunted by the Wyandot and earlier peoples.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee.

• Simon Kenton gauntlet site (other) — a little northeast of Marseilles village, Marseilles Township, 1778 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1821 — Samuel Simpson, said to be the oldest settler of the township still living in 1884, arrived with his parents Samuel and Elizabeth Simpson; he later learned to speak the local Native language through his association with the Wyandot.
2. 1822 — The first saw and grist mill in the township was erected on Tymochtee Creek in Section 17 by David and Jerry Terry, using the creek's water power.
3. 1822 — The first highway regularly laid out in the township, the State or Bellefontaine road, enters from Mifflin Township and runs southwest through the future Marseilles Village into Marion County.
4. 1823 — The first schoolhouse, of hewed logs with puncheon floor and greased-paper windows, is built in the northwest of Section 17; Jerry Terry, Silas Unten and William Williams teach it in turn, three months each. A Presbyterian society of thirty to forty members is organized in the same log schoolhouse that year.
5. 1824 — The township was organized, comprising part of the former Grand Township, Marion County, and part of Goshen Township, Hardin County.
6. 1825 — A Methodist Episcopal society is organized in the old log schoolhouse with twenty-five to thirty members, including the Nutern, Wallace and Parish families.
7. 1826 — John Crosberry dies, the first death in the township, and is buried on the Wallace farm.
8. 1829 — The first election, held for what was then Grand Township, takes place in Charles Merriman's storehouse in Marseilles Village, with forty or fifty votes: Abraham Renick elected justice, Samuel Simpson constable, Merriman clerk and treasurer.
9. 1832 — The first white child in the township, a girl, is born to Harvey and Abigail Buckmeister; Maj. Hugh Long, a tanner, settles in Marseilles when it has six or eight cabins and one frame house, Merriman's.
10. 1844 — The first wedding in the township joins Samuel Simpson and Ann E. Kennedy.
11. 1845 — On April 28, Wyandot County's Commissioners attached six sections detached from Goshen Township, Hardin County, to the existing township and fixed its boundaries, naming it Marseilles for its chief village.
12. 1849 — The township's earliest surviving list of officers begins; John W. Kennedy, John N. Bower and William Woodard are the first trustees on it.
13. 1967 — On March 5, a commercial airliner flying between Columbus and Toledo crashed in a field near the Wyandot/Hardin county line near Marseilles, killing all 38 people aboard, after a propeller blade separated in flight due to fatigue.
14. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 404 residents in the township, 93 of them in the village of Marseilles.

Stories

The 1967 crash near Marseilles

On the evening of March 5, 1967, a twin-engine commercial airliner en route from Columbus to Toledo suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure when metal fatigue caused a propeller blade to separate from its hub. The blade tore through the cabin, and the aircraft went down in a field near the Wyandot-Hardin county line, close to the tiny village of Marseilles. All 38 people aboard were killed, making it one of the deadliest aviation disasters in the region's history and a defining, if grim, event in the township's modern memory.

Samuel Simpson, who learned the Wyandot language

Samuel Simpson, born July 8, 1815, was the oldest living settler of Marseilles Township when the county history was written in 1884. He came with his parents, Samuel and Elizabeth Simpson, in 1821, at a time when the first ax had only recently been laid to the township's forest, and in his dealings with the Indians as a boy he learned to speak their language, which he could still do in 1884. As a young man of eighteen he drove a stage between Cincinnati and Portland and between Springfield and Columbus for two years. He was constable at the first township election held at Charles Merriman's storehouse in 1829, and on his own wedding to Ann E. Kennedy in 1844, the first in the township, he became part of its list of firsts. He lived in Marseilles village in 1884.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Upper Sandusky City60% of residentsSandusky River (via Upper Sandusky Reservoirs 1 & 2)
• Forest Village30% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - La Rue Village10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-08

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