Marseilles

How Marseilles began

Marseilles grew from two adjoining pioneer townsites: Burlington, laid out about 1827 by Virginia-born Garrett Fitzgerald, and Marseilles proper, laid out in 1828 by Josiah Robinson on the section immediately south, on Tymochtee Creek and the old Bellefontaine road. Charles Merriman, who owned land between the two plats, added his own additions in 1845, and the three tracts merged into the Marseilles village of today, named after the French port city of Marseille. Its population peaked at 273 in 1880 and has declined steadily since, to 93 residents at the 2020 census. The village sits at the western edge of the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area and is remembered locally for a fatal 1967 airliner crash nearby.

Settled 1827, platted 1828, by Garrett Fitzgerald laid out 'Burlington' about 1827; Josiah Robinson laid out 'Marseilles' in 1828 on the adjoining section; Charles Merriman's additions (1845) joined the two into one village.

Where the name comes from

Named after Marseille, France, per an early-1900s U.S. Government Printing Office study of American place names; the 1884 county history records who named the town (Josiah Robinson) but not why he chose the name.

Before the town

No Wyandot village or treaty-cession site is recorded at the Marseilles townsite itself, but the 1884 county history notes Indian camp remains in Sections 8 and 17 of Marseilles Township (on which the village sits) and states that the exact spot where the frontiersman Simon Kenton was made to run the gauntlet by Wyandot captors can be pointed out a little to the northeast of the village.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Simon Kenton gauntlet site (other) — a little to the northeast of Marseilles village, Marseilles Township, 18th century; the county history gives no date (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1827 — Garrett Fitzgerald, a Virginia-born settler who had entered eighty acres in Section 8, laid out a small town he called Burlington.
2. 1828 — Josiah Robinson, a Virginian who had settled in Antrim Township in 1822 and later acquired 160 acres in Section 17, laid out an adjoining town he named Marseilles; the same year Merriman & Terry built the village's first store, a 20x32-foot hewed-log building.
3. 1832 — Charles Merriman owns the only frame house in the village, which consists of six or eight cabins, when Maj. Hugh Long arrives to set up as a tanner; Long later fills nearly every township office.
4. 1834 — William Carey and C. H. Merriman build the village's first frame business building, 22 by 44 feet, on Lot 24 of Robinson's Addition.
5. 1836 — Solomon Adams builds a frame house on the lot where Garrett Fitzgerald's round-log house of the late 1820s had stood.
6. 1837 — The first schoolhouse, a frame building costing $300 or $400, is built on Merriman's Addition; it is replaced by a brick school in 1847.
7. 1840 — The Methodist Episcopal society, organized in 1825, builds a frame church 30 by 40 feet in the village for about $1,000; the Presbyterians, organized in 1823, had built a church in Robinson's Addition in 1832 and build a new one in 1847 for $1,800.
8. 1845 — Charles Merriman, who owned the strip of land between Burlington and Marseilles, laid out his own additions, merging the plats into a single village known thereafter as Marseilles.
9. 1847 — Charles Merriman builds a two-story brick block, 22 by 40 feet, and keeps a general store there for a few years.
10. 1852 — A joint-stock company built a five-story, $12,000 frame flour mill in the village; it burned in a smut-mill fire in June 1883.
11. 1876-06-27 — Tymochtee Lodge No. 634, I.O.O.F., is organized; Marseilles Lodge No. 515, F. & A. M., follows on December 14, 1876.
12. 1877 — A three-room brick school is built in Merriman's Addition, after a special school district was organized in 1875.
13. 1880 — Marseilles reached its historic population peak of 273.
14. 1883 — Ellis Post No. 292, Grand Army of the Republic, is organized in the village, and J. W. Kennedy is appointed postmaster on April 17; Marseilles has dry goods, hardware, grocery and general stores and a portable saw mill.
15. 1967 — On March 5, a commercial airliner crashed in a field near the village after a propeller separated in flight, killing all 38 people aboard.
16. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 93 residents in Marseilles, down from 273 in 1880.

Stories

A village named for a French port, remembered for a 1967 crash

Marseilles took its name from the French port of Marseille, according to a 1905 Government Printing Office study of American place names cited by Wikipedia. The village never grew much beyond a few hundred people, peaking at 273 in 1880, and has shrunk since. Its most widely recorded historical event came in 1967, when a commercial airliner flying from Columbus to Toledo lost a propeller and crashed nearby, killing all 38 aboard.

Two townsites, one village

Marseilles as it stands today did not start as one town but two. About 1827, Garrett Fitzgerald, a Virginia-born pioneer who had entered eighty acres of Section 8, platted a small settlement he called Burlington. The next year, Josiah Robinson, another Virginian who had first settled in Antrim Township in 1822, laid out a second town on the adjoining section to the south and named it Marseilles. Charles Merriman, who came to own the strip of land separating the two, added his own plats in 1845, and Fitzgerald's Addition, Robinson's Addition and Merriman's First and Second Additions grew together into the single village of Marseilles that has stood ever since.

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

Sandusky River, pumped to Upper Sandusky Reservoir #2 for storage. The CCR does not mention Reservoir 1, so it is not stated that water passes through both reservoirs. The water here

• Upper Sandusky City100% of residentsSandusky River (via Upper Sandusky Reservoirs 1 & 2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 2 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 2025-03-25

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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