Middleton Township, Columbiana County

How Middleton Township, Columbiana County began

Middleton Township, on the Pennsylvania line in the northeast of Columbiana County, was organized in 1803. Its first settlers were squatters who thought they were in Pennsylvania; Quaker and other farm families followed from about 1800, and Aaron Brooks's mills at Achor (1803) became Baltzer Young's. The township was dotted with paper towns (Waterford, Bellefont, New Liberty, the Valley of Achor), and only Clarkson, platted 1816, grew into a village. The Sandy and Beaver Canal's Lock No. 36 and Gaston's Mill, on the Middle Beaver south of Clarkson, are now a National Register district, and Negley, platted in 1883, grew as a coal town. In October 1764 Bouquet's army camped near Negley. The township held 3,359 people in 2020.

Settled c.1800, platted 1806 (Waterford, never built); before 1807 (Valley of Achor); 1816 (Clarkson); 1883 (Negley), incorporated 1803 (township organized, among the county's first), by Early squatters, then John Leslie, Aaron Brooks and Baltzer Young; Columbiana County commissioners (township).

Where the name comes from

No source we reviewed gives a documented origin for Middleton Township's own name; Ohio has one other Middleton Township, in Wood County. Negley, within the township, was named for James S. Negley, a Union Army major general, later U.S. Representative, and president of the New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago Railway whose 1883 line the town was platted alongside.

Before the town

The most notable Native-related event in the township is military and comes from before settlement. In October 1764, in the wake of Pontiac's war, Colonel Henry Bouquet led an army of regulars and militia down the Ohio and into the Tuscarawas valley to compel the Ohio nations to return their captives. The 1905 county history says that on Monday, October 8 (it admits a slight conflict of dates) the army camped at 'Camp No. 7,' on a knoll near Negley, a place that has been known since as Camp Bouquet; it adds that many men in the army were there to recover wives and children held among the Indians. Two days later the army reached a fork in the Indian path it had been following, somewhere in the southern part of the present county, where a right-hand trail ran northwest to Sandusky and Detroit and a left-hand one southwest through Carroll and Tuscarawas counties toward Coshocton and the Scioto towns; Bouquet took the right-hand trail. No Native village, camp or burial site within the township is named in the 1879 county history, whose settlement story begins with squatters about 1800. The census-designated place 'Lake Tomahawk' appears to be a modern lake-community name and is not presented as Native-linked. The township lies within the region ceded under the 1785 Treaty of Fort McIntosh and confirmed by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

• Camp Bouquet (camp No. 7 of Bouquet's 1764 expedition) (camp) — Knoll near Negley, Middleton Township, October 1764 (the county history gives Monday, October 8) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1764-10-08 — Colonel Henry Bouquet's expedition against the Ohio Indians camps at 'Camp No. 7' on a knoll near Negley, afterward known as Camp Bouquet.
2. 1800 — About this year squatters (Benjamin Wright, John Wilson, Jacob Welker and others), who believed they were in Pennsylvania, are the first to settle along the township's streams; John Leslie, in the north soon after 1800, is probably the first permanent settler.
3. 1803 — Middleton Township is organized, among the first in Columbiana County.
4. 1803 — Aaron Brooks builds a sawmill and the first gristmill with bolting apparatus at Achor; in the fall of 1804 he sells to Baltzer Young, who moves his family there in 1805 and keeps the mills until his death in 1846.
5. 1806-11-28 — William Heald plats Waterford for Isaac Siddle, fourteen lots on the northwest quarter of section 18; not a single house is ever built there.
6. 1807 — By this date Abraham Z. Rogers has platted the 'Valley of Achor' half a mile east of Young's mills; it declines once the state road is laid out over the ridge a mile south.
7. 1808 — Archibald Scott and William Hamilton start a tannery at Achor, bought in 1812 by Richard F. Randolph; Levi Rogers sets up the first still about the same year.
8. 1813 — A great freshet sweeps away Bernard Feazle's mill on section 10.
9. 1816 — Clarkson is platted on February 19 by William Heald for Robert Hanna and Bellefont on March 9 by Nicholas Young, a tailor from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania; Clarkson becomes the only village in the township.
10. 1828-1852 — The Sandy and Beaver Canal, including Lock No. 36, crosses the township during its brief operating life.
11. 1830 — Samuel Conkle erects a grist-mill, and soon a sawmill, on the Middle Beaver in the southwest of the township; it later passes to James Gaston and then Philander Gaston.
12. 1839 — The Clarkson post office is established about this year with Richard Stock as postmaster.
13. 1846-10-26 — The first canal boat from the east reaches New Lisbon over the Sandy and Beaver Canal, which the 1905 county history says was incorporated in 1830 and begun in 1834 (Wikipedia gives a 1828 charter and completion in 1848); the east end was kept up until about 1852.
14. 1883 — Negley is platted as the first new town along the New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago Railway, named for railroad president and former Union general James S. Negley; its post office opens the same year.
15. 1974-05-23 — Gaston's Mill-Lock No. 36, Sandy and Beaver Canal District, near Clarkson, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; the mill is dated 1837 in that listing.
16. 2020 — The census counts 3,359 people in Middleton Township and 274 in the Negley CDP.

Stories

Squatters on the wrong side of the line

The first people to live in Middleton Township were squatters who believed they had crossed into Pennsylvania, where, by the custom of that state's western counties, a settler could hold land simply by occupying it. The 1879 county history names Benjamin Wright, John Wilson, Jacob Welker, Andrew Wisely, Stephen Pearce and others, living in log cabins with puncheon floors and greased-paper windows near a spring, eking out a living on game, fish and a patch of corn. They had no money to buy the land, and gave way to men who did, such as John Leslie, who located in the north soon after 1800, and Aaron Brooks, who built the mills at Achor. From 1808 to 1824 immigration was heavy, and by 1821 the township had more than two hundred voters, probably more families than in 1879. The author found accurate accounts of many of the early families nearly impossible to get, since so many stayed only a few years before moving on.

Villages that exist only on paper

Middleton's history is full of towns that were platted and never built. Waterford was laid out on November 28, 1806 for Isaac Siddle with fourteen lots, but not a single house went up, and the 1879 historian noted that few in the quiet Quaker neighborhood knew how narrowly they had escaped village greatness. Abraham Z. Rogers named his plat the Valley of Achor; it had a promising future until the state road was located over the ridge a mile to the south, after which the log houses were moved or rotted away and the plat returned to farmland, while the mills nearby kept the Achor name for the post office. Bellefont, platted in March 1816 by a tailor from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, got only half a dozen houses, and New Liberty, platted in March 1817 by Levi Guy in rivalry with Clarkson, got a house or two. Clarkson, laid out in February 1816 around a square of twelve lots, was the one that took, with churches, stores and taverns of its own by the end of the century.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Tomahawk Utilities68% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• East Palestine Village28% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• New Waterford Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (7)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-05-12

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