Millville

• Kenesaw Mountain Landis1866-1944Butler County-born federal judge who fined Standard Oil $29 million in 1907 and,...

How Millville began

Millville takes its name from the grist mill Joseph Van Horn opened around 1805; he founded the village itself in 1815. It grew slowly as a farming hamlet, reaching 250 residents by 1880 and still under 350 as late as 1940 before a mid-20th-century increase brought it to roughly 700-800 residents, where it has remained since. The village's best-known native son is Kenesaw Mountain Landis, born there November 20, 1866 and later Major League Baseball's first commissioner, who permanently banned the eight Chicago White Sox players implicated in the 1919 Black Sox World Series scandal. A historic Presbyterian cemetery about 5.5 miles north holds the graves of early Revolutionary War-era pioneers, many bearing the surname Ross.

Settled 1805 (Van Horn's grist mill), platted 1815, by Joseph Van Horn, who opened a grist mill around 1805 and founded the village in 1815.

Where the name comes from

Millville was named for the grist mill Joseph Van Horn opened around 1805, the enterprise around which the village grew.

Before the town

No Native village, trail, or burial site specifically within Millville was found in the sources consulted. Miami and Shawnee people were present in the Great Miami valley before the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which opened this land to the settlement that produced Van Horn's mill a decade later.

Timeline

1. 1805 — Joseph Van Horn opens a grist mill in the area that becomes Millville.
2. 1815 — Van Horn founds the village of Millville.
3. 1866 — Kenesaw Mountain Landis is born in Millville on November 20, named for the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain where his physician father was wounded fighting for the Union.
4. 1880 — Village population is recorded at 250.
5. 1907 — Federal judge Landis fines Standard Oil of Indiana roughly $29 million for rebating violations, the largest corporate penalty to that date (later reversed on appeal).
6. 1920 — Team owners select Landis, in the wake of the Black Sox gambling scandal, as Major League Baseball's first commissioner.
7. 1940 — Village population stands at 335.
8. 1960 — Village population reaches 676.

Stories

The mill town that named baseball's first judge

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born in Millville on November 20, 1866, carrying a name born from his own father's Civil War wound: Dr. Abraham Landis had been shot fighting for the Union at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, and when he and his wife could not agree on a name for their new son, she proposed honoring the battle itself, with the spelling later simplified to Kenesaw. The boy who grew up in this small Butler County mill village went on to become a federal judge in Chicago, where in 1907 he handed down a record-breaking $29 million fine against Standard Oil of Indiana, a ruling later overturned on appeal but one that made his name nationally known for toughness. That reputation was exactly why baseball's team owners turned to him in November 1920, in the middle of the Black Sox betting scandal that threatened the sport's credibility: as the game's first commissioner, Landis banned all eight implicated Chicago White Sox players for life, declaring flatly that no player who threw a game would ever play professional baseball again, regardless of what a jury decided -- a ruling that still defines the outer edge of baseball's tolerance for corruption more than a century later, and traces back to a mill town on the Great Miami River that most fans of the sport have never heard of.

Photographs

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

Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer, drawn from 16 production wells scattered through the City of Fairfield along the Great Miami River (river-induced infiltration), treated at the plant on River Road in Fairfield The water here

• Hamilton Public Water System60% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southwest Regional Water District38% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Miami Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Cincinnati Public Water System0% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-07-27: county board of elections.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-29

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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