Milton Township, Ashland County

How Milton Township, Ashland County began

Milton Township was organized in 1816 in what was then Richland County, originally covering a much larger area before Clear Creek Township was split off from its northern half on October 15, 1818. When Ashland County was formed in 1846 the township was divided again: its eastern part joined the new county while its western sections stayed in Richland County, leaving Milton Township at its present four-by-six-mile size in the western part of Ashland County. Part of the city of Ashland, the county seat, sits in eastern Milton Township.

Incorporated 1816 (township organized).

Where the name comes from

No naming rationale is recorded; Milton is one of five townships of that name in Ohio.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, mound, or treaty site specific to Milton Township is recorded. The township lies within land ceded at the Treaty of Fort Industry (1805), generally within Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), and Mingo hunting and travel range before removal, but nothing site-specific is recorded for this township.

Timeline

1. 1807 — Milton Township is surveyed; the surveyors note the kind and quality of timber, the streams and the Indian trails and villages, and describe good clayey soil and some of the strongest springs in the county.
2. 1816 — Milton Township is organized in what was then Richland County.
3. 1818-10-15 — Clear Creek Township is organized out of the northern half of Milton Township, reducing Milton to six miles square.
4. 1820 — Milton Township counts 544 residents; by 1830 it counts 1,156.
5. 1846 — Ashland County is formed; Milton Township is split, with its eastern portion joining Ashland County and its western sections remaining in Richland County.
6. 1846 — When Ashland County is formed the two western tiers of sections, including the town of Olivesburg, stay with Richland County.
7. 1900 — The Anderson Schoolhouse on U.S. Route 42 near Ashland is finished in the spring, replacing a brick school on the site that burned in November 1899; it is the only building in Milton Township on the National Register.
8. 2020 — The census counts 2,357 residents in Milton Township.

Stories

A township split twice

Milton Township was carved out of Richland County in 1816 at a size large enough that two years later its entire northern half was spun off to create Clear Creek Township. When Ashland County itself was organized in 1846 from pieces of Richland, Wayne, Lorain, and Huron counties, Milton was cut a second time along the new county line, with its western sections staying behind in Richland County. What was left became the four-by-six-mile township that exists today, its eastern edge now home to part of the city of Ashland itself. The repeated redrawing is typical of how Ohio's early townships were built up and then whittled down as counties formed around them.

A township with nothing eventful to tell

The 1909 county history says the people of Milton Township have always been so well behaved and orderly, and so satisfied with the good things of earth about them, that there is nothing very eventful to be said about it. The township was surveyed in 1807 and organised in 1816 by the Richland County commissioners, who had earlier ruled it from Mifflin; the pioneers named include the Andrews, the Dotys, the Lockharts, the Reeds and the Woodburns, among them Jacob Foulks, Alexander Reed, Robert Nelson, Benjamin Montgomery and Peter Brubaker. The first justice of the peace was Robert McBeth, who lived in what is now Clear Creek Township. It was densely timbered with oak, hickory and beech, had no streams of consequence but many fine springs, and the history calls it essentially a farming community with no town within its limits.

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

Every historic place in Ashland County on the full map

Wells (14 listed as active in EPA SDWIS: Wells 1-7 and 10-15; Well 9 was deactivated 2025-11-17) in the Jerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer, sited generally north of the treatment plant on Cleveland Road The water here

• Ashland City92% of residentsJerome Fork Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Rural Lorain Co. Water A6% of residentsMostly Lake Erie (bought from Avon Lake); some New London Reservoir and Ashland wells
• Bailey Lakes Village2% of residentsLake Erie
• Hayesville Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 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, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-11-06

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