Milton Township, Wood County

How Milton Township, Wood County began

Milton Township was established June 11, 1835 in western Wood County, set off, per the county's own commissioners' record, from Townships 3 and 4 in Range 9; so few voters showed up at the first organizational meeting that the settlers had to borrow four from neighboring Weston Township to hold a legal election. It holds the villages of Custar and Milton Center along with the northern part of Weston.

Incorporated township established June 11, 1835, per the county's own commissioners' record (a secondary source rounds this to 1835), by Wood County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

The origin of the name 'Milton' for this township was not found in the sources consulted; Ohio has five townships of that name statewide.

Before the town

No mound or earthwork is recorded. The 1897 county history prints a reminiscence by a son of Henry Dubbs that in 1834-35 the Indians had not yet been removed to the Far West and were almost daily visitors in the small settlement; once several came to the cabin and the spokesman drew his hunting knife and pointed at the family's hog pen, then led them to the grindstone to show he only wanted to sharpen the knives. Wood County was Ottawa hunting ground until the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa.

Timeline

1. 1819 — The surveys of the township are made in 1819 and 1821.
2. 1834-summer — The Hutchinsons (James and Andrew), Morrison McMillan and Samuel Barton move in during the summer and fall; Henry Dubbs's family, just over the line in Liberty, is the neighbor.
3. 1834-04 (about) — Henry Dubbs settles near the west line of neighboring Liberty Township, then the only settler west of Portage besides James Birdsall; over that summer and fall the Hutchinsons, Morrison McMillan and Samuel Barton join them, families whose votes would soon be needed to organize Milton Township.
4. 1835-06-11 — Townships 3 and 4 in Range 9 are set off to form Milton Township, with the first meeting place fixed at Morrison McMillan's house.
5. 1835-07 (2nd Saturday) — At the township's first organizational meeting, too few voters are present for a legal election, so four voters -- including Samuel Dull and Joseph Ward, paid 75 cents each -- are borrowed from neighboring Weston Township to represent absent or sick residents.
6. 1836 — The old Revolutionary soldier and missionary Rev. Joseph Badger builds a cabin on a ridge at the west end of the Wadsworth prairie, overlooking the great marsh.
7. 1836-10 — At the state election for governor, only 13 votes are cast in the township, six for Joseph Vance and seven for Eli Baldwin.
8. 1837-02 — Daniel Barton and Morrison McMillan qualify as the first justices of the peace; until then Weston Township justices serve Milton.
9. 1837-11-20 — Clerk Daniel McMillan reports two school districts, 50 children between four and twenty in District No. 2, and no school directors or school tax yet.
10. 1839-40 — William Woodward teaches the first regular school in an 18-by-20-foot log cabin on the Otsego pike, built in 1837; his pupils include seven McMillans and three Hutchinsons.
11. 1840-10-08 — Daniel Barton and Martha Hutchinson are married by Morrison McMillan, the first marriage in the township; Maria Hutchinson, daughter of Andrew L. Hutchinson, is the first white child born there.
12. 1850 — The census counts 244 residents, under seven to the square mile; 675 in 1860; 1,464 in 1870; 2,181 in 1880; 2,287 in 1890.
13. 1855 — A $300 schoolhouse is built in Sub-District No. 1 and Francis Muzzy is made librarian of eighty state books.
14. 1857-02 — Milton Center is surveyed for Andrew Hutchinson and Lewis Dubbs.
15. 1864 — Daniel Scheuren builds a large sawmill that becomes the seed of the village of Custar (originally platted as Lewisburg in 1865).
16. 1882-04 — Sub-District No. 9 is set off as the special school district of Custar.
17. 1892-07 — The trustees take bids for a brick and stone town hall at Milton Center; B. B. Richardson wins the masonry at $934.
18. 2020 — The census finds 929 people living in the township.

Stories

Sharpened knives, not a slaughtered hog

A son of pioneer Henry Dubbs, writing in 1895 about his family's settlement near Milton Township, recalled that in the mid-1830s Native people who had not yet been removed from the region were almost daily visitors to the family's cabin. On one visit, several men came to the cabin and the spokesman drew his hunting knife and pointed toward the family's fattened hog, kept for winter meat -- the children, unable to understand the visitors' words, feared the worst. Instead the man ran to the grindstone that stood by the pen and made clear, through gesture, that the group only wanted to sharpen their knives. The same recollection told of a night the Dubbs children spent at a widowed neighbor's cabin and ran out of firewood after dark; when one boy, John, went out to fetch more, he found a bear at the corn crib and fled back inside, the family driving it off only by throwing firebrands into the dark. The writer contrasted those years, when wolves, bears and uncertainty over Native neighbors were part of daily life, with the settled farm township Milton had become by the 1890s.

Old Billy Hill's hand mill

With no water mill nearer than Perrysburg and roads that were only zig-zag paths around trees and fallen timber, the settlers of 1834-35 ground their corn at William Hill's hand mill. It was four upright posts framed together with the stones set between them; two men took hold of an upright shaft and turned the upper stone, and later four men worked cranks like a grindstone. The mill ran from morning until midnight, with dozens of men and women waiting their turn at a time, and some would leave their corn and go home to hungry families and return to take their places. A trip to Perrysburg and back took four to five days by ox-cart. The 1897 history, quoting a sketch printed in the Sentinel in 1881, says that when the mill was improved the settlers all thought they had found a paradise.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Northwestern W and SD - Weston100% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Private schools (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-27

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