Monroe Township, Clermont County

How Monroe Township, Clermont County began

Monroe Township, one of the Ohio River townships in the county's south, was first settled about 1796 by hunter David Colclazer at the mouth of Indian Creek. Jacob Ulrey, a Maryland-born pioneer who survived an icy flatboat wreck on the Ohio River near Louisville in 1794, settled on the stream that still bears his name in March 1798 and became one of the township's most notable early residents, credited with killing a hundred deer in a single year to help feed his neighbors. The township's best-known place is Point Pleasant, birthplace in 1822 of Ulysses S. Grant; it also holds the Clarke Farm Site, a National Register-listed prehistoric archaeological site near that village.

Settled 1796, incorporated 1825-06-09 (created), by David Colclazer, first settler, mouth of Indian Creek.

Where the name comes from

The reason for the township's name is not stated; the common assumption for Ohio townships of this era carrying presidential names is that it honors James Monroe, but this is not confirmed for this specific township.

Before the town

No mound, earthwork or documented historic-era Native village, encounter or battle specific to Monroe Township is recorded, aside from the Clarke Farm Site, a National Register-listed prehistoric archaeological site near Point Pleasant; its culture and period beyond "prehistoric" are not given. The 1880 county history records that early settler Jacob Ulrey's 1794 flatboat voyage down the Ohio River toward Kentucky (three years before he settled in Monroe Township) was made warily "on account of the Indians who infested the shores of the river," though no attack or contact actually occurred on that trip. The township's Ohio River frontage lay within the general travel corridor used by the Shawnee and other nations before the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. The county's one documented pitched battle was fought at Grassy Run, well to the north in Jackson Township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Clarke Farm Site (other) — Monroe Township, near Point Pleasant, prehistoric, unspecified (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1794 — Jacob Ulrey, a Maryland-born farmer then living in Pennsylvania, builds a flatboat and sets out down the Ohio River for Kentucky with his wife, infant child and a hired man; drifting ice nearly wrecks the boat near Louisville before a rescuer in a canoe reaches them.
2. 1796 — David Colclazer becomes the first settler within Monroe Township, at the mouth of Indian Creek, supplying game to neighboring pioneer families as a hunter.
3. 1798 — March 11: Jacob Ulrey settles on the stream later named Ulrey's Run, near the present Bantam fairgrounds; his daughter Susan, born that September, is recorded as the first white child born within present Clermont County to reach an especially old age.
4. 1798 — Samuel Jackson, a Maryland-born tanner, settles near Nicholsville, later becoming one of the county's first nurserymen.
5. 1813 — Joseph Jackson lays out Point Pleasant at the mouth of Indian Creek for Henry Ludlow, 62.7 acres with 100 in-lots; in 1815 it has only two houses, Ludlow's and a blacksmith shop, until Thomas Page builds the third and opens its first store and warehouse.
6. 1818-06-01 — William W. Steele and Thomas Danby lay out the paper town of Point Opolis opposite Point Pleasant, 332 lots with a public square reserved on condition that the county seat be located there within two years; hardly a building is ever erected.
7. 1820 — Thomas Page establishes a tannery at Point Pleasant and puts Jesse R. Grant in charge of it; Grant runs it until 1823.
8. 1822 — April 27: Hiram Ulysses Grant, the future Civil War general and 18th president, is born in a one-room house at Point Pleasant, built in 1817 near a tannery.
9. 1825-06-25 — The first election of the newly organized township is held at the house of Thomas Hitch Sr.; John Rogers, John Marsh and Isaac Mitchell are elected trustees and George Palmer clerk. The township was created June 9, 1825.
10. 1837 — William Pollard lays out Van Burenville, later Laurel, with 67 lots after a March 1838 addition; the post office, opened October 17, 1842 as Clermont, takes the name Laurel two years later.
11. 1839 — Rev. Daniel Parker and his wife found Clermont Academy at Clermontville, which their son Professor James K. Parker and his wife continue until it closes in 1892.
12. 1842 — E. S. Dole lays out about six acres to enlarge the hamlet that grew up around Daniel Fee's store, calling it Feetown; in 1847 it is replatted and renamed Nicholsville for merchant N. B. Nichols.
13. 1856-12-19 — Golden Rule Lodge No. 313, I.O.O.F., is instituted at Nicholsville, where it builds a hall.
14. 1861 — A township hall is built.
15. 1877-03-05 — Albert W. Huling lays out the hamlet of Hulington where the Cincinnati and Portsmouth Railroad crosses Ulrey's Run, 59 lots in eight blocks.
16. 1998 — August 6: the birthplace cottage and its surrounding commemorative features at Point Pleasant are added to the National Register of Historic Places as the U.S. Grant Birthplace and Grant Commemorative Sites Historic District.
17. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 7,531 residents in Monroe Township.

Stories

A bridge of ice

In 1794, four years before he settled in what became Monroe Township, Jacob Ulrey loaded a flatboat with his family, a hired man, provisions, tools, horses and cattle and set off down the Ohio River from western Pennsylvania toward Kentucky. The trip went smoothly until they neared Louisville, where descending river ice began to close in on the boat and threaten to crush it. Ulrey made several failed attempts to land before a rescuer finally appeared in a canoe about ten miles above the falls -- but the ice pack kept him some twenty feet short of the flatboat. Ulrey did not hesitate: he tore the roof off his own boat and shoved it across the ice as a makeshift bridge, walking his wife, child and hired man safely over it to the waiting canoe and the Kentucky shore. The abandoned flatboat, still loaded with their goods, drifted off in the ice and was found the next day ten miles below the falls, only lightly damaged. Ulrey recovered his belongings and pressed on, eventually settling in Clermont County, where he became known as one of the district's most prolific hunters, once killing a hundred deer in a single year and sharing the meat among his few neighbors.

Point Opolis, the county seat that never came

On June 1, 1818, William W. Steele and Thomas Danby laid out a town on the Ohio just above the mouth of Indian Creek, across the creek from Point Pleasant, and named it Point Opolis. The plat held 332 lots and reserved a public square on one condition: that the county seat of Clermont be located there within two years. The county seat was fixed at Batavia in 1824, and Point Opolis was never built beyond a building or two. By 1880 the site had long been vacated and its interests were regarded as part of Point Pleasant. Point Pleasant itself, laid out five years earlier at the mouth of Indian Creek by Joseph Jackson for Henry Ludlow, was by then a small river village where, in a one-story frame house sixteen by nineteen and a half feet, Hiram Ulysses Grant had been born on April 27, 1822.

The Grant house at Point Pleasant, as described in 1880

The 1880 county history describes the house where Ulysses S. Grant was born as it then stood on the upper part of Indian Street, facing Indian Creek: a one-story frame house, the main part sixteen by nineteen and a half feet, with a steep roof, a huge chimney on the outside of the north end for a spacious fireplace, and a door in front with a window on each side with small panes of glass. Inside were a living room and, at the south end, a bed chamber, in which Grant was born. The house had been built for Lee Thompson, and Jesse Grant, who had married Miss Simpson of Tate the year before, rented it while working in Thomas Page's tannery. The family stayed about a year after the birth and moved to Georgetown in 1823. A lean-to kitchen had been added since the Grants lived there, but otherwise the house stood as built.

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

Every historic place in Clermont County on the full map

Eleven vertical wells and one collector well in the Ohio River valley aquifer at Clermontville and Moscow The water here

• Tate-monroe Water Association56% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Clermont Public Water System28% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• New Richmond Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Bethel Village3% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Robin Grays0% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Felicity Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mount Orab Village0% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)

Fire and EMS stations (2)

Public schools (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 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.
• OP&F Examination, 2024, released 2026-05-07

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