Oakwood

How Oakwood began

Oakwood, in the southeast of Brown Township on the Auglaize River, grew from a tiny hamlet of 23 people in 1880 to 378 within a decade after 1890, and continued growing through the twentieth century to a peak of 886 residents in 1980. It has settled back to a little over 500 residents in recent decades and maintains its own branch of the Paulding County Library.

Settled 1851, platted 1872-09-17, by William C. Hedges of Tiffin, surveyed by L. E. Holtz of Ottawa.

Where the name comes from

Not documented in the sources checked.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or treaty site specific to Oakwood is documented in the sources checked. The village sits in Brown Township, which also holds the documented Ottawa Oquanoxa Reserve and the community of Charloe. Charloe was Paulding County's original county seat, laid out about 1840 on the Auglaize River and the Miami Extension Canal, and stood on the site of a village belonging to an Ottawa leader named, per Henry Howe's 1888 travelling notes, "Ockenoxy" (Oquanoxa); the community was later renamed for Charloe Peter, a separate Ottawa chief remembered for his eloquence.

Nations recorded here: Odawa (Ottawa).

Timeline

1. 1851 — John Crosson sells goods on the farm on which much of the future village stands.
2. 1854 — A general store is opened by a contractor named Hazen while the Tiffin & Fort Wayne railroad (later the Nickel Plate) is being built, and runs until the road collapses.
3. 1872-09-17 — William C. Hedges lays out Oakwood as a village, one of several towns, with Hedges and Payne, that he plats along the line of the 'Continental' railroad then being graded; L. E. Holtz of Ottawa does the surveying.
4. 1880 — Oakwood is recorded with just 23 residents.
5. 1881 — The Nickel Plate opens through the village, ending the mail route from Ottawa to Charloe on which the post office had stood for years; a two-story brick schoolhouse costing about $2,600 is built in the same year.
6. 1888 — Oakwood is described as eleven miles southeast of Paulding village, on the Auglaize River and the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad; its school census that year counts 136 pupils.
7. 1890 — Population jumps to 378, a 1,543.5 percent increase over the previous decade.
8. 1892 — Oakwood has grocery, dry goods, hardware and drug stores, a steam flouring mill, saw and planing mills, the Nickel Plate hotel, two physicians and the weekly Oakwood Sentinel; the incorporated village's population is about 400.
9. 1980 — Population peaks at 886.
10. 2020 — The census records 546 residents.

Stories

The boom that waited ten years

Oakwood's history is a series of false starts. John Crosson sold goods from his farm in 1851, and in 1854, while the Tiffin & Fort Wayne railroad was being built, a contractor named Hazen opened a general store that closed when the railroad project collapsed. After the Civil War, S. S. Schiller and N. C. Whiting opened small stores, and Whiting ran a ferry across the Auglaize for teams and passengers. William C. Hedges laid out the village on September 17, 1872, hoping the 'Continental' railway then being graded would make it a town; it got a boom in 1871-72 and then stalled. Only about ten years later, when the New York, Chicago, St. Louis & Pacific (the Nickel Plate) was completed in 1881, did Oakwood show signs of permanent thrift, and by 1892 it was an incorporated village of about 400 with its own newspaper.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Oakwood Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-05-14

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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