Owensville

How Owensville began

Owensville began as Boston, a village on Harsh's Run in Stonelick Township laid out on March 21, 1836, by James McKinnie, though the first house on the site had already gone up in 1824. William Owens kept the young village's first store, opened in 1827, and by 1832 a post office operated under the name Owensville; the newer name, honoring Owens as first postmaster, gradually displaced the original. Owens himself left the village in 1833, but his name outlasted his residence there.

Settled 1824, platted 1836-03-21, by Henry Allison, area's first cabin-dweller after the abandoned 1792 attempt (1798); Dr. Richard Allison, whose land grant lay at or beside the village site (1799); Cranston Lewin, first house within the platted village's own limits (1824); James McKinnie, platted as Boston (1836).

Where the name comes from

The village was originally platted and known as Boston. It was renamed Owensville for William Owens, who kept the settlement's first store beginning in 1827 and, by 1832, gave his name to the local post office; Owens left the village in 1833, but the post office name eventually replaced "Boston" as the village's own name. Before either name, the surrounding neighborhood was informally known as Allisonia, for Dr. Richard Allison, a Revolutionary War military surgeon (later remembered as the first Surgeon General of the United States) whose land grant lay at or beside the later village; the sources do not settle whether Allisonia was the same ground later platted as Boston.

Before the town

A specific Native American encounter is recorded a mile above the mouth of Stonelick Creek, in the same neighborhood as the future village: pioneers built a small log cabin there in 1792 but were driven off, and the cabin stood empty until 1798, when Henry Allison moved in; the source gives no further detail on the Native party involved. No mound, earthwork or documented historic-era Native village, encounter or battle specific to the village site of Owensville (Boston) was found in the sources searched. The 1880 county history's detailed account of the village's founding and early businesses, beginning with the first house in 1824, records no Native presence or conflict at the site by that date, nearly three decades after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville cession. The Massie survey-party ambush took place elsewhere in Stonelick Township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Abandoned 1792 Stonelick Creek cabin (other) — Stonelick Township, about a mile above the mouth of Stonelick Creek, near the future site of Owensville, 1792 (stonelicktwp.org)

Timeline

1. 1824 — Cranston Lewin builds the first house within the future village's limits, a two-story log cabin later weatherboarded.
2. 1827 — William Owens opens the village's first store, in a log house built by William South.
3. 1832 — A post office begins operating under the name Owensville, honoring storekeeper William Owens.
4. 1833 — William Owens leaves the village; Conrad Harsh and Elza Cook take over his store.
5. 1836 — March 21: James McKinnie formally plats the village under the name Boston, with Squire Frazee surveying; the town takes a roughly triangular shape straddling Harsh's Run.
6. 1851 — September 15: James McKinnie plats a further addition to the village, southeast of the original plat.
7. 1855 — October 3: Peter Anderson plats a large addition of 121 lots, covering the part of the village west of Harsh's Run and north of the Milford and Chillicothe turnpike.
8. 1792 — Pioneers build a small log cabin about a mile above the mouth of Stonelick Creek, near the future site of Owensville, but are driven off by Native Americans; the cabin stands empty for six years.
9. 1798 — Henry Allison moves into the abandoned 1792 cabin, clearing land in what becomes one of the area's first lasting homesteads.
10. 1799 — Dr. Richard Allison, a Revolutionary War military surgeon, moves onto his adjoining land grant and builds a two-story log house; the surrounding neighborhood becomes informally known as Allisonia in his honor.
11. 1804 — The Pattison family settles near the future site of Owensville; the family later produces John M. Pattison, Clermont County's only native son to serve as governor of Ohio.
12. 1810 — Dr. Richard Allison, the area's first resident physician, relocates to Cincinnati.
13. 1812 — March: Stonelick Township, in which Owensville lies, is formally erected from portions of Miami and Williamsburgh townships and named for Stonelick Creek.

Stories

Allisonia before Owensville

Long before anyone called the place Boston or Owensville, the neighborhood a mile above the mouth of Stonelick Creek was known, informally, as Allisonia, though whether that was the exact ground later platted as Boston is not certain. The name honored Dr. Richard Allison, a Revolutionary War military surgeon later remembered as the first Surgeon General of the United States, who held a military land grant there and moved onto it in 1799, a year after his brother Henry had taken up an abandoned settler's cabin nearby. That cabin had stood empty since 1792, when an earlier party of pioneers who built it were driven off by Native Americans and gave up the site rather than risk staying. Richard Allison built a two-story log house, farmed the grant, and served for over a decade as the neighborhood's only physician before moving on to Cincinnati in 1810. By the time James McKinnie platted the village of Boston in 1836, a full generation had already lived, farmed, and buried the memory of the 1792 scare under the Allisonia name; only later did the newer name of Owensville, for storekeeper and postmaster William Owens, eclipse both of its predecessors.

Photographs

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

Five wells in the sand-and-gravel aquifer of the Little Miami River valley at Miamiville, Miami Township The water here

• Clermont Public Water System99% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Williamsburg Village1% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Tate-monroe Water Association0% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Western Water Company0% of residentsLittle Miami River valley wells (51%) plus Cincinnati Ohio River water (49%)

Public schools (1)

Private schools (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

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, 2021 to 2022, released 2026-01-06

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