Oxford Township, Delaware County

How Oxford Township, Delaware County began

Oxford Township was carved off from Marlborough Township on March 6, 1815, after John Shaw and others petitioned the county commissioners, and it has since given up territory twice more, to Westfield Township in 1822 and to the new Morrow County in 1847. Settlement began around 1810 in two separate pockets, at Windsor's Corners in the northwest and in the Alum Creek District in the southeast, the latter becoming the village of Ashley by the late 1840s. Much of the township's low, once-swampy land, remembered in 1880 as the "great south woods," was drained over decades into productive corn, wheat and stock farms. Today Oxford remains a rural township of under a thousand people, its only incorporated place the village of Ashley in its northeast corner.

Settled 1810 (Windsor's Corners area, by the Olds family; and the Alum Creek District, by Andrew Murphy), incorporated March 6, 1815, organized as a separate township from Marlborough, by petition of John Shaw and others to the Delaware County Commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains why the township was named Oxford. The 1880 county history simply records the organizing petition and boundaries without discussing the name, and the village that later grew up inside the township was itself first platted under the name Oxford in 1849 before being renamed Ashley within the year. Six other Ohio townships carry the Oxford name, a common one drawn from the English university city, but no document found ties this particular choice to a specific person or place.

Before the town

The 1880 county history states plainly that early Oxford Township was "a favorite hunting-ground of the Indians," with numerous parties of Wyandot roaming its forests for game. A well-beaten trail ran along the banks of Indian Run, in the Windsor's Corners section of the township, by which hunting parties came down from their reservation, and the Wyandot continued to use the township as hunting ground as late as 1815, when white settlement began crowding them out. After that, up to about 1820, an old Wyandot chief remembered only as Scionto kept coming back to the township to trap, and he regularly made the house of Joseph Cole, just across the line in Troy Township, his headquarters; the history describes him as a favorite of the family and remarkable for his friendliness toward the settlers. The organizing petition for the township itself also names the "Indian boundary line" as part of its northern edge, meaning Oxford sat directly against the 1795 Greenville Treaty line separating ceded land from the remaining Wyandot territory to the north. No source found names a Native village, mound, or burial site within the township's own boundaries; for the fuller county- and state-level record of the Lenape, Wyandot, Shawnee and Mingo presence in this part of Ohio.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes the future township to the United States, with the treaty line itself forming part of the township's later northern boundary.
2. 1810 — The father of Ezra and Comfort Olds builds the first cabin in the township, a twenty-foot-square log structure near what becomes Windsor's Corners; the same year Andrew Murphy settles the Alum Creek District in the southeast.
3. 1815 — Oxford is organized as a separate township on March 6, on the petition of John Shaw and others, having previously been governed as part of Marlborough Township.
4. 1817 — Robert Brown settles the ground in the southwest quarter of what becomes the village of Ashley, the first settler on that particular tract.
5. 1822 — Oxford furnishes territory to the newly formed Westfield Township.
6. 1832 — Milton Pierce and Henry Riley build the township's first sawmill, at the mouth of Basin Branch in the southeast part of the township; a horse-powered gristmill with buhr-stones cut from boulders follows soon after.
7. 1842 — A 4,000-acre tract in the southwest quarter of the township, patented to John Rathbone in 1800 under a warrant signed by President John Adams, finally comes to market under his grandson Hiram G. Andrews and is subdivided into 100-acre lots.
8. 1847 — The formation of Morrow County takes a strip one mile wide and five miles long from Oxford's north side and adds it to Westfield Township, fixing the township at its present size.
9. 1849 — The village of Ashley is platted inside the township under the name Oxford, then renamed within the year for co-owner L. W. Ashley.
10. 1861-1862 — Oxford raises two full companies for the Union Army: Company C of the 26th Ohio Volunteer Infantry under Capt. Jesse Meredith in May 1861, and Company D of the 121st Ohio Volunteer Infantry under Capt. Samuel Sharpe in August 1862.

Stories

Two Settlements, Seven Years Apart

Oxford Township did not grow from a single starting point. In 1810 the father of Ezra and Comfort Olds built the first cabin in the northwest, around what became Windsor's Corners, a plain twenty-foot-square log structure; old Mr. Olds later liked to recall going to an election in the township when there were only five voters, who promptly made him the township's first juror. The same year, in the southeast, Andrew Murphy of Pennsylvania began the Alum Creek District, joined soon after by the McWilliams, Waters, Riley and Wolf families. It was not until 1817, seven years later, that anyone settled the specific ground where Ashley would eventually rise: Robert Brown, whose cabin stood on what later became the site of the Ashley Hotel.

The Great South Woods

Section 3, the southwest quarter of the township, had an unusual history. John Rathbone of New York patented 4,000 acres there in 1800 under a warrant signed by President John Adams himself, but the land sat undeveloped for more than four decades because it was so wet and heavily timbered that early settlers considered it almost worthless; for years people simply called it the "great south woods." Only in 1842, when Rathbone's grandson Hiram G. Andrews put it on the market in 100-acre lots at three to eight dollars an acre, did buyers like Griffith Thomas and Evan McCreary begin clearing it. By 1880 the county history could report that this same swampy quarter had become the home of some of Oxford's most productive farms.

An Old Chief's Winter Camp

For years after white settlement began, Oxford Township's forests still drew Wyandot hunting parties, who followed a trail along Indian Run down from their reservation to the north. By around 1820 most had stopped coming, but one man kept returning: an old chief the settlers knew as Scionto, who trapped through the township into his later years and made a regular winter headquarters at the cabin of Joseph Cole, just over the boundary in Troy Township. The 1880 county history remembers him as well liked by the Cole family and "remarkable for his friendliness to all whites," one of the last individually named links between the township's Wyandot past and its farming present.

Photographs

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

Olentangy River intake at Del-Co's plant on Olentangy River Rd, Liberty Twp, south of the city of Delaware The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.53% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Ashley Village47% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 3 of 3 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 2 of 2.

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 2026-01-27

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