Paint Township, Wayne County

How Paint Township, Wayne County began

Paint Township is the extreme southeastern township of Wayne County. It was organized on March 5, 1816 and named for a spring whose water, resembling red paint, colored the earth it touched. Michael Waxler, a buckskin-clad hunter from Harrison County, was the first settler in 1810. The village of Mount Eaton, platted as Paintville about 1813 and renamed in 1829, grew up at the spring, and West Lebanon was platted in 1833. Cholera killed 26 people at Mount Eaton in a month in 1833. The township had 1,418 residents in 1870 and 3,458 in 2020, many of them Amish and Mennonite.

Settled 1810 (Michael Waxler, from Harrison County), platted Paintville (Mount Eaton), as early as 1813 per the county histories (1814 per Wikipedia); West Lebanon, 1833, incorporated March 5, 1816 (township organized), by William Vaughn and James Galbraith platted Paintville; Philip Groff and Rev. William S. Butt platted West Lebanon.

Where the name comes from

Both Douglass (1878) and Bowen (1910) say the township took its name from a spring where Mount Eaton now stands, the water of which resembled red paint and imparted its color to the earth and other objects it touched. The village was first Paintville; in 1829, through the action of Jacob Beam and James Galbraith, it became Mount Eaton, a name Douglass does not explain. West Lebanon was named by its founder Philip Groff for his native West Lebanon in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Before the town

No mound, village or treaty event specific to Paint Township is recorded in the sources checked, but its pioneer accounts name one Native man and one legend. Michael Waxler, the first settler, 'frequently hunted with old Chief Lyon,' whom Douglass calls an 'ubiquitous character throughout the county and pseudo-chief of a nameless tribe of Indians' (probably the Chief Dan Lyon remembered in Franklin Township to the west). Douglass also prints James Galbraith's legend of the Popolat Rocks: a young Indian, Prince Oppopolat (Turkey Gobbler), banished by his people from east of the Blue Ridge for loving Fisfisalee (Pheasant Tail) of an enemy tribe, wintered with her at the rocks in Paint Township before he was seized and taken home to die. The legend, set 'before the discovery of America,' is a settler's story and has no documentary support.

• Popolat Rocks (legend of Oppopolat and Fisfisalee) (other) — Paint Township; exact location not given, legendary, undated; recorded in 1878 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810 — Michael Waxler, a hunter in buckskin from Harrison County, becomes the first settler; he is known to have hunted with old Chief Lyon.
2. 1813 — Paintville, later Mount Eaton, is laid out 'as early as 1813' by William Vaughn and James Galbraith; Elijah Carr builds the first cabin and Samuel Shull keeps the first tavern. (Wikipedia gives 1814.)
3. 1816 — On March 5 Paint Township is organized; at the first election Frederick Shull and Jacob Beals tie for justice of the peace and draw lots, Beals winning and serving twelve years.
4. 1818 — On June 20 the Presbyterian church of Paintville is organized with thirteen members by Rev. James Adams.
5. 1819 — A post office named Paintville opens; it keeps that name until 1830, then becomes Mount Eaton.
6. 1823 — James Morrow runs a horse-powered carding machine at Paintville; in 1827 Weed & Jones have an iron foundry running.
7. 1826 — David Houmard, a Swiss cutler who reached Wayne County in September 1825, settles in Paint Township in May and winters his family and cattle in one log room.
8. 1829 — The village name changes from Paintville to Mount Eaton, through the action of Jacob Beam and James Galbraith.
9. 1831 — Col. William Goudy builds the first steam grist mill at Mount Eaton, burned in 1836 and rebuilt in 1838.
10. 1833 — Cholera, brought by a family of French emigrants carrying a dead child, strikes Mount Eaton in mid-August and kills 26 people in four weeks, about one in ten of the village.
11. 1833 — Philip Groff and Rev. William S. Butt lay out West Lebanon, three miles northeast of Mount Eaton, named for Groff's native West Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
12. 1839 — The rebuilt Goudy mill's boilers explode, killing John Murphy and fatally injuring Jeremiah Nelson and James Bradley; one boiler is thrown fifty yards up the hillside.
13. 1861 — Mount Eaton Fire Company No. 1 is organized.
14. 1870 — On April 4 Mount Eaton holds its first incorporation election for special purposes, with 42 votes; the township has 1,418 residents.
15. 1900 — The census counts 1,206 residents in the township.
16. 2020 — Township population reaches 3,458; Mount Eaton's own population has fallen to 171.

Stories

The backwoodsman who fought off the wolves

The 1878 county history opens its account of Paint Township with Michael Waxler, who came from Harrison County in 1810 and is remembered as a backwoodsman of the highest type: buckskin breeches, hunting shirt and moccasins, armed with scalping knife, tomahawk and rifle. He shared his hospitality freely and hunted with Chief Lyon, the Native man known throughout the county, and with Bill Harrison. One night he camped where Winesburg now stands and a pack of wolves attacked; he held them off until morning, killing several and, 'in true Indian style,' scalping them. His wife was killed by lightning down the chimney in 1828. The township's next settlers followed: James Sullivan, John Sprague, David Endsley, Nathan Peticord, James Galbraith, William Vaughn, Elijah Carr and the Shulls. At the first election in 1816 Frederick Shull and Jacob Beals tied for justice of the peace and drew lots, and Beals held the office twelve years.

Cholera at Mount Eaton, 1833

In mid-August 1833 Benedict Beaverstine, a Frenchman emigrating with his family, reached Mount Eaton with a child dead of cholera in the wagon. The disease turned malignant at once. David Boyd, an intoxicated man, strutted up to the wagon to see how a cholera victim looked, was attacked, and died before sundown. In four weeks twenty-six people were dead, about one in ten of the town's people; Drs. Hall and Barber did what they could, and many families fled the village. The last victim was James Galbraith, who with William Vaughn had laid out the town and with Jacob Beam had renamed it Mount Eaton four years earlier.

David Houmard's one-room cabin

David Houmard, a Swiss cutler, took seventeen weeks to come from Switzerland, among the first to pass through the locks at Lockport on the Erie Canal. He arrived at Cleveland when it had about fifty houses, bought a yoke of oxen for thirty-six dollars, hitched it to a wagon and reached Sugarcreek Township on September 2, 1825. He settled in Paint Township in May 1826. His cabin was twenty by thirty feet, log, unhewn until after it was raised, with no floor and the fireplace in the middle of the room. There he, his wife and their child passed the winter of 1826-27 with the cow and calf in the same room, keeping milk in walnut troughs and churning in a hollowed cherry tree. He made 'many curious firearms and tools.'

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

Mostly private wells The water here

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• Brewster Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Winesburg Area Development Corporation4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Massillon4% of residentsWells in Tuscarawas Valley sand & gravel aquifer
• Canton Public Water System4% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Fredericksburg Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Heritage Green Condominium Assoc3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mount Eaton Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tcmsd-dundee2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Lincoln Terrace Estates1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Millborne Mobile Home Community1% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Private schools (15)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-19

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