Perry Township, Brown County

How Perry Township, Brown County began

Perry Township, formed by the Clermont County commissioners on June 6, 1815, is the northernmost and, in 1883, the largest township in Brown County, at 35,816 acres on the East Fork of the Little Miami River. Abraham Claypool and Peter Hull located two 1,000-acre Virginia Military District tracts here in 1796, and Solomon Claypool began the first permanent farm in 1807. Fayetteville grew up on the East Fork from 1811, and the Irish and French Catholic farm families around St. Martin drew the Ursuline Sisters in 1845. The 2020 census counted 4,674 people.

Incorporated 1815, by Ohio General Assembly.

Where the name comes from

Like many Ohio townships, almost certainly named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie; no township-specific naming account is recorded, so this is given as the common pattern rather than a documented fact.

Before the town

The 1883 county history says Perry Township has mounds built by the prehistoric 'Mound-Builders', with stone pestles, hammers, mortars and flint points picked up on farms, and reports Indian settlement remains indicated by skeletons turned up in the soil; it names no mound or village. L. W. Claypool, whose father came in 1807, recalled that he did not believe there were Indians living in the township at first settlement and that it was used only by occasional stragglers. The land lies in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville cession and the Virginia Military District.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. 1796 — June: Abraham Claypool of Virginia and Peter Hull locate two 1,000-acre military-district tracts in what is now Perry Township, one on Solomon's Run and one on Glady Run.
2. 1807 — Solomon Claypool, son of Abraham, begins a farm on Solomon's Run half a mile above the future Fayetteville and is remembered as the first permanent settler; he later builds the township's first mill and first distillery.
3. 1809 — December: Jacob Claypool's first cabin goes up on his 500-acre tract on Glady Run, finished in the winter of 1810.
4. 1811 — The Thumann Log House is built about one mile south of St. Martin, at the junction of present Ohio Route 251 and U.S. Route 50, by architect/builder Erastus Adkins.
5. 1811 — Erastus Atkins builds the first house on the site of Fayetteville, a double log house; the salt-maker Nathan Bishop settles nearby the same year.
6. 1815 — Perry Township is organized as Brown County's northernmost township.
7. 1815-10-10 — Perry Township, formed that June by the Clermont County commissioners, holds its first election; 23 voters are on the roll.
8. 1815-10-12 — Jacob Claypool opens the township's first school in a log cabin on the East Fork bank near the later Cranmer's Graveyard.
9. 1817-12-27 — The legislature creates Brown County and cedes Perry, Pleasant, Lewis and Clark townships to it from Clermont.
10. 1828 — A Methodist church near Cranmer's Graveyard begins regular services, held there until 1868, when the congregation divides between Marathon and Fayetteville.
11. 1845 — July: eleven Ursuline Sisters arrive at St. Martin, a settlement of French and Irish families in the township's northern tip, and found a convent and school.
12. 1851 — Epidemic cholera fills Fritt's Graveyard on the Anderson State road between Fayetteville and St. Martin, as the gravestones there record.
13. 1870 — Dillen & McConn build the Fayetteville Mills; the frame building burns in 1874 and John Dillen rebuilds it in brick the same year.
14. 1880 — The township polls 642 votes in the presidential election and has about 3,000 people, mostly Irish and French by birth or descent, five-sixths of them Catholic.
15. 2020 — The census counts 4,674 people in Perry Township, which holds Fayetteville and the census-designated places of St. Martin and Lake Lorelei.

Stories

The Ursuline Sisters of Brown County

In July 1845, eleven Ursuline Sisters, recruited from Ireland by Cincinnati's Archbishop John Baptist Purcell, arrived at St. Martin, a small settlement of French and Irish Catholic farm families in the northern tip of Perry Township. They opened a convent and school there, teaching local children and eventually training teachers for parish schools across the region. The community grew into a substantial complex of convent buildings, motherhouse and cemetery on Route 251 northeast of Fayetteville, known today as the Ursuline Center, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The order, now known as the Ursulines of Brown County, still maintains a presence on the site more than a century and a half after the sisters' arrival, and later founded Chatfield College nearby.

The Claypools of Solomon's Run

Abraham Claypool, born in Virginia in 1762, was a Virginia legislator who had seen the slave pens of Richmond and went prospecting in the Northwest Territory. In June 1796 he and Peter Hull located two 1,000-acre tracts in what became Perry Township, one on Solomon's Run and one on Glady Run, and the same year he worked with General Massie laying out Chillicothe. He freed his slaves on moving to Chillicothe in 1799, and as a member of the first Ohio legislature he secured the State road from Cincinnati to Chillicothe, surveyed through the site of Fayetteville and long called the Anderson State road. His son Solomon began clearing the run that bears his name in 1807, keeping 'bachelor's hall', and was the township's first Justice of the Peace; he built its first mill and first distillery, sold the future Fayetteville site to Erastus Atkins, and left for Indiana in 1816. His brother Jacob took the Glady Run tract, taught the first school in October 1815, and in 1834 went off to Illinois, dying in 1876 at eighty-eight.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · npgallery.nps.gov · hmdb.org · ursulinesofbc.org · west2k.com · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Every historic place in Brown County on the full map

Ohio River intake at the plant's riverfront on Kellogg Ave in the California neighborhood, east Cincinnati The water here

• Western Water Company73% of residentsLittle Miami River valley wells (51%) plus Cincinnati Ohio River water (49%)
• Fayetteville Village12% of residentsOhio River (Miller Plant, ~88%) plus Great Miami Buried Valley Aquifer wells (~12%)
• Blanchester Village10% of residentsWhitacre Run, Stonelick Creek & West Fork East Fork Little Miami River reservoirs
• Lynchburg Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mount Orab Village2% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (7)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-18: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-05

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