Perry Township, Logan County

How Perry Township, Logan County began

Perry Township, in eastern Logan County, is Virginia Military District land in the valley of Otter and Mill creeks, a country of springs and flowing wells. Its first settler, the Virginia Quaker John Garwood, built his cabin on the site of East Liberty about 1803-04, and the mill he put up on Otter Creek about 1810 became the hub from which the first roads and trails of the area ran. Set off from Zane Township in 1830 and named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the township kept Bokes Creek within its bounds until 1837; East Liberty was laid out beside Garwood's Mill in 1834 and North Greenfield, first nicknamed Mudsock, in 1847. Today the township is dominated by the Transportation Research Center proving ground and Honda's East Liberty auto plant.

Settled about 1803-04 (tradition says 1802), platted 1834 (East Liberty); 1847 (North Greenfield), incorporated 1830 (township, set off from Zane), by John Garwood Sr., first settler; John Bowyer, proprietor of East Liberty.

Where the name comes from

Perry Township was named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval officer who commanded the American fleet at the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie; the same name was applied to two dozen other Ohio townships in the years after the War of 1812.

Before the town

The 1880 county history, drawing on the memory of Hannah James, whose family came in 1810, records that there were no Native villages in the township when settlers arrived, but that Lenape (Delaware) and Shawnee people, mostly from the Lewistown reservation, came often and camped for a month or two at a time at the township's many springs while hunting. They visited the settlers' cabins and were remembered as friendly. After the War of 1812, the history says, they were moved to reservations farther west, and by 1880 few in the township remembered seeing them. No mound, trail or burial is recorded in the township in the sources read.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee.

• Hunting camps at the springs (camp) — at the numerous springs of Perry Township, especially in the Otter Creek valley, early 1800s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1803 — John Garwood Sr., a Virginian and Quaker preacher, settled about 1803-04 on the site of the later East Liberty; tradition gives 1802.
2. 1805 — About 1805-06 the brothers Joshua, Job and John Inskeep came from Virginia; John Inskeep became the first member of the legislature from Champaign County, which then included this land.
3. 1806 — Henry Howe, writing of Logan County as first settled about 1806, names John and Levi Garwood among the earliest settlers recollected in the county.
4. 1808 — Samuel Ballinger came from New Jersey and settled about two miles south of the later East Liberty.
5. 1810 — Thomas James, a Virginian of Welsh descent who had left Virginia because he opposed slavery, settled on the later Robert Green place.
6. 1810 — About this year John Garwood Sr. built a mill on Otter Creek; as Garwood's Mill it became the center from which the early roads and trails of the area ran.
7. 1815 — About 1815-16 a man named David Reed taught school at the site of East Liberty, among the earliest teachers remembered.
8. 1826 — Lot Inskeep opened the first store, on the road from Garwood's Mill to Big Spring.
9. 1830 — Perry Township was organized and named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.
10. 1832 — Thomas James and William Smith ran a distillery at Garwood's Mill in 1832 and 1833; it closed after a year or two under a later owner and was never revived.
11. 1833 — John McCally, who had settled that spring, opened a tannery that he ran for ten years before selling it to Job H. Sharp.
12. 1834 — In March John Bowyer laid out East Liberty on land conveyed to him by John Garwood; King and Hitchens opened its first store that October.
13. 1835 — The Methodists, the first church organized in the village, built a log church at East Liberty.
14. 1836 — A post office opened at East Liberty; the 1880 history says the office first bore the name Garwood's Mill.
15. 1837 — Bokes Creek Township was set off from Perry, bringing Perry to its present size of about six by four miles.
16. 1847 — On June 24 County Surveyor S. A. Harbison laid out North Greenfield for proprietor Henry Van Vheris on an old Methodist camp-meeting ground; the town was first called Mudsock.
17. 1850 — About this year the Quakers built a meetinghouse a mile or two west of North Greenfield; after it burned it was rebuilt about the start of the Civil War, with Mary Elliott as its minister.
18. 1854 — East Liberty Lodge No. 247, Free and Accepted Masons, was chartered on October 18.
19. 1875 — The United Presbyterians built a frame church in East Liberty across the street from the Baptist church, at a cost of about $2,200.
20. 1880 — East Liberty had 225 residents, two general stores, a mill, three churches, a Masonic lodge and two doctors; its flowing wells, some rising into second stories through pipes, fed the race of McCally's mill.
21. 1882 — Alonzo Skidmore, a Disciples of Christ minister, organized Central Ohio College at East Liberty; it closed in the late 1890s.
22. 1989 — Honda's East Liberty Auto Plant opened in the township.

Stories

Anthony Banks

Anthony Banks, a Black man believed to have come from Virginia, was among the early settlers of Perry Township. He cut cordwood near Sandusky, bought the freedom of his wife, who had been enslaved, and raised a large family on land he owned in the township. He grew wealthy; the 1880 county history says he owned the first silver-mounted harness and the first buggy with silver-tipped hubs seen in the township, and his daughters wore the first silk dresses in the settlement. Most of the children died young, many of consumption. When Mrs. Banks lay dying, she told Dr. James, who attended her, that she had never been free: she had been bought by her husband as she had once been the property of white people, and she welcomed death as freedom. In 1880 one son, Washington Banks, still farmed land left him by his father in the east part of the township.

Garwood's Mill

A few years after he settled on Otter Creek, John Garwood Sr. built a mill some three or four hundred yards from the site later used, supposedly about 1810. Thomas James, a millwright, later moved it to the new site. Garwood's Mill drew customers from many miles around; the first roads were cut from it to Big Spring and to the Skidmore settlement, and the first post office in the township took its name. When John Bowyer laid out East Liberty beside it in 1834, the post office moved into the village and took the new name. By 1880 the mill, owned by John McCally, was a two-story frame building with two run of burrs that could grind 150 bushels a day, its race fed by Otter Creek and by flowing wells along the way; the old building had been remodeled so often that little of the original was left.

A proving ground on farmland

For most of its history Perry Township was farm country in the Otter and Mill creek valleys, with the villages of East Liberty and North Greenfield. That changed in the twentieth century when the Transportation Research Center, an independent proving ground that, according to Wikipedia, also hosts the federal government's vehicle research and testing center, was built on a large tract inside the township, and in 1989 Honda opened an auto plant at East Liberty. The oval track and test grounds are now among the most visible features on any map of eastern Logan County: a township named in 1830 for a naval commander is known chiefly for testing cars on land that was farmland within living memory.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• West Mansfield Village79% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mountainview Mobile Village21% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public EV charging (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 8 of 8 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-19

Cite this page