Phillipsburg

How Phillipsburg began

Phillipsburg was platted as a town in 1836 and named for Philip Studybaker, a member of the company that laid it out; it was incorporated as a village in 1899. Its post office went through several names before settling on the town's own: opened as 'Centre' in 1848 (by Wikipedia's account; the 1882 county history dates the first post office to 1846), respelled 'Center' around 1893, and finally renamed 'Phillipsburg' in 1903. A small farm-trade village on State Route 49 in western Montgomery County, it is now best known locally for Phillipsburg Airport, a privately owned grass-and-paved field on its northeast edge that has operated since the late 1940s. Its population has slipped from a high of 831 in the 1970s to under 500 today.

Platted 1836, incorporated 1899, by Ten lots were laid out in January 1836 by surveyor James Hanks for the proprietors Philip Studybaker, John John, John Thomas and Jeremiah Thomas.

Where the name comes from

Phillipsburg was named for Philip Studybaker, a member of the company of proprietors who platted the town in 1836. The 1882 History of Montgomery County confirms the derivation and adds the names of the other three proprietors (John John, John Thomas and Jeremiah Thomas) and the surveyor, James Hanks, who laid out the original ten lots in January 1836.

Before the town

No mound, village, trail or treaty site specific to Phillipsburg was found in the sources checked. Phillipsburg sits in the same western Montgomery County country contested and used as hunting ground by the Miami, Shawnee, Wyandot, Potawatomi and Ottawa before the 1795 Treaty of Greenville opened it to settlement, but no source found names a Native site or encounter specific to the village itself.

Nations recorded here: Miami, Shawnee, Wyandot, Potawatomi, Ottawa.

Timeline

1. 1828 — The Society of Friends (Quakers) built the first meeting-house in what became Clay Township, in the vicinity of the future village of Phillipsburg, several years before the town itself was platted; John Thomas, one of the four men who would later plat the town, was its first preacher.
2. 1835 — Peter Rhodebauch was doing business as a merchant in the vicinity, a year before Phillipsburg itself was platted.
3. 1836 — Ten lots were laid out in January by surveyor James Hanks for proprietors Philip Studybaker, John John, John Thomas and Jeremiah Thomas; the town was named for Studybaker.
4. 1846 — According to the 1882 county history, a post office was established at Phillipsburg with Peter Smith as postmaster and a schoolhouse was built the same year; this conflicts with a Wikipedia-sourced account giving 1848 and the name 'Centre' for the post office's founding, and both dates are given here since the primary and secondary accounts disagree.
5. 1848 — A post office opened under the name 'Centre' (per Wikipedia; see also the 1846 entry above, sourced to the 1882 county history, which gives a different year and no 'Centre' name).
6. 1893 — The post office's name was respelled 'Center.'
7. 1899 — Phillipsburg was incorporated as a village.
8. 1903 — The post office was renamed 'Phillipsburg,' matching the village.
9. 1949 — Phillipsburg Airport opened on the village's northeast edge (one source dates its origin as a Myers-family grass strip to 1945, opening formally under the Myers name in 1949).
10. 1970s — The village's population peaked at 831 residents.

Stories

A post office that changed its name three times

Long before Phillipsburg's post office carried the village's own name, it operated for decades as 'Centre,' opening under that name in 1848 by Wikipedia's account (the 1882 county history dates the office to 1846), a dozen years after the town itself was platted and named for company man Philip Studybaker. The spelling shifted to the plainer 'Center' around 1893, and it was not until 1903 -- some sixty-seven years after the town was laid out -- that the post office finally took the name Phillipsburg. The lag is a small reminder that a platted town's name and its postal identity did not always travel together in nineteenth-century Ohio, and that the paper trail of post office records can run under a different name than the place itself for generations.

A meeting-house before the town

Phillipsburg's oldest institution predates the town plat by eight years. In 1828 the Society of Friends built Clay Township's first meeting-house in the immediate vicinity of what became the village, with John Thomas -- later one of the four proprietors who platted Phillipsburg itself in 1836 -- serving as its first preacher. The Quaker congregation did not last: the 1882 county history reports that by then the society 'having long since disappeared,' its meeting-house gone the way of many small rural congregations once larger, better-organized denominations arrived. By 1882 the village instead supported four churches -- Christian, United Brethren, Lutheran and Evangelical -- run by A. H. Baker and J. M. Beason as its merchants, with one saw-mill and one of the township's two voting precincts.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · phillipsburgoh.gov · en.wikipedia.org · fly3i7.com · archive.org

Village-owned groundwater wells (STU 1, STU 2) per EPA listing. In Feb 2025 the village laid out a funded plan to buy City of Union water via a new ~3-mile pipeline on Phillipsburg-Union Road, with a pump station and a new water tower, because the current supply has PFAS; construction could start after July 1, 2025. We found no record that Union water is flowing yet. The water here

• Phillipsburg Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-08-05

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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