Plain Township, Wood County

How Plain Township, Wood County began

Plain Township was established March 3, 1835, its first election fixed at the house of Henry Walker on the ridge that a few years later grew into the town of Bowling Green. Named for the level, once-swampy plains within its borders, the township shares the county seat with neighboring Center Township -- Bowling Green's eastern side and several of its landmark buildings, including the Wood County Courthouse, sit inside Plain Township's own boundary -- and its farmland today is still known for wheat.

Incorporated township established March 3, 1835, by Wood County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

Plain Township was named for the level plains within its borders.

Before the town

The 1897 county history says that when settlers reached Weston, Center, Liberty and Middleton, Plain was an Indian hunting ground 'with few attractions, even for the savages'. Plain's earliest institutions were tied to the Presbyterian Indian mission on the Maumee below Grand Rapids: Rev. Isaac Van Tassel, its former superintendent, farmed here after the mission was abandoned or disbanded, cared for wards named Susan Rebideau and Sophia Tebault (a French-Indian surname spelling given as 'Teboo'), and gave the mission house bell to the district school; in April 1836 the old interpreter at the mission, named King, was tried before the Plain church for intemperance. No mound or earthwork is recorded.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa.

Timeline

1. 1819 — Samuel and Alexander Holmes survey the exterior lines of the township; I. T. Worthington runs the subdivisional lines in 1821.
2. 1831 — The first land entries in what becomes Plain Township are made, among the earliest interior settlement in Wood County outside the Maumee riverbank.
3. 1831-04-06 — Joseph DeWitt enters the west part of the southeast quarter of Section 36, the first land entry; Joseph A. Sargent follows on May 31, and the first actual settler comes in 1831.
4. 1832-10-29 — Elisha Martindale makes the pioneer land entry within the future town of Bowling Green, in Plain Township's Section 24.
5. 1834-35 — The Rev. Isaac Van Tassel, former superintendent of the Presbyterian mission below Grand Rapids, settles on a farm and sets out hundreds of mulberry trees to start silk culture; he farms and raises stock until his death in 1849.
6. 1835 — After the Gorrills move to Bowling Green, Morris Brown, "the great pedagogue of that day", teaches the first lessons in a cabin there.
7. 1835-03-03 — The commissioners set off Plain Township and order the first election for April 4 at Henry Walker's house.
8. 1835-11-27 — The Plain Congregational Church, one of the earliest of its denomination in northwestern Ohio, is organized at Jacob Minton's house near the present Plain church, with Rev. Joseph Badger presiding as moderator.
9. 1836-04 — The old interpreter at the Indian mission, named King, is tried by the Plain church for intemperance and suspended.
10. 1841 — John Whitehead and John E. Jenkins build the Bell school house, placing in its belfry the bell from the mission house, given by Rev. Van Tassel with conditions; it burns in 1857.
11. 1842-10 — Township clerk Abraham D. Edgerton takes the first school census: 55 males and 51 females in three districts.
12. 1844-12-02 — The south half of Section 36 is set off from Middleton and annexed to Plain.
13. 1863-05-03 — Lovett's Grove Seventh-day Adventist Church elects trustees Peter F. Ferciot, John Mears and Joseph Ralston; the frame church is finished that fall for about $280 and volunteer labor.
14. 1875-09-09 — A $4,000 brick building for the Plain Congregational Church is finished near the site of the old one, restored in 1889-90.
15. 1890 — The census counts 2,673 people in the township, 1,589 of them in the part of Bowling Green west of Main Street; 272 in 1840 and 1,300 in 1860.
16. 1893-11-28 to 1896-08-31 — The present Wood County Courthouse is built at Bowling Green, on ground that straddles Plain and Center townships.
17. 1895-12-06 — The Ohio and Indiana Torpedo Company's nitroglycerin magazine on the Fowler farm (Section 35) explodes with 520 quarts in storage, the first accident to disturb the township's peace since March 1849; the blast leaves a crater 8 feet deep and 25 feet across, uproots a large elm nearby, and breaks windows and shakes buildings in Bowling Green, two and a half miles away.

Stories

The quiet township's one explosion

The county's 1897 historian, casting around for tragedies or accidents to record in Plain Township, could find almost nothing to write about between March 1849 and December 6, 1895 -- 'nothing strikingly tragic,' as he put it, had ever happened there. That streak ended on December 6, 1895, when the magazine of the Ohio and Indiana Torpedo Company, standing on the Fowler farm in Section 35 with 520 quarts of nitroglycerin in storage for well-shooting work in the oil fields, exploded. The little building vanished entirely, leaving a crater eight feet deep and twenty-five feet across; a large elm tree standing nearby was lifted whole out of the ground and came down again with its branches pointing at the earth. Two and a half miles away in Bowling Green, the shock broke windows and shook buildings, and the concussion was felt across the township and its neighbors -- a single, sudden violence in a place whose history was otherwise almost entirely free of it.

The mission bell and the mulberry trees

When the Presbyterian mission on the Maumee below Grand Rapids was abandoned, its superintendent, the Rev. Isaac Van Tassel, settled his family on a farm in Plain Township. In 1834 or 1835 he introduced silk culture, setting out hundreds of mulberry trees that friends sent him from Connecticut or New York, and for nearly fifteen years he devoted himself to farming, fruit growing and stock raising; at his death in 1849 he was probably the first agriculturist in the county. In 1841 John Whitehead and John E. Jenkins built a schoolhouse for subscribers in what became District No. 2 and hung in its little belfry the bell from the mission house, which Van Tassel had donated with conditions that left the title with him. A few years later the house passed to the common-school trustees and Van Tassel had the bell taken down. The 'Bell school house' burned in 1857, but the 1897 history says few old settlers or their children forget to mention it.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Bowling Green City91% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Northwestern W and SD - Weston8% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Grand Rapids Village0% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Northwestern W and SD - Portage0% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Tontogany Village0% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Maurers Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Public EV charging (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 1 of 1 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, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-29

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