Pleasant Hill

How Pleasant Hill began

Pleasant Hill began life as Newton, platted along the Stillwater River in 1843 within Newton Township (organized 1810), though a post office had already been operating under the name Pleasant Hill a mile away since 1839. The village took the post office's name when it incorporated in 1866. It grew as a farm-market and limestone-quarrying town on the Stillwater, and in 1847 a group of freed slaves who had bought land from John and Sarah Marshall founded the nearby settlement of Marshalltown. Its best-known former student is Roy Plunkett, a Newton High School graduate who discovered Teflon at DuPont in 1938.

Settled 1801 (Michael Williams, first recorded settler in Newton Township), platted 1843 (as Newton), incorporated 1866, by platted by three local proprietors along the Stillwater River; post office named Pleasant Hill from 1839.

Where the name comes from

The village was originally platted in 1843 as "Newton," honoring the English scientist Isaac Newton, matching the name already given to its surrounding township in 1810. A post office called "Pleasant Hill" had been running about a mile from the platted village since 1839; when the village incorporated in 1866, it took the post office's name, Pleasant Hill, in place of Newton. No source found explains who chose the descriptive name "Pleasant Hill" itself.

Before the town

No known source records a mound, earthwork, treaty line, or named Native village specific to the Pleasant Hill/Newton Township area.

Timeline

1. 1801 — Michael Williams becomes the first recorded settler in what will become Newton Township, purchasing land on August 7.
2. 1810 — Newton Township is officially organized on March 6, the second-largest of Miami County's twelve townships.
3. 1814 — The Society of Friends builds the Union Church, a log structure, the first church in the township.
4. 1820 — Dr. David Patty arrives as the area's first physician, and Jesse Emery builds a grist mill on the Stillwater River.
5. 1825 — Abram Deeter opens the township's first limestone quarry; by 1875 six quarries are active.
6. 1839 — A post office called Pleasant Hill begins operating, about a mile from where the village would later be platted.
7. 1843 — The Village of Newton is platted along the Stillwater River by three local proprietors.
8. 1847 — Marshalltown is founded nearby by freed slaves who purchased land from John and Sarah Marshall.
9. 1864 — Twelve township residents die in the Civil War; a monument to them is dedicated in 1895.
10. 1866 — The village formally incorporates and changes its name from Newton to Pleasant Hill; John Whitmer Sr. becomes the first postmaster of the incorporated village.
11. 1902 — An electric interurban traction line connects Pleasant Hill to larger cities.
12. 1938 — Roy Plunkett, a graduate of Newton High School, discovers Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) at DuPont on April 6; he is later inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
13. 2002 — The Pleasant Hill United Church of Christ, at 10 West Monument Street, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (August 22).

Stories

Freed slaves bought their own ground next door

In 1847, a small community called Marshalltown was founded just outside the platted village of Newton (soon to be Pleasant Hill) when a group of freed slaves purchased land directly from John and Sarah Marshall. It stands alongside the far better documented African Jackson Cemetery settlement near Piqua as one of Miami County's antebellum Black landholding communities, though far less is recorded about it: no source found gives Marshalltown's population, its later fate, or whether any trace of it remains today. It is included here as a documented fact worth further local research, not a fully told story.

A village that outgrew its own post office's borrowed name

Pleasant Hill's naming is backwards from the usual pattern: the post office came first. A post office called Pleasant Hill opened in 1839 about a mile from where the village of Newton was platted four years later in 1843. For over twenty years the platted village kept the name Newton — honoring the same Isaac Newton the surrounding township had been named for in 1810 — while mail addressed to the area went to the older Pleasant Hill office nearby. When the village incorporated in 1866, it dropped Newton and took the post office's older name, leaving Newton to survive only as the township's name and the high school's, the school from which Roy Plunkett graduated before discovering Teflon at DuPont's laboratory in New Jersey in 1938.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · pleasanthillohio.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Miami County on the full map

Groundwater wells (3 wells) The water here

• Pleasant Hill Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Public libraries (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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-25

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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