Pleasant Township, Henry County

How Pleasant Township, Henry County began

Pleasant Township, in Henry County's southwest, was settled beginning in 1836 almost entirely by German-speaking immigrants from Bavaria and Baden, whose names -- Hofricker, Saur, Dirr, Mangas, Grimm -- fill its earliest tax and school records. Detached from Flat Rock Township around 1843, it grew along the Belmore Ridge, a natural high ground that carried the only early wagon road through the surrounding wet lowlands. Its village of New Bavaria, platted in 1882 at a railroad crossing near an older post office of the same name, and the nearby hamlet of Pleasant Bend anchor a farming community that has kept its German Catholic and Lutheran character since the 1830s; the larger village of Holgate straddles the township's northeast corner with neighboring Flat Rock Township.

Settled 1836 (George A. Hofricker, Henry Saur, Frederick Loesch, George Dirr, Andrew Gardner and Peter Grimm), platted New Bavaria platted 1882; Pleasant Bend platted 1882, incorporated detached from Flat Rock Township, supposed about 1843, by Henry County.

Where the name comes from

The reason for the name Pleasant is not stated; the name is common across Ohio townships, and the 1888 county history's account, which focuses instead on the township's detachment from Flat Rock and its settlement by Bavarian and Baden immigrants, gives no specific local explanation.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to Pleasant Township is documented. The township's earliest written record, contributed to the 1888 county history by former teacher James E. Scofield, describes the area in the 1830s and 1840s as a 'howling wilderness of water, frogs, wolves, bear, deer, turkeys, coon and other animals,' with no reference to any earlier or contemporary Native settlement, trail or encounter within the township's own boundaries; its Belmore Ridge road did connect toward Defiance and Independence, both places with documented Native history, but the connection is one of route rather than a site within Pleasant Township itself.

Timeline

1. 1836 — George A. Hofricker, Henry Saur, Frederick Loesch, George Dirr, Andrew Gardner and Peter Grimm become the township's first documented settlers.
2. 1837 — John P. Hornung, George A. Young, Adam Minsell, John Friberger and Paul Renolet join the first settlers of 1836.
3. 1838 — The Flat Rock school census counts 41 children aged four to twenty in the township's survey township three north, range six east.
4. c. 1840 — An Englishman named Easterbrook, who styled himself 'David Crocket second,' teaches the settlement's first school for three or four winter terms.
5. c. 1843 — Pleasant Township is detached from Flat Rock Township as a separate civil division; James Shasteen serves as its first justice of the peace from 1844.
6. 1844 to 1845 — A post office named New Bavaria is recalled in the 1888 county history as opening on the Ridge road in 1844-45, with Charles Hornung as postmaster, a post he held for decades except for one year in 1860; federal records list it from 1848.
7. 1844 to 1845 — James E. Scofield teaches the settlement's school for two winter terms, following the Englishman Easterbrook.
8. 1848 — Postal records list the New Bavaria post office as established.
9. 1873 — Holgate is platted at the northeast corner of the township beside the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
10. 1879 — A station and post office called Pleasant Bend open on the new Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City line, platted in 1882; the post office closes in 1928.
11. 1882 — New Bavaria is surveyed and platted a short distance from the old post office site, at the crossing of the Ridge road and the Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City Railroad; Pleasant Bend is platted about the same time, two miles south.
12. 1887 — A German Methodist church, a German Reformed brick church with a large bell and a Catholic church under construction of brick at about $24,000 serve the township; the Catholic church replaces one burned earlier.
13. 2020 — The census counts 1,882 people in Pleasant Township.

Stories

A postmaster beheaded for his politics

Charles Hornung held the New Bavaria post office almost continuously from its founding around 1844 until the 1888 county history was written -- with one telling exception. In 1860, Hornung sided with the Republicans in the Lincoln and Hamlin campaign, a political choice that cost him his postmastership; Henry Schall was appointed in his place. The setback did not last: immediately after Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1861, Hornung was reinstated, and he and his sons went on to run New Bavaria's general store and warehouse, buying grain and produce from the surrounding German farming community for decades afterward -- a small-town postmastership that tracked national politics closely enough to be interrupted by them.

The ridge road to a mill that vanished

The settlement of Pleasant Township followed a natural causeway. The Belmore Ridge crosses the township from northwest to southeast, rising above lowlands that were swamp, and an early wagon road along it ran from Defiance and Independence to Madera in Putnam County, where a steam flouring mill stood. Madera, like Independence, had disappeared by 1888. Germans from Bavaria and Baden settled the ridge from 1836 and drained the swales, and the township was split from Flat Rock about 1843. Its first school teacher was an Englishman named Easterbrook, who wrote a pamphlet of his life under the name David Crocket the Second and called his pupils 'benighted beings.'

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Holgate Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-09-17: county board of elections.

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 2025-06-17

Cite this page