Range Township, Madison County

How Range Township, Madison County began

Range Township, in the southern tier of Madison County, was laid out by the county commissioners on December 7, 1812, on land that had drawn stockmen from Ross County before any settler owned it outright, since its prairies gave free pasture to herds driven up from the south. William M. Linton, an Englishman who had come by way of Virginia and Ross County, settled just south of the future village of Midway about 1800-01 and is reckoned the township's first settler. Two villages grew up on the great east-west stock road that crossed the township: Midway, platted in 1833 at the halfway point of a cattle route said to run from Chicago to Philadelphia, and Danville, which grew from a country store about 1827-28. Both towns lived and then declined with the overland cattle trade before railroads took it away. Today Range Township is a farming community anchored by Midway (also called Sedalia) and Danville.

Settled 1800-01, incorporated 1812-12-07, by erected by the Madison County Commissioners; William M. Linton was the first settler.

Where the name comes from

The commissioners' order of December 7, 1812 simply names the new township "Range"; the 1883 county history does not explain the choice, and the surveyor's range-and-township land-survey terminology is the most likely source, though this is not stated outright in the sources found.

Before the town

No mound, village or camp site specific to Range Township turned up in the sources searched, but the township sits inside the hunting range the 1883 county history describes for the county as a whole: Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware (Lenape) and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) hunters wintered along the Darby creeks, Deer Creek, Paint Creek and Oak Run, and set the prairies afire each fall to keep them open for the chase. Early Range Township settlers arrived only a few years after the Treaty of Greenville (1795) opened this part of Ohio, and the last Native people were reported leaving Madison County about 1820.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1800-01 — William M. Linton, an English-born settler who had lived in Virginia and Ross County, moved to land just south of the future Midway, the first settler within what became Range Township.
2. 1807-08 — Burton Blizzard settled on land bought from William Dunlap at $1 an acre; he later helped survey and lay out the lots of the county seat, London, and served as county commissioner from 1810 to 1839.
3. 1812-12-07 — The Madison County Commissioners formally erected Range Township from the surrounding territory.
4. 1813 — Burton Blizzard and William King became Range Township's first Justices of the Peace.
5. 1833-06-13 — The village of Midway was surveyed, platted and recorded at London, on land owned by William Morris, Frank Thompson and Lockhart Biggs; it took its name from its position roughly halfway between Chicago and Philadelphia on a great cattle-driving road.
6. 1848-10-18 — Danville, which had grown up around a store Daniel Brown opened about 1827-28 on land given by Daniel Counts, was formally laid out and its plat recorded at London; the name honored both founders, who were each named Daniel.
7. 1875 — Midway held two churches, three dry-goods stores, a hotel, a blacksmith shop, a wagon shop and a shoe shop, with a population of about 250.
8. 1876-11-02 — Leanore Lodge No. 512, Free and Accepted Masons, was chartered at Midway.
9. 1881 — Simeon Martin erected a steam grist-mill at Danville, the township's only permanent mill.

Stories

Midway: named for a halfway point on the cattle road

Long before it was a village, the ground where Midway stands lay on a great dirt thoroughfare that carried droves of cattle from the western prairies toward the Eastern markets, and travelers reckoned it as the midpoint between Chicago and Philadelphia. Hotels and stores sprang up to serve the drovers; the 1883 county history counted twenty-four different landlords who had kept the town's main hotel over the years, and recalled seeing as many as two thousand cattle pass over the adjoining Federal Road in a single day before the railroads came. William Morris, Frank Thompson and Lockhart Biggs owned the ground, and the plat was recorded June 13, 1833. When steam railroads replaced the long overland cattle drives, Midway's hotel trade and "palmy days" ended and the town's business turned to farm trade instead.

Two men named Daniel give Danville its name

About 1827 or 1828, a stock dealer named Daniel Brown, who had been buying cattle in the neighborhood and driving them east, asked to open a store at a crossroads owned by Daniel Counts. Counts gave him ground and helped raise a hewed-log store building. When Brown moved on after a few years, he was followed by another trader named Daniel: Joseph Counts's brother, also confusingly remembered in local telling by the name Daniel that both original men shared. Because the town's two founding merchants were both named Daniel, residents began calling the crossroads Danville, and the name stuck when the town was formally platted and recorded in 1848.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Mount Sterling Village56% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mid-ohio WSD - Chrisman Avenue WTP22% of residentsLocal glacial sand-and-gravel wells (Madison County)
• South Solon Village16% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Choctaw Utilities, Inc.4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Sunset Mobile Home Park2% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Green Meadows Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

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.
• Financial Audit, 2021 to 2022, released 2025-07-10

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