Richland Township, Defiance County

How Richland Township, Defiance County began

Richland Township, in the east of Defiance County, was organized in 1824 as part of Henry County, with Pierce Evans, William Kohn and Isaac Braucher as its first trustees, more than two decades before Defiance County existed. Gen. Anthony Wayne's army camped here in 1794 at Camp No. 3, on Section 23, and the Kohn family found its pickets still standing in 1822. Native people, among them Delaware, Ottawa, Potawatomi and Shawnee, lived and camped along the Maumee in the township, and a silver cross, pottery and many relics have been found. The Wabash & Erie Canal brought the village of Independence, laid out about 1838, and left it when the canal was done in 1842. A Methodist class was organized in 1820.

Settled 1822, platted 1838 (Independence), incorporated 1824 (organized as part of Henry County), by Pierce Evans, William Kohn and Isaac Braucher, first trustees.

Where the name comes from

The origin of the name Richland Township is not recorded, and neither is the reason Independence, its vanished village, was so called.

Before the town

Warner's 1883 county history, in the reminiscences of Rinaldo Evans (born 1819, who came with his parents in 1822) and others, records that he found a great many Miami and Ottawa Indians, with many Wyandot and Shawnee hunters, who came to Independence to trade furs and maple sugar. Evans's farm was the site of Indian cabins and of peach and apple trees planted by the French, and in 1855 a plow turned up an Indian silver cross worth six dollars that a chief might have carried two hundred years before; his collection includes pottery of the Mound Builders. The Delawares quartered on the north bank of the Maumee at 'Sulphur Hollow' and camped at Delaware Bend, the Ottawas and Potawatomi encamped on the farm, and the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket probably died in his village on the river bank; the Ottawa chief Oconoxee, of the village of Chartoe in Paulding County, went west in 1838 with the Ottawas, and the Potawatomi left at the same time. Gen. Wayne's army passed over the farm in 1794, and relics of it are found; Camp No. 3 on Section 23 had pickets still standing about forty acres in 1822.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Wyandot, Miami.

• Gen. Wayne's Camp No. 3 (camp) — Section 23, Richland Township, home of William Kohn, 1794 (archive.org)
• Delaware camp at Sulphur Hollow and Delaware Bend (camp) — North bank of the Maumee, about half a mile above the Evans farm, before 1838 (archive.org)
• Indian village site and relics on the Evans farm (village) — Pierce Evans farm on the Maumee, about a mile and a quarter below Defiance on the north bank, before 1838; relics of earlier cultures (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1794 — Gen. Anthony Wayne's army camps in the township on its march to the Maumee: Camp No. 3, on Section 23, where Wayne's pickets still stood over some forty acres in 1822, and relics and guns of the expedition are still turned up.
2. 1820 — A Methodist class is organized; the first church building in the township, put up in 1824, is the Methodist Episcopal, with Mr. Pettit as first preacher.
3. 1822 — Pierce Evans, from Fayette County, settles in the fall and William Kohn's family arrives at Camp No. 3; Kohn's cabin stands in the old army pickets. Samuel Kohn recalls pickets and a rock cut with the name of the Ottawa leader Turkey Foot.
4. 1824 — Richland Township is organized as part of Henry County, more than two decades before Defiance County is created.
5. 1824 — Isaac Braucher marries Mary Washburn on December 10; he later helps build the first schoolhouse in Defiance, on the east bank of the Maumee at the foot of Perry Street, where William Soman teaches. Richland is organized with Evans, Kohn and Braucher as trustees and Henry Markel as clerk.
6. 1837 — Excavation of the Wabash and Erie Canal begins near the township.
7. 1838 — Foreman Evans of Defiance lays out the village of Independence; Edward Hughes lays out its west part.
8. 1838-1840 — A canal dam is built about a mile below Independence, costing the state roughly $130,000.
9. 1838 — The Ottawa chief Oconoxee leaves for the West with the Ottawas, and the Potawatomi leave at the same time; Independence is laid out and the canal dam begun that year.
10. 1842 — The Wabash and Erie Canal is completed through the area; Captain McMahan runs the first boat that fall.
11. 1855 — Rinaldo Evans plows up an Indian silver cross on his farm, valued at six dollars and thought two hundred years old.
12. 1873 — Fort Defiance Grange No. 267 is organized at Independence on December 13 by Deputy State Master W. F. Williams with forty members, equally men and women; Albert Elliott is the first Master. It is the oldest grange in the county.
13. 1877 — The Lutherans and United Brethren build a church used jointly, split into northern and southern congregations by the river, about this year.

Stories

Independence: a village the canal built and then bypassed

About 1838, Foreman Evans of Defiance laid out a village on the Maumee in what is now Richland Township and named it Independence; a local man, Edward Hughes, laid out its western half. For about a year the new town prospered, riding the construction boom of the Wabash and Erie Canal, whose builders were digging a dam roughly a mile downstream between 1838 and 1840 at a cost to the state of some $130,000, funded by selling off alternating sections of public land along the canal route. The first business men were C. J. Freedy, who built a hotel, and merchant Benjamin Weidenhamer, and the canal's first boat, run by Captain McMahan, passed through in the fall of 1842. But the boom Independence was built on moved on without it: by the time the 1883 county history was written, the village had "gradually went to decay, and is now an open field," with perhaps thirty houses still standing where a town once expected a lasting future.

Camp No. 3 and the Evans farm

Gen. Anthony Wayne's army passed through Richland Township in 1794 on its march to the Maumee, and one of its camps, Camp No. 3, lay on Section 23. When the Kohn family came to Ohio in 1821 and moved in 1822 to that spot they found the army's pickets still standing around some forty acres, and William Kohn built his home there; Samuel Kohn recalled that a rock was cut with the name of the Ottawa leader Turkey Foot in memory of the chief. Pierce Evans, who came the same year from Fayette County, had a farm about a mile and a quarter below Defiance on the Maumee that had been a village site of Native people. Warner's county history records that his son Rinaldo found peach and apple trees planted by the French, plowed up an Indian silver cross in 1855 and gathered a fine collection of Mound Builder pottery. Rinaldo said that Delawares, Ottawas and Potawatomi had camped there, that the Delawares' camp at Sulphur Hollow was possibly connected with the burning of Col. William Crawford by Captain Pipe, and that many guns from Wayne's expedition had been picked up in the fields.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Defiance City89% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Holgate Village5% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Ayersville Water and Sewer District3% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Christi Water System Inc2% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Brunersburg Wd - Brunersburg1% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)
• Brunersburg Wd - Airport0% of residentsMaumee River (via 74-acre upground reservoir)

Fire and EMS stations (2)

Superfund sites (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (12)

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 2024-12-31

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