Salt Rock Township, Marion County

How Salt Rock Township, Marion County began

Salt Rock Township lies in the northern part of Marion County, a 24.6-square-mile farming township holding the village of Morral in its northeastern corner. It is the only Salt Rock Township in Ohio. In 1831 the future industrialist and Purdue University benefactor John Purdue, then a young businessman, bought a 160-acre farm here and sold it at a profit within about a year, part of the land speculation typical of Ohio's early settlement period.

Settled 1819, by Ebenezer Roseberry, first settler; Messrs. Vulgamat and Alcott came in 1819.

Where the name comes from

The 1883 county history tells it this way: when the few early settlers met to name the townships, Ebenezer Roseberry related that after wounding a large buck he had stumbled over what he took for a rock, broken off a piece because it looked so white, and found it to be pure salt. The company laughed, and Piatt Bush said that will do, Salt Rock shall be the name; the commissioners adopted it.

Before the town

The 1883 county history records signs of earlier occupation along Little Sandusky Creek: the remains of extensive wigwams, a large amphitheater-shaped tracing, an oblong ditched enclosure 550 paces around on the table-land with openings to the southwest and northeast, and near Morral a circular mound several feet high that early settlers remembered with a hickory tree on top and that had never been disturbed. It also describes a fight between two Indian chiefs witnessed near Carpenter's Cross Roads, and says whites and Indians often hunted together along the creek's springs. The writer's attribution of the earthworks to an unknown past is his own and no culture or date is given. The township lay north of the Greenville Treaty line of 1795.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Wigwam remains and ditched enclosure on Little Sandusky Creek (earthwork) — banks of Little Sandusky Creek, Salt Rock Township, undated; described in 1883 (archive.org)
• Circular mound near Morral (mound) — vicinity of Morral, northeast Salt Rock Township, undated; described in 1883 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville fixed a line closing what became Salt Rock Township to settlement for roughly a generation, part of the county-wide pattern described in the 1883 county history.
2. 1819 — Ebenezer Roseberry, from New Orleans, was the first settler, on the Radnor road about eight miles south of Upper Sandusky; Vulgamat and Alcott came the same year and Ora Bellis, the first merchant, died in 1819 as the township's first death.
3. 1820 — Rosanna Bowser, the township's first birth, was born; her father voted at the first election, held at Roseberry's, after his vote was challenged because he could not testify to his age and said he had a wife and baby.
4. 1821 — Enoch Clark and Mahlon Marsh and family arrived; Clark's entry of 99 acres in the township was among the first lands entered northwest of Big Island.
5. 1823 — The first school was taught at John Green's, the township's first justice of the peace.
6. c. 1825 — At a wedding on the Little Sandusky at Robert Martin's, a band of old soldiers led by Samuel Morral Sr. carried off the chicken pot and the whole brick oven with its pies and cakes and went into camp half a mile down the creek.
7. 1831 — John Purdue, later the principal benefactor of Purdue University, bought a 160-acre farm in Salt Rock Township on March 13, 1831.
8. 1832 — Purdue sold the Salt Rock Township farm at a profit roughly a year after buying it, before he had made his fortune as a merchant in Lafayette, Indiana.
9. 1845-03-23 — After Wyandot County was created, the commissioners reorganized the township, which lost two tiers of sections on its north side to Pitt Township and kept twenty-four sections.
10. 1877 — A post office opened at Morral, in the township's northeastern corner.
11. 1878 — The Free-Will Baptist society of Morral was organized by Rev. L. Johnson; its 35-by-45-foot church, on land given by Samuel Morral, was finished in 1881 at a cost of $1,800 and dedicated in September.
12. 1883 — The township reported 10,614 acres owned, 122,700 bushels of corn and 24,360 pounds of wool; Goose Pond, a 50-acre pond where migrating waterfowl once gathered by the thousand, had long since been drained.
13. 2020 — The census counted 605 residents in the 24.6-square-mile township, 373 of them in Morral.

Stories

A land deal before the fortune

Long before he became the merchant and industrialist whose $150,000 gift and 100 acres of land founded Purdue University in Indiana, John Purdue was a young man testing his luck in Ohio real estate. On March 13, 1831 he bought a 160-acre farm in Salt Rock Township, Marion County. He held it only about a year before selling it at a profit, one small transaction in a career of buying and reselling land and goods that eventually built the fortune he left to education. Purdue never lived in the township for long and no structure tied to him is known to survive there, but the sale is the only documented link between this Marion County farmland and the university that carries his name.

How Salt Rock got its name

The 1883 county history gives the township's name to a hunting yarn. When the first few settlers were gathered to talk over the organization and naming of townships, Ebenezer Roseberry, who liked to enliven such occasions, told how soon after he came he had shot and wounded the biggest buck he ever saw. The deer got away on three legs through the tall grass, and in the chase Roseberry stumbled over what he took to be a rock. It looked so white that he broke off a piece, and, he declared, it was pure salt. The company laughed, and Piatt Bush said that would do, Salt Rock should be the name of the township. The history adds that the name was proposed to the commissioners and adopted, so a trifling and incredible story named one of the county's finest divisions.

The wedding supper that marched away

About 1825, on the banks of the Little Sandusky at Robert Martin's place, a wedding was set for eight o'clock on an October evening. All day pies and cakes had baked in the brick oven on the hillside, and a pot of chicken hung on the crane in the fireplace. Samuel and John Harmon, Samuel Morral Sr., Reuben Johns and other old soldiers came for fun. Just before the ceremony they formed a close line in front of the fireplace to hide it, and Captain Morral slipped behind it, seized the pot, and called Forward, march. The company took comfort that the pies and cakes were still in the oven, but when they went out the oven was gone too. The soldiers had put poles under it and carried it half a mile down the creek, where they went into camp.

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

No water-system data is linked to Salt Rock Township, Marion County's ZIP codes yet.

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 2 of 2 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.

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