Seneca Township, Seneca County

How Seneca Township, Seneca County began

Seneca Township, in the southwestern corner of Seneca County, was surveyed in 1820 as Township 1 North, Range 14 East and offered for sale in 1821. When Sandusky County's commissioners set it off on May 8, 1820, as Seneca Township, it covered almost the whole of the present county; Clinton, Eden, Bloom, Scipio, Hopewell and finally Big Spring were detached between 1820 and 1833 until the township reached its present 36 square miles of mostly flat farmland. It holds Berwick, surveyed in 1845 and named for Berwick, Pennsylvania, and the Catholic settlement at McCutchenville, and within its limits lay most of the 640-acre grant to the Wyandot woman Catharine Walker and her son John, made by the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids. The population was 1,519 by the 1880 census (1,537 in another count) and has no incorporated municipality of its own.

Incorporated 1820 (organized), by organized by Seneca County.

Where the name comes from

Named, like the county itself, for the Seneca of Sandusky, whose reservation occupied territory not far to the east and north.

Before the town

Unlike most of the county's western townships, Seneca Township holds a documented individual Native land grant: Lang's 1880 history records a 640-acre section here given to Catharine Walker, a Wyandot woman, and her son John Walker, who had been wounded in United States service, secured to them at the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids (at the foot of the Maumee River's rapids, in present Lucas County). The grant lay mostly within Seneca Township's present limits, directly west of the Van Meter section; Lang, who knew Catharine and another son, William Walker, when they later kept a store in Upper Sandusky, records that Judge Lugenbeel bought a large part of the section once the Walkers sold it. The township otherwise lies southwest of the Seneca of Sandusky reservation that occupied Clinton, Scipio, Adams and Seneca County's own Seneca-named townships from 1817 to 1831-32. That reservation's history includes the 1828 killing of chief Seneca John and the 1831 removal treaty.

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

• Catharine and John Walker land grant (other) — a 640-acre section in Seneca Township, directly west of the Van Meter section, granted 1817 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1817 — A 640-acre section in the township is granted at the Treaty of the Maumee Rapids to Catharine Walker, a Wyandot woman, and her son John Walker, wounded in U.S. service.
2. 1820 — J. T. Worthington surveys Township 1 North, Range 14 East for the United States; the land is offered for sale in 1821.
3. 1820-05-08 — The commissioners of Sandusky County set off Seneca Township, comprising almost the whole of present Seneca County except the reservations and Thompson Township.
4. 1820-06-01 — The township's first election is held on Monday, June 1, 1820, while Seneca County is still part of Sandusky County; twenty-six votes are cast that fall across what was then most of the future county.
5. 1821-06 — Eden Township is detached from Seneca Township; Clinton had been detached in June 1820.
6. 1822 — The tax duplicate lists about fifty property owners, including Erastus Bowe, Abner Pike, Paul D. Butler and David Smith, mostly from Fort Ball, Tiffin and Fort Seneca rather than settlers within the present township.
7. 1823 — William Arnold and his wife settle near McCutchenville from Frederick County, Maryland; when their first child is born they must carry the baby to Lancaster, Ohio, to be baptized, and the family later helps establish the Catholic church at McCutchenville.
8. 1824-06 — Bloom Township is detached from Seneca Township in June, and Scipio and Hopewell in December, when Seneca Township is reorganized as the present township plus Big Spring.
9. 1829 — The Walkers sell the 640-acre grant to Judge Lugenbeel and others and move to Upper Sandusky to keep a store.
10. 1833-03 — Big Spring Township is detached from Seneca Township.
11. 1833-12 — A school-building bee raises and completes the first schoolhouse in a single day.
12. 1838-05-26 — Trustees John Davidson, John Larkins and Andrew Bolin lay out nine school districts.
13. 1841-05 — At a dance following a logging bee, settler Francis Joseph Hirt fatally stabs neighbor John Feck; Hirt is jailed in Tiffin's log jail but escapes to Canada before trial.
14. 1845-04-15 — Henry F. Kaestner, William Brinkerhoff and John Campbell have the town of Berwick surveyed on section nineteen, the township's only village, named by Campbell for his hometown of Berwick, Pennsylvania; it becomes a station on the Cincinnati, Sandusky & Cleveland railroad eight miles from Tiffin.
15. 1850 — A church is established at Berwick by Rev. F. Wahl; its members and pastors are identified with the Salem Church.
16. 1861-12-15 — The German United Evangelical Seneca Jerusalem Church, a brick building inside its cemetery, is dedicated.
17. 1864-04-02 — The South Bend Cemetery Association is founded by John Kerr, J. H. Brinkerhoff and others to take over the old burying ground on the James Starkey farm.
18. 1880 — The township's population is 1,537 (another count gives 1,519), down slightly from 1,580 in 1870 after rising from about 1,369 in 1830 and 1,393 in 1840.
19. 1884 — The township has twelve schoolhouses worth $17,600, 436 pupils enrolled and twenty-four teachers.

Stories

The logging-bee killing and its long aftermath

In the spring of 1841, at a dance held after a neighborhood logging bee in Seneca Township, a boisterous Francis Joseph Hirt was confronted by others trying to calm him and, in the scuffle, stabbed fellow settler John Feck in the stomach with a pocket-knife; Feck died of the wound soon after, and Hirt's bloody knife was later found hidden behind a chest in the room. Arrested and held in Tiffin's old log jail, which had survived the courthouse fire only days earlier, Hirt broke out before trial and fled to Canada, where he lived for years while his wife, a devout woman, took ownership of his property through the courts and settled near her church in New Riegel. Hirt eventually persuaded her by letter to sell that property and join him in Iowa City; she went, but was so horrified to see him again that she refused to live with him and bought her own house nearby. One afternoon, finding her and her mother alone, Hirt shot both women dead, and, by the account Lang records, set the house on fire and hanged himself.

The baby carried to Lancaster

William Arnold and his wife settled near McCutchenville in 1823, coming from Frederick County, Maryland. Their first child was born in the township, and the family had to carry the baby all the way to Lancaster, Ohio, to be baptized. A few years later the Arnolds took a leading part in the establishment of the Catholic church of McCutchenville. Their experience was typical of the township's first decade, when Seneca Township still stretched across most of the county and the nearest church, mill or court was at Fort Ball or Tiffin, and a schoolhouse, when it finally came in December 1833, was raised and finished by a bee in a single day.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Tiffin100% of residentsSandusky River

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-09

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