South Bloomfield Township, Morrow County

How South Bloomfield Township, Morrow County began

South Bloomfield Township was established in 1817, taking its descriptive name, like its northern namesake elsewhere in the county, from the wildflowers once common on its land. It occupies the county's southeastern corner and includes the village of Sparta, which itself passed through two earlier names, Aaronsburg and Rome, before settling on Sparta in 1837. The township belonged to Knox County until Morrow County's 1848 organization, a change Sparta's own residents reportedly resented at the time because it cut them off from Mount Vernon's trade. Today the township has about 1,770 residents.

Incorporated organized as a township in 1817.

Where the name comes from

Bloomfield is a descriptive name, chosen for the wildflowers once frequent on the township's land; 'South' distinguishes it from North Bloomfield Township in the same county.

Before the town

No Native American site or event specific to South Bloomfield Township was found in the sources searched. The township was part of Knox County before 1848, within the broader Morrow County region where Ohio History Central and the 1880 county history describe Shawnee use of the land for hunting before white settlement. Baskin (1880) adds that rude earth fortifications on Wilbur Barr's land in the southwest, now nearly plowed away, have yielded flint, chert and chalcedony arrow, dart and spear heads, and that in 1818 Sandusky Indians had a temporary camp near where Thomas Orsborn lived; he found no evidence of a permanent village.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Earthworks on the Barr land (earthwork) — southwest South Bloomfield Township, land of Wilbur Barr in 1880, precontact; builders not named in source (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1813 — In autumn the hunters Peter and Nicholas Kile and Enoch Harris, the last a powerfully built Black pioneer whom the county history calls a mulatto, enter the township from Mount Vernon and each choose a quarter-section.
2. 1814-03 — Enoch Harris builds the first log cabin in the township; the Kile brothers and Timothy Smith settle that fall.
3. 1817 — South Bloomfield Township was organized, then part of Knox County.
4. 1817 — The township has sixteen white male inhabitants over twenty-one; there are sixty-nine in 1820.
5. 1818 — Dr. David Bliss, the first physician, and Crandall Rosecrans, father of General William S. Rosecrans, arrive, and Sandusky Indians camp near Thomas Orsborn's.
6. 1821 — John Helt and Matthew Marvin each give half an acre for a burying-ground, which grows to the sixteen-acre Bloomfield Cemetery.
7. 1822 — The Rev. James Smith of Mount Vernon founds a New Light Church society near Sparta, and a Methodist society forms about the same time.
8. 1823 — Thomas Orsborn builds the first corn-mill in the township and a log cabin near Roswell Clark's serves as school and church.
9. 1824 — Aaron Macomber founded a settlement in the township named Aaronsburg, which failed to develop.
10. 1827 — Lemuel Potter lays out a second town, named Rome, across the street from Potter's hill; it too fails.
11. 1833 — A post office is secured at Bloomfield, with Samuel Whitney as first postmaster.
12. 1837 — Surveyor Johnson Stone lays out forty lots on the Columbus road, and the settlement is named Sparta for the Greek city; postal records list the Sparta post office from 1837, while Baskin (1880) dates Dr. A. W. Swetland's appointment as first postmaster to 1838.
13. 1839 — The Methodist Episcopal church at Bloomfield, the oldest church building in the township, is erected.
14. 1845-04-18 — Bloomfield is surveyed and platted by Thomas C. Hickman for Elizur Loveland and Alexander Marvin, in thirteen lots.
15. 1848 — Despite outrage among residents who preferred trading with nearby Mount Vernon in Knox County, South Bloomfield Township and Sparta became part of the newly organized Morrow County.
16. 1870 — Sparta incorporated as a village.
17. 1875 — A company of six men builds the present grist-mill at Sparta for $5,300, in 106 shares of $50.
18. 2020 — The census counts 1,768 people in South Bloomfield Township, 121 of them in Sparta.

Stories

A village with three names

The village now called Sparta took three tries to find a name that stuck. Aaron Macomber first platted it as Aaronsburg in 1824, but the settlement never grew. Lemuel Potter tried again in 1827, naming it Rome after opening a tavern there; that name, too, was abandoned. Only in 1837, when surveyor Johnson Stone laid out forty lots and the village took the name Sparta after the Greek city, did the settlement finally take hold, opening a post office the same year. Along the way, in the 1840s, 'several notorious desperadoes' were said to roam the area -- a detail the local paper still repeats without further explanation.

Two fires, two years apart

Sparta lost much of its commercial block to fire twice in the space of two years. On November 8, 1918, a fire at the Jinkins and Hedge hardware store destroyed the building along with the newly remodeled Knights of Pythias Hall next door. Just over two years later, on December 10, 1920, a second fire broke out in the town hall and spread to destroy the J.D. Vall dry goods store and the Thomas Liggett house, with losses estimated at $20,000, a large sum for a village that had incorporated only fifty years earlier.

Three hunters and a quarter-section each

In autumn 1813 three hunters left Mount Vernon with rifles and pushed west past the last cabin: Peter and Nicholas Kile and Enoch Harris. Entering the future township at the southeast corner, they liked the branch of Dry Creek running among grasses and mosses and the hills crowned with trees in autumn colors, and agreed to settle. Each wanted a quarter-section, so they chose in order of age: Harris, the oldest, took the one with many springs, Nicholas Kile the one with a good mill site on Dry Creek, and Peter Kile the one with walnut groves. Harris cleared ground that winter and in March 1814 raised the first cabin with help from Mount Vernon; within five years he and his family vanished from the record. By 1818 there were twenty-five clearings in the woods.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · morrowcountysentinel.com · en.wikipedia.org · morrow.ohgenweb.org · archive.org · postalhistory.com

Del-Co's East Knox wellfield at Bryant and Lucerne Rds, Wayne Twp, about 5 miles WSW of Fredericktown The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.97% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Fredericktown Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Public schools (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

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