St Paris

How St Paris began

St. Paris, in Johnson Township in western Champaign County, was founded in 1831 by David Huffman, who first called it New Paris after the French capital; learning of another New Paris already in Ohio, he added 'Saint' to keep the mail from going astray, and the village incorporated in 1858. Two railroads reached it in the 1840s and 1850s and turned it into a shipping point for the surrounding farm country, a role it kept until the last line was abandoned in 1983. It holds two National Register buildings from its early-twentieth-century prosperity, the Kiser Mansion and the architecturally unusual Monitor House.

Settled 1797 (first white settlers in the area), platted 1831, incorporated 1858, by David Huffman.

Where the name comes from

Huffman first named his village New Paris, after the French capital. On finding that another Ohio town already carried that name, he prefixed 'Saint' so mail addressed to the two towns would not be confused, giving St. Paris its final name.

Before the town

St. Paris's own Wikipedia article states plainly that the ground it stands on was originally inhabited by Native Americans before white settlement, without naming a specific nation or village at the site itself. The area lies in Johnson Township along the upper Mad River drainage, within the broader region of Shawnee towns and hunting ground before the Treaty of Greenville (1795); no site-specific village, mound, or trail inside the village of St. Paris was found in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1797 — The first white settlers arrived in the area that became St. Paris.
2. 1831 — David Huffman platted the village in Johnson Township, first naming it New Paris and then St. Paris.
3. 1846-1847 — The Columbus and Piqua Railroad was built along the village's southern edge, boosting local commerce.
4. 1858 — St. Paris incorporated as a village.
5. 1859 — The Columbus, Piqua and Indiana Railroad opened on March 25, becoming the chief carrier for the area's agricultural products.
6. 1888-1892 — The post office at Nettleton, a short-lived hamlet between St. Paris and Urbana, operated for four years before closing.
7. 1913 — John and Thyrza Kiser built the Classical Revival Kiser Mansion on East Main Street; the family later donated the building that became the village library and the land that is now Kiser Lake.
8. 1983 — The last successor railroad through St. Paris, by then part of Conrail, was abandoned.

Stories

A house that hides its own history

Sometime around 1860 someone in St. Paris built a brick house with an unusual feature: a raised, windowed clerestory box rising from the center of its roof, a style called a 'monitor house' after the shape of the Civil War ironclad. No record survives of who built it, who designed it, or who lived there first. It is one of only two or three monitor-style houses known anywhere in Ohio, and architectural historians consider it the best-preserved of them, more intact than its nearest cousin, Tanglewood, in Chillicothe. When the National Register of Historic Places began listing Champaign County properties in 1974, the Monitor House on West Main Street was the very first to be added - the county's Register history in effect starts with a building whose own history is a blank.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · gohistoric.com · en.wikipedia.org · roadsidethoughts.com

Every historic place in Champaign County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Saint Paris Village86% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Christiansburg Village10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Grandview Heights Civic Association5% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-08-06

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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