Sterling Township, Brown County

How Sterling Township, Brown County began

Sterling Township was organized as a civil township from Perry and Pike townships on December 7, 1824, in the northern part of Brown County; it originally included the territory that became Green Township, split off by the County Commissioners on December 2, 1834. Hugh McLain, an Irish immigrant who had spent his early career trading across the Atlantic before settling in Ohio in 1796, is credited as the township's first permanent settler around 1798; the families of John Anderson and Moses Leonard, brothers-in-law who traveled together from New Jersey, followed in 1799 or 1800.

Settled c. 1798 (Hugh McLain), incorporated 1824-12-07, by Brown County, from Perry and Pike townships.

Where the name comes from

No documented source for the township's name was found.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound or trail specific to Sterling Township is recorded in the sources checked. The township lies within the 1795 Treaty of Greenville cession and the Virginia Military District.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. c. 1798 — Hugh McLain, an Irish-born former transatlantic trader who had emigrated to Ohio in 1796 and stopped at Columbia for two years, settles on 200 acres in Survey No. 3,343, becoming the township's first permanent settler; he plants two apple trees on the McLain farm around 1800 that still stood in 1883.
2. 1799-1800 — Brothers-in-law John Anderson and Moses Leonard, who had traveled together from New Jersey to Pittsburgh and down the Ohio River, settle on land in the J. Harvie Survey, No. 3,344.
3. 1799-1800 — George Earhart, a German immigrant, settles with his family in the southern part of the township, having landed at Columbia with the Day family before moving to the vicinity of the Andersons.
4. 1804-08-29 — William Winters and Peter Light execute a deed for a church lot at Clover, just across the county line, where many of Sterling Township's pioneer Methodist families -- the Days, Andersons, Trouts and Earharts -- worshiped for decades before churches were built within the township itself.
5. 1812-08-04 — Four men of Capt. Jacob Boerstler's company of riflemen, organized at Williamsburg in April and in service until October 1812, are killed with the captain at the battle of Brownstown; the company drew men from the Sterling neighborhood.
6. 1814 — A schoolhouse stands on the Samuel Boyd farm in the southwestern part of what became Sterling Township, where Leonard Raper teaches; Archibald McLain helps build another about 1824 or 1825, and John Skinner teaches in the north in 1825.
7. 1824-12-07 — Sterling is organized as a civil township from Perry and Pike townships, its original boundaries encompassing what would later become Green Township as well.
8. 1834-12-02 — The County Commissioners equally divide Sterling Township's original territory, forming Green Township from the eastern half.
9. 1845 — The United Brethren congregation on Five-Mile Creek is organized; a neighboring schoolhouse serves as its meeting place until Joseph Brown deeds the church and burial lot on February 2, 1849.
10. 1851 — Archibald McLain and Curtis Wilson build a water-powered sawmill on Todd's Run.
11. 1852 — The De La Palma post office is established with William Weeks as postmaster; others follow in 1878 and on June 23, 1881, in a township that has no village.
12. 1854 — The Salem Methodist society, which had met in a schoolhouse on Archibald McLain's farm from about 1834, builds a one-story brick church on a lot given by Timothy Kirby of Cincinnati.
13. 1866 — John Irwin builds a chair factory on Five Mile Creek near the United Brethren church; in 1870 Stephen Waits builds a sawmill on Crane Run, which burns on the night of August 16, 1871.
14. 1871-06 — Burdsall's Chapel, a one-story brick Methodist church with belfry and bell, is dedicated on the fourth Sunday of June; the congregation had belonged to the Williamsburg Circuit since 1851.
15. 1874 — Taylor Chapel, a Methodist Episcopal church in the center of the township, is organized in the Ross Schoolhouse; its frame church in the south is dedicated August 20, 1882, with 39 members.
16. 1881 — Seven school districts with eight schoolhouses worth $5,000 enroll 422 pupils taught by ten men at about $32 a month; the township spent $2,555.07 on schools in the year.
17. 2020 — The census counts 4,602 people in Sterling Township, part of the village of Mount Orab lying in its southeast.

Stories

A king-bolt that still survives

Hugh McLain's son Archibald drove the Conestoga wagon that carried James Kain's family from Newtown to found Williamsburg in the fall of 1796 -- probably the first such wagon ever used in Clermont County. The trip, following mere bridle paths that often had to be widened into roads, took several days. The 1883 county history notes that the wagon's king-bolt was still in the possession of the McLain family at the time of writing, a physical relic of the earliest overland travel in the region.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · data.census.gov · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org

Five wells in the sand-and-gravel aquifer of the Little Miami River valley at Miamiville, Miami Township The water here

• Mount Orab Village39% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)
• Williamsburg Village36% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Western Water Company17% of residentsLittle Miami River valley wells (51%) plus Cincinnati Ohio River water (49%)
• Tate-monroe Water Association7% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

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