Sugar Creek Township, Putnam County

How Sugar Creek Township, Putnam County began

Sugar Creek Township, in southern Putnam County, was surveyed in 1820 by James Riley, first settled in 1828 by Robert Martin and Solomon Sprague on Hog Creek, and named for the Sugar Creek that flows through it. It holds two unincorporated communities, Rimer -- originally called Roxburg -- in the west and Vaughnsville, formed from the merger of two adjoining 1847 plats, in the south, but no incorporated village.

Settled 1828, incorporated 1830s (organized), by Robert Martin and Solomon Sprague, first settlers.

Where the name comes from

Named after the Sugar Creek, which flows through the township.

Before the town

No Native American site or village specific to Sugar Creek Township was located in the sources checked.

Timeline

1. 1820 — Sugar Creek Township is surveyed by James Riley.
2. 1828 — Robert Martin and Solomon Sprague make the first settlement, on Hog Creek in the township's southern part.
3. 1830 — William Clevenger takes up a claim near the future site of Vaughnsville, soon joined by four Clevenger brothers; the following year they build the Clevenger mill, thought by many old settlers to be the first grist-mill in the county.
4. 1832 — Peter Rhodes builds the first saw-mill in the county.
5. 1847 — Eli Clevenger plats the town of Monterey south of what is now the Vaughnsville-Columbus Grove road, while D. C. Vaughn plats Vaughnsville north of it the same year; the two adjoining plats eventually merge under the Vaughnsville name.
6. 1881 — James W. Rimer lays out the town of Rimer, originally called Roxburg, for proprietor D. P. Rimer on the east bank of the Ottawa river; it is later renamed for its owner.
7. 1882 — A post office called Rimer opens; it operates until 1916.
8. 1890 — Jones City is platted at the intersection of the Northern railroad and the Ohio Electric line, laid out for R. W. and Ella Jones by surveyor Evan H. Jones, from whom it takes its name.
9. 1905 — The Center Point Agricultural Society forms after twenty township farmers pool funds to buy a huller to save an oversized clover-seed crop, later expanding into cooperative grain buying and selling.

Stories

One Road, Two Plats, One Town

Vaughnsville exists because two different men platted two adjoining pieces of the same crossroads in the same year. In 1847 Eli Clevenger laid out a town called Monterey on the land south of what became the Vaughnsville-Columbus Grove road, while D. C. Vaughn platted the land immediately north of that same road and called his plat Vaughnsville. For a time the settlement carried both names depending on which side of the road one stood, but the Monterey name gradually fell out of use and Vaughnsville absorbed both plats into a single village. It has never incorporated -- the county's 1915 historian noted it saw no need for corporate government, being content as a trading point for the township's prosperous farmers -- yet it built a consolidated high school and kept a bank, an elevator and a saw-mill, all without ever becoming more than an unincorporated crossroads with two founding names instead of one.

A Clover Crop Too Big to Waste

The Center Point Agricultural Society began, in 1905, as an emergency. Sugar Creek Township's farmers had brought in an enormous crop of clover seed that fall, far more than anyone locally had the equipment to hull, and with winter coming on it looked as though the whole crop would go to waste. Twenty farmers pooled their money, bought a huller together, and saved the seed. The experiment worked well enough that the group kept going, applying the same cooperative principle first to harvesting grain and then to buying provisions and selling crops in bulk. They wrote a constitution and adopted by-laws, careful to describe themselves as neither an incorporated company nor a secret society, just neighbors voting each other into membership. Their stated aim, as recorded by the county's historian, was as much social as economic: "to promulgate a helpful, sociable and friendly feeling among its members" while saving money by buying in quantity -- and, they insisted, without trying to put the small-town dealer out of business in the process.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Columbus Grove Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Ottoville Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-02

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