Sugar Creek Township, Stark County

How Sugar Creek Township, Stark County began

Sugar Creek Township in the southwest corner of Stark County takes its name from Sugar Creek, which drains most of it. It was part of Canton Township until the county commissioners erected it as a separate township on March 4, 1816, with the first election at Adam Grounds's house. Jacob Grounds, who came in 1808 and built a cabin on a tract of sugar maples, is called the first permanent settler, and Joshua Carr came in 1810. Henry Willard built a grist mill on the creek in 1810, around which Beach City grew as Willard's Mills and later Bell's Mills; Plainsburg and Justus Station developed later, and Brewster became a Wheeling & Lake Erie shop town after 1910. The township counted 492 residents in 1820, 1,263 in 1830 and 6,547 in 2020.

Settled 1808, incorporated March 4, 1816 (set off from Canton Township), by Jacob Grounds, first permanent settler; Stark County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

Perrin's 1881 county history says the township takes its name from the stream that drains the greater part of it, Sugar Creek.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or treaty site specific to Sugar Creek Township is documented in the sources consulted. The township lies in the area of Stark County ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1808 — Jacob Grounds, an educated Easterner, builds a log cabin on a tract of sugar maples (the Truby farm) just after the township is surveyed; neighbors from Kendal, Canton and New Philadelphia raise it, and the family lives in solitude for eighteen months.
2. 1810 — Joshua Carr settles in the north of the township, the second settler, and Samuel Hale follows; Henry Willard builds a two-story frame grist mill with a breast-wheel and two sets of millstones on Sugar Creek.
3. 1812 — Barbara Poyser, daughter of Joseph Poyser, dies in the summer and is buried on the Poyser farm, the first death in the township.
4. 1813 — On April 18 John Reed, son of Jacob, marries Mary Poyser before William Henry, Esq., the first marriage in the township; the first birth, Jacob Poyser's, comes the same year.
5. 1816 — On March 4 the Stark County commissioners erect the part of Range 10 south of Township 12 into Sugar Creek Township, with the first election at Adam Grounds's residence on the first Monday of April; Calvin Brewster is elected justice of the peace and Joseph Poyser constable.
6. 1820 — The township's population is recorded at 492 residents.
7. 1823 — By about this year almost all the land in the township has been entered, after slow arrivals until about 1815.
8. 1829 — The community later known as Winesburg (originally Weinsberg, after a town in Germany) is founded near the township's western edge.
9. 1830 — The township's population reaches 1,263, a 156.7 percent increase over 1820.
10. 1830 — P. V. Bell takes over Willard's mill about this time, opens a store with some $300 in goods and adds a carding, spinning and weaving department; the settlement is then called Bell's Mills, later Beach City.
11. 1836 — The village later renamed Wilmot is laid out under the name Milton.
12. 1881 — Perrin says four villages had sprung up, among them Justus Station, begun when the Tuscarawas Valley & Wheeling Railroad was completed about nine or ten years earlier; Plainsburg, first Stambaughtown and briefly 'Slabtown'; and Beach City; he also notes seven distilleries once operated in the township.
13. 1890 — The township's population reaches an early peak of 2,782 residents before a slight decline and later 20th-century recovery.
14. 1910 — The Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad establishes shops at Brewster, within the township, becoming one of its major employers.

Stories

Treed by the hogs

Swine let loose in the woods of Sugar Creek Township in the early years ran wild, fattened on mast to as much as 500 pounds, grew tusks said to be six inches long, and were nearly as hard to kill as deer. Perrin's history, drawing on Mr. Agler of Beach City, whose father was an early settler, tells how William Smoyer, an eccentric old bachelor who owned a great many of them, went into the woods one day with Henry Wyant to shoot several of his fattest. A large herd with bristles up and mouths open charged the two men, who ran in circles until they were tired out and then had to climb trees, dropping their guns. They sat in the branches all night, afraid to come down among the surging animals, until the hogs left for their feeding grounds about breakfast time. Their guns were found trampled and bitten. Afterward the settlers built a large pen with a corn bait and a trap door and shot the hogs once they were caged.

A wagon for two oxen and two families

Henry Wyant and William Agler each owned a single ox, and as a joke the two men hitched the animals together; for years the team served both families. A large tree was cut down and four solid wheels were sawed from it, with holes in the center for the heavy axles and tires of strong bark fastened round the edges; the front axle had a stout tongue, the hind and fore wheels were coupled, and a rough wagon bed was set on top. Perrin offers the shared wagon as only one of many such devices of the settlers' early years, a period he says of roads that were bottomless in wet seasons, streams that swept away their bridges, and weeks without bread. Agler's son remembered his mother pounding corn to bake cake in the ashes as the family's only food for a meal.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Navarre Village38% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Beach City Village32% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Lake Sherman Village8% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Brewster Village7% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Massillon6% of residentsWells in Tuscarawas Valley sand & gravel aquifer
• Canton Public Water System6% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Wilmot Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mount Eaton Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Winesburg Area Development Corporation0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Tcmsd-dundee0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Private schools (4)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-11-06

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