Tate Township, Clermont County

• East Fork LakeBuilt 1978 · 2160 acres

How Tate Township, Clermont County began

Tate Township, the largest in Clermont County at nearly 29,000 acres, was erected from Williamsburgh Township in 1805 along the Brown County line. Its first and most consequential settler was Obed Denham, a Virginia-born opponent of slavery who bought 1,500 acres at Bethel in 1797 and moved there directly from Kentucky rather than raise a family under a slave economy. The township's most nationally significant resident was Thomas Morris, a Bethel lawyer who served one term as a United States Senator from Ohio (1833-1839), was denied re-election for his outspoken anti-slavery convictions, and ran for vice president on the abolitionist Liberty Party ticket in 1844, dying on his farm near Bantam that December.

Settled 1797, incorporated 1805, by Obed Denham, first settler at Bethel (1797); township erected from Williamsburgh Township, 1805.

Where the name comes from

No source we consulted states who or what Tate Township is named for; the 1880 county history records the township's 1805 erection from Williamsburgh Township without explaining the choice of name.

Before the town

No mound, earthwork or documented historic-era Native village, encounter or battle specific to Tate Township was found in the sources searched. The 1880 county history's chapter on the township, covering its pioneer settlement from 1797 onward around Bethel, does not mention Native residents or conflict at the time of settlement, two years after the Treaty of Greenville cession. The township lies within the East Fork of the Little Miami's drainage, the same general area where the Shawnee held the county's eastern reaches before 1795. That wider context includes the 1792 Battle of Grassy Run in neighboring Jackson Township and the Wyandot camp that persisted near Grassy Run until 1811.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1797 — Obed Denham, a Virginia-born opponent of slavery who came directly from Kentucky, buys 1,500 acres and settles at Bethel, becoming the township's first documented settler.
2. 1797 — Kelley Burke and his wife Sarah, married in Kentucky three years earlier, settle near Bethel's old cemetery; Burke becomes one of the first deacons of the Bethel Baptist Church.
3. 1800 — Houton Clarke, an English-born former Kentucky resident who had come to Tate before 1800, opens the first licensed tavern in Bethel.
4. 1804 — Thomas Morris, a Pennsylvania-born lawyer who had settled at Columbia and then Williamsburgh, moves to Tate Township; two of his brothers, Benjamin and John, follow him into the township the same and following years.
5. 1805 — Tate Township is erected from Williamsburgh Township, becoming the largest township in Clermont County.
6. 1833 — March 4: Thomas Morris of Bethel takes his seat as a United States Senator from Ohio.
7. 1839 — The Ohio legislature denies Morris re-election to the Senate over his outspoken anti-slavery convictions, a stand historian Eric Foner later called making him "the first political martyr of the anti-slavery cause."
8. 1844 — The Liberty Party nominates Morris for vice president alongside presidential candidate James G. Birney; Morris dies on his farm near Bantam on December 7, the same year.
9. 1978 — August 11: the Bethel Methodist Church, one mile north of Bantam on Elk Lick Road, is added to the National Register of Historic Places.
10. 1976 — June 22: the Salt House, southwest of Bethel on State Route 222, is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

The senator who would not bend

Thomas Morris moved his family to Tate Township in 1804, already an established lawyer with a practice built up first in Columbia and then in Williamsburgh. He built a long career in Ohio politics, rising in 1833 to a seat in the United States Senate as a Jacksonian Democrat -- a considerable achievement for a lawyer from a small Clermont County township. But Morris's convictions on slavery, formed in a county where fellow settler Obed Denham had moved his own family out of Kentucky expressly to avoid raising children under a slave economy, hardened into open abolitionism during his Senate term, at a time when few national politicians of either party would say the word publicly. His party turned on him: in January 1840 Ohio Democrats formally expelled him, condemning him in print as "a rotten branch that should be lopped off," and the legislature declined to send him back to Washington. Morris did not retreat. In 1844 the Liberty Party, the country's first avowedly abolitionist political party, nominated him for vice president alongside James G. Birney; the ticket finished a distant third behind the Democratic and Whig candidates, but it marked one of the first national campaigns run explicitly against slavery. Morris died on his farm near Bantam that December, within the township he had represented, in body if not in office, for forty years.

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

Every historic place in Clermont County on the full map

Eleven vertical wells and one collector well in the Ohio River valley aquifer at Clermontville and Moscow The water here

• Tate-monroe Water Association61% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Bethel Village33% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (collector/vertical wells)
• Hamersville Village2% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Felicity Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• New Richmond Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Brown County Rural Water0% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Mount Orab Village0% of residentsSterling Run (reservoirs)
• Clermont Public Water System0% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers
• Robin Grays0% of residentsWilliam H. Harsha Lake plus wells in the Little Miami River and Ohio River aquifers

Public schools (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 2 of 2 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.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2026-07-07

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