Taylor Township, Union County

How Taylor Township, Union County began

Taylor Township was the last of Union County's fourteen townships to be formed, organized on December 5, 1849 out of land taken from York, Liberty and Leesburg townships. Its only real village is Broadway, surveyed in August 1865 along the newly built Atlantic & Great Western Railroad; the surrounding forest gave the young settlement its first industry, and by 1877 Broadway held a spoke-and-hub factory, several stores, two blacksmith shops, a school and a church. Taylor Township remains unincorporated farm and woodland country between Marysville and the Logan County line.

Platted 1865 (Broadway), incorporated 1849-12-05.

Where the name comes from

No source found explains why Taylor Township was given its name; formed in 1849, the year after Zachary Taylor's election as President, it may honor him as many Ohio townships of the period did, but no source we read confirms it.

Before the town

No mound, village or trail specific to Taylor Township has turned up in the sources checked; the earliest recorded land surveys here date to 1799, and the township itself was not organized until 1849, decades after Native American land title in this part of Union County passed to the United States. The county lay within territory used by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Miami and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga); the Greenville Treaty Line of 1795 runs through Union County, and Jonathan Alder, taken captive as a boy by the Mingo and Shawnee, later settled a few miles away in Jerome Township in the same county.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Miami, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1799 — The earliest land surveys in what became Taylor Township were run.
2. 1829 — Adam Shirk, a Virginia-born War of 1812 veteran who came to Union County in 1822 and first settled in Liberty Township, makes a settlement in Taylor Township and lives there until 1876; he is thought one of the earliest settlers, though the first settler cannot be traced.
3. 1832 — Robert Maskill, Richard Judy (later the first assessor) and James Irwin (the first township treasurer) settle about this year; the first band of settlers clusters along Mill Creek in the southeast, with John McNeal also arriving from Ross County.
4. 1838 — Vermonters Robert G. Greene and Gideon Draper settle, Greene on Mill Creek near James Hamilton's place; Samuel Wheeler (1836-37) had settled in the 'Cotton Slash,' a flat named for its cottonwood trees.
5. 1849 — Taylor Township was organized on December 5, the fourteenth and last township formed in Union County, from parts of York, Liberty and Leesburg townships.
6. 1849-12-05 — The county commissioners, on R. L. Judy's petition, form Taylor Township on December 5; it is the last of Union County's townships.
7. 1850-04-01 — The first township election is held on April 1 at 'Scott's schoolhouse,' an old log building, and chooses Otway Curry and Cornelius S. Hamilton as delegates to the Ohio constitutional convention for the Marion, Union, Logan and Hardin district.
8. 1854 — Thomas and James Yearsley build the township's first mill, a steam sawmill west of the later Broadway, with a corn-cracker attached; it cut most of the lumber for the first settlers until it closed in 1869.
9. 1863 — H. P. Goff and partners plat a village called Union Center a mile east of the later Broadway site; little was built there, and the county history guesses its founders had county-seat visions.
10. 1864 — The first house and store on the future Broadway town site were built near the newly completed railroad grade.
11. 1864-03-31 — The first train runs through Broadway on March 31; Peleg Cranston opens the first store, in a frame house south of the railroad, in December.
12. 1865 — A town was surveyed by deputy surveyor A. S. Mowry about a mile west of the proposed site of Union Center in August, and the plat was recorded with the county on September 1 as Broadway, laid out along the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad.
13. 1865-08-15 — L. C. Pooler and Leonard Richey have Broadway surveyed and platted on August 15 and 16 by deputy county surveyor A. S. Mowry; Cranston is appointed postmaster December 27 and the first post office in the township, at Taylor Center on the Kenton and Marysville pike, is discontinued.
14. 1877 — By this date Broadway held a spoke and hub factory, four dry goods and grocery stores, two drug stores, a grain warehouse, two blacksmith shops, a boot and shoe shop, a school-house and a meeting house.
15. 1910 — The township has 1,088 residents, 390 of them in Broadway; by 1914 Broadway has Methodist Episcopal and Baptist churches, an Odd Fellows lodge, a drain tile factory and a township house.
16. 2020 — The census counts 1,516 people in the township.

Stories

A railroad town built on the timber around it

Broadway was among the youngest villages in Union County, and it owed its start entirely to the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad. A house and store went up near the new grade in 1864, and the following August deputy surveyor A. S. Mowry laid out a formal town a mile west of the spot first proposed for a settlement called Union Center; the plat was recorded on September 1, 1865. The heavy forest that still covered much of Taylor Township at the time became Broadway's first business: timber cut from the surrounding woods fed a spoke-and-hub factory that turned out wagon parts, and the young town filled in quickly around it with dry goods and grocery stores, two drug stores, a grain warehouse, blacksmith and boot shops, a school and a meeting house, all within about a dozen years of the first survey stake.

Union Center, the town that wanted the courthouse

In the autumn of 1863 H. P. Goff, Hiram Danforth, Ira A. Robins and Charles J. Sayre platted a village on survey 829, a mile east of where Broadway would soon stand, and called it Union Center. The county history says there was never much building done and no business house was ever put up; the name, and the central position of Taylor Township in the middle of the county, suggest the proprietors had the county seat in mind. The railroad ended their hopes: the Atlantic & Great Western ran its first train through Broadway on March 31, 1864, Peleg Cranston opened a store beside it that December, and L. C. Pooler and Leonard Richey had Broadway platted in August 1865. Broadway took the post office, which had stood at Taylor Center on the old Kenton and Marysville pike, and went ahead as what the county history called a sprightly business town; Union Center stayed a paper plat.

Photographs

Local history sources: web.archive.org · uccogs.org · uccogs.org · en.wikipedia.org · heritagepursuit.com · en.wikipedia.org · remarkableohio.org · uccogs.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Marysville City93% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells
• Richwood Village6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.0% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Milford Center Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 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 2025-12-30

Cite this page