Thompson Township, Seneca County

How Thompson Township, Seneca County began

Thompson Township was established in 1820, the year Seneca County was created, and covers 37.3 square miles in the county's northeastern corner, bordering Sandusky and Huron counties. Its only settlement is Flat Rock, platted in 1841 as Lewisville and renamed for the flat rock layer covering a local artesian aquifer when it got a post office in 1846. The Henny Barn, a farmstead outbuilding east of Flat Rock, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979; otherwise the township's history is that of a small, rural farming community on the county's edge.

Platted 1841 (Flat Rock, as Lewisville), incorporated 1820 (organized), by organized by Seneca County.

Where the name comes from

The specific reasoning behind the township's name was not found in the sources checked; it is one of three Thompson Townships in Ohio (the others in Delaware and Geauga counties). Flat Rock, the township's village, was originally platted as Lewisville in 1841 and renamed Flat Rock in 1846 when its post office opened, for a flat rock formation covering an underground artesian aquifer there.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, trail, or treaty site specific to Thompson Township is documented in the sources checked. The county's historic-era Native history includes the Seneca reservation, which lay well southwest of this township, and the 1831 removal.

• Henny Barn (other) — east of Flat Rock, on County Road 34, section 1 of the township, listed 1979 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1820-05-06 — The township's first election is held at the house of settler Joseph Parmenter; early settlers named alongside him include William and Nathan Whitney, H. Purdy, David, James and Jasper Underhill, James Whitmore, Eli Whitney, Benjamin Clark, Solomon Dimick, Benjamin Murray and A. H. Twiss.
2. 1815 — Firelands-district settlers already know of a cave in what becomes the township's section one, visiting to hunt the rattlesnakes that gave it the name 'Rattle Snake's Den'; the discovery is later credited to George and Henry Hasson, though Lang's history suggests it may first have been found by Lyman and Asa Strong.
3. 1832 — German Catholic settlers in the township's southeastern portion organize a congregation, among the first of that community in Thompson; the parish later builds a church and, per Lang, a convent under the Society of the Precious Blood like the one at New Riegel.
4. 1841 — The settlement later called Flat Rock is platted under the name Lewisville.
5. 1844 — During an especially wet year, the underground stream deep in the township's cave rises 170 feet, to within thirty feet of the surface, the highest recorded rise noted in Lang's account of the cave.
6. 1846 — A post office opens under the name Flat Rock, for the flat rock formation covering a local artesian aquifer, and the community's name changes accordingly.
7. 1979 — The Henny Barn, a farm building east of Flat Rock, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 6.

Stories

Rattle Snake's Den

Thompson Township's best-known natural landmark, per Lang's 1880 county history, was a cave known locally as Rattle Snake's Den, entered through a mouth just six feet long and three feet wide near the south end of the east half of the northwest quarter of section one, about a mile and a half from Bellevue and three-quarters of a mile from Flat Rock. Firelands settlers already knew of it by 1815 and visited to hunt the rattlesnakes that gave the cave its name; a passage descends about thirty feet into darkness and forty feet into a large cavern, where sulphur-tinged water drips from the ceiling and bats hang from the rocks, reviving when carried into sunlight. Around two hundred feet down, the passage meets a cold, slow-moving underground stream whose level rises and falls with the season, cresting 170 feet in the unusually wet year of 1844, within thirty feet of the surface, though no explorer had ever reached its bottom by the time Lang wrote. Lang credits the discovery to George and Henry Hasson but suggests Lyman and Asa Strong may have found it first, and speculates that the surrounding five sunken acres mark where a shaley limestone layer collapsed into a cavity left by an eroded bed of soapstone below.

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

Every historic place in Sandusky County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Bellevue City97% of residentsFrink Run & Berry Creek/Big Ditch runoff (own reservoirs); backup Lake Erie via Erie Co.
• Green Springs Village2% of residentsRaccoon Creek & Beaver Creek Reservoirs (upground, off Sandusky River basin)
• Republic Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

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