Union Township, Highland County

How Union Township, Highland County began

Union Township lies in northwestern Highland County, Ohio, organized as a township by 1809 out of a much larger original tract that also covered parts of present-day Jackson and Washington townships. Its first settler, Thomas Dick, took up land in the Marshall neighborhood, opened a school there and founded the local Presbyterian church. The township's small villages, Sharpsville on Turtle Creek and Fallsville near its border (one source places Fallsville in neighboring Penn Township), both grew up around 19th-century grist mills and both eventually emptied out when the railroads bypassed them. Today it is open farm and pasture country of about 30 square miles with no incorporated municipality inside its boundaries, recorded at 1,969 residents in the 2020 census.

Settled 1802 (a hunter named Adams, on Turtle Creek), incorporated township established July 17, 1809, by a hunter named Adams (first recorded settler).

Where the name comes from

No source found gives a documented reason for the name 'Union.' It is one of twenty-seven townships named Union in Ohio, a common 19th-century township name whose specific local rationale was not recorded in the sources checked.

Before the town

No site-specific Native American history — named villages, trails, mounds, or documented encounters located within present Union Township itself — was found in the sources checked. The township lies within the wider Highland County landscape that includes the Hopewell-era Fort Hill earthwork about ten miles southeast of Hillsboro, and the whole county was opened to Euro-American settlement as part of the land ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795), which ran along a line through central and southern Ohio and ended the war between the United States and the Northwestern Confederacy of Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa, and other nations. Highland County itself was not organized until 1805, a decade after the treaty, from parts of Ross, Adams, and Clermont counties.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa, Hopewell culture.

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio's Virginia Military District region, including the future Highland County, opening the area to Euro-American settlement.
2. 1805 — Highland County is organized from parts of Ross, Adams, and Clermont counties.
3. 1802 — A hunter named Adams builds a five-cornered cabin on Turtle Creek, the first settlement within the present township; he leaves within a year or two. Union Township itself is established on July 17, 1809.
4. 1826 — James Sharp and Margaret (Cloud) Sharp, both Pennsylvania natives, marry in Highland County and settle on Turtle Creek in what becomes Union Township, building a saw mill and grist mill that give the later village of Sharpsville its start.
5. 1848 — John Timberlake plats the town of Fallsville around a grist mill first built in the mid-1820s by Simon and Elizabeth Clouser.
6. 1852 — A post office opens at Sharpsville, serving the mill settlement on Turtle Creek; it closes in 1855.
7. 1893 — Fallsville's last resident dies, ending the settlement after it failed to attract a railroad.

Stories

The mill town on Turtle Creek

James Sharp and his wife Margaret Cloud, both born in Pennsylvania, married in Highland County in 1826 and settled along Turtle Creek in what would become Union Township. James built a saw mill and grist mill on the creek, and the milling operation helped the family build up a 400-acre farm. A small settlement grew around the mills and took the family's name: Sharpsville. It got a post office in 1852, kept it only three years, and supported a Methodist church and a school for a time. The village outlasted its post office by decades, still marked on county atlases into the later 19th century, but it never became more than a mill hamlet. A quarry later worked on the old Sharp property outgrew the village itself, and the Sharps were buried at Mount Olive Cemetery northeast of the town site they founded.

Fallsville: platted for a railroad that never came

In the mid-1820s, farmers Simon and Elizabeth Clouser built a grist mill on the falls that gave Fallsville its name, and for a time it was the only mill for miles around. In 1848 John Timberlake platted a town on the site with three streets and eight houses already standing; more mills, stores, and a quarry followed, and the small community was lively enough to support its own literary society. An 1872 newspaper column predicted a bright future for the place, but the railroad Fallsville needed never arrived, and the anticipated growth never came. A Methodist church went up as late as 1891, a last gesture of confidence, but the town's very last resident died just two years later, in 1893, ending the settlement after forty-five years. By 2018, only scattered house foundations and a rusted water tank remained on the site, along with a local reputation for ghost stories.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• New Vienna Village38% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Lynchburg Village33% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Hillsboro City22% of residentsClear Creek (via Selph Road & Liberty Park Reservoirs)
• Highland County Water Company, Inc.7% of residentsSand-and-gravel aquifer wells (Ross/Highland Co. well fields; local wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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.
• Basic Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-07

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