Union Township, Van Wert County

How Union Township, Van Wert County began

Union Township was struck off from Hoaglin and Tully townships on December 1, 1845, at the petition of a small group of settlers led by Samuel Nestric, who also suggested the township's name. Its first resident, Hercules Kain, built the township's first log house around 1837 or 1838 and was found frozen to death sitting on a log after losing his way on the road home in a rainstorm. The township's documented early history is a record of first elections, land entries, and the kind of pioneer anecdotes -- a wolf hunt, a woman lost for six days in the woods, a bungled bear hunt -- that the county's 1906 historian collected township by township. Part of the village of Scott lies in the township's northwestern corner along the Paulding County border.

Settled c. 1837-1838 (Hercules Kain, first resident, died shortly after settling), incorporated organized as a civil township December 1, 1845, by Van Wert County commissioners, on petition of Samuel Nestric and neighbors.

Where the name comes from

The name 'Union' was suggested by Samuel Nestric, one of the township's organizing petitioners, at the time of its formation in December 1845; no further explanation of his reasoning was located.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound or treaty site specific to Union Township is recorded in the sources checked. The 1906 county history includes H. G. Lehmann's article saying the earliest settlers found many Native bands camping on the county's ridges, among them Sugar Ridge, the Ridge road, from which Hercules Kain strayed in Union Township, and that the Indians were soon crowded off those camping places and left the county; the article's graves and relics, including an English-made tomahawk and a copper kettle, were found on the Stacy and Martin farms near Delphos, not in Union Township. The 1906 history says the county was formed in 1820 out of lands bought from the Indians at the treaty of Wapakoneta in 1818.

• Ridge road (Sugar Ridge) (trail) — the county's ridge road, which ran northwest from Delphos to the Indiana line; Kain's last journey in Union Township began on it near where Dix Church stands, settlers of 1833-36 found Native camps along the ridges (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1820-04-01 — Van Wert County is formed out of lands bought from the Indians at the 1818 treaty of Wapakoneta; its townships, including Union, are cut later.
2. 1833-1836 — Settlers fill the county's ridges, according to H. G. Lehmann in the 1906 history, and crowd the Native bands off their camping grounds there.
3. 1837-1838 — Hercules Kain, the first resident, builds the first log house; he later freezes to death sitting on a log after losing his way in a storm, having left the Ridge road near where Dix Church stands.
4. 1839-12-02 — Tully Township, one of the two townships from which Union is later cut, is struck off by the county commissioners.
5. 1842 — John A. Welch settles in section 25; a falling tree injures his back and he dies after lingering for several months.
6. 1845-12-01 — The county commissioners strike off Township 1 South, Range 2 East from Hoaglin and Tully townships as Union Township, on the petition of Samuel Nestric and others.
7. 1845-12-20 — The first election is held at Samuel Nestric's house; Nestric and Samuel Murphy are elected trustees, O. H. Harvey clerk, Robert Pollock justice of the peace, John Murphy constable and William Harvey assessor.
8. 1850-10-08 — Thirteen qualified electors vote in a township election.
9. 1858 — Bears are plentiful enough in Union and Tully townships that two or three are killed a day.
10. 2020 — The census records 946 residents in Union Township, with part of the village of Scott in its northwest corner.

Stories

A Daring Deed

At an early day two boys, Norman Fish and William Evans, were out hunting when they came to a hollow log in what was called the Frisbie deadening -- known later as the McMillen farm -- and heard something moving inside it. Fish decided to crawl in and investigate, taking his gun with him, and after going some distance he saw two bright eyes in the dark. He fired, then went forward, caught an animal's foot, and pulled out a full-grown wolf. He crawled back in, and the same thing happened a second time, and then a third, bringing out one black wolf and two gray ones in succession, all from the same hollow log. The county's 1906 historian called it 'a good day's work for the boys' -- four dollars a scalp from the county bounty, on top of the pelts themselves, for two boys who had gone looking for nothing more than an afternoon's hunting and crawled out with three wolves.

Lost in the Woods

In the township's early days, a Mrs. Holtrey and her young son Barney went out in the evening to drive up the cows. She found them by their bell and started them toward home, then thought she heard the horses' bell as well and sent Barney on ahead with the cattle while she went to find the horses herself. She lost the sound, tried to turn back, and became bewildered as night came on; rain turned to snow, and she kept walking through the cold because she knew stopping meant freezing. Her family raised the few neighboring settlers with dinner horns and cow bells, and search parties combed the woods all that night and the next day without finding her. Discouraged, most of the searchers concluded she had either perished or wandered into another settlement entirely, but the search continued, and a party going in a different direction finally found her. She told them she had crawled into a hollow tree, said her prayers, and resigned herself to dying there -- until she heard someone shout, and came out to follow the sound. She had been lost for six days and seven nights.

A Bear Hunt

In the fall of 1858, bears were plentiful enough in Union and Tully townships that two or three were killed in a single day, and a young man named Fred Coffin, eager to try his luck, finally talked James Webster into going with him. Around ten o'clock that morning, northwest of C. P. Richey's place, the two sat down on a log to rest -- and a large black bear stopped within about a hundred feet of them. Webster's gun misfired twice; he told Coffin to shoot, and afterward said he noticed Coffin's gun shaking as he fired. The bear only shook its head, showed its teeth, and walked off into the woods. Webster reloaded and followed alone, expecting Coffin to come along behind him, and when he lost the bear's trail he fired his own gun into the air to signal his whereabouts. No answer came. Webster hunted on alone until nightfall, then returned to town to learn that Coffin had given up and gone home before noon -- and that no argument afterward could persuade him to go bear hunting again.

The horse Speiler couldn't afford

Jacob Speiler, a German immigrant settler, lost the two horses that were all he owned while clearing his land, and had no money left to replace them, so he went back to felling trees without a team. James G. Gilliland -- a member of the same family whose recollections fill much of the county's 1906 history -- gave Speiler a horse of his own: an animal with a habit of throwing down fences, but otherwise good and powerful, and it did all of Speiler's farm work for years until he could afford another team of his own. Speiler and his wife wanted badly to repay the favor and offered repeatedly to work it off, but Gilliland, the county historian recorded, 'would never take any pay' -- a small, plainly told story of ordinary neighborliness on a hard frontier, remembered specifically enough that both families' names survived to be printed sixty years later.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Van Wert City78% of residentsTown Creek via two impounding reservoirs
• Convoy Village22% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 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, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-01-08

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