Washington Township, Hardin County

How Washington Township, Hardin County began

Washington Township, in the northern tier of Hardin County, was organized by the county commissioners in the winter of 1835-36 and named for George Washington. Its first settlers arrived from about 1832, clearing farms out of the Hog Creek Marsh country; its one platted town, North Washington, was laid out in 1852, and a scattered crossroads settlement called Blocktown grew up later around a German Lutheran church in the township's north. Today it is unincorporated farmland home to about 740 people, with the community of Dola at its center.

Settled 1832, incorporated 1835, by organized by the Hardin County commissioners; first settler cabin credited to Andrew Petty, c. 1832-33.

Where the name comes from

Named for George Washington, the first President of the United States, one of forty-three townships of that name in Ohio.

Before the town

No source found names a Wyandot, Shawnee, or other village, camp, or trail specifically within Washington Township; neither the 1883 county history's township chapter nor the modern township article mentions Native people there. Across Hardin County, the Wyandot and Shawnee held this part of northwestern Ohio until the War of 1812 ended Anglo-Indian resistance, and the last Indian village in the county was abandoned by 1817. Hog Creek, which drains the marsh at the heart of the township, keeps a name likely older than the township itself, but no source traces that name to a specific Native-language origin.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1832 — Andrew Petty builds the first cabin in the township but leaves soon after; John Fry, from Pennsylvania, settles the same year.
2. 1835 — The county commissioners organize Washington Township; the first township election is held the following spring at Richard Hamilton's cabin, with eleven voters.
3. 1838 — Wilmot Manson teaches the township's first school, in a log building with a puncheon floor, slab seats, and greased paper for window lights.
4. 1853 — St. John's Lutheran Church, later the anchor of the Blocktown crossroads, is organized with ten founding members.
5. 1852 — North Washington, the township's only platted town, is laid out by Judy Shaw and A. Landis.
6. 1873 — St. John's Lutheran Church builds a frame church building costing about $1,600.
7. 1877 — German immigrants Charles and Elizabeth Block found a crossroads settlement, later called Blocktown, at the intersection of present County Roads 60 and 115, with a general store, blacksmith shop, saw mill, and cider mill.
8. 2020 — Township population is 740.

Stories

Blocktown: a store, a mill, and a church that outlived both

In 1877 Charles Block, a German immigrant, and his wife Elizabeth set up a general store and blacksmith shop at a crossroads in the north of Washington Township, adding a saw mill and a cider mill; Charles served as the local postmaster. Before 1879 the 58-acre parcel that held the mills passed to another German immigrant, William Beach, and his wife Anna. Two schoolhouses served the surrounding farms, and St. John's Lutheran Church, already twenty years old by the time Block arrived (it was organized in 1853-54 and had built a $1,600 frame church in 1873), anchored the little settlement. The Block family moved out of state in the early 1900s and the store and mills faded, but the brick church that eventually replaced the 1873 frame building still stands at the crossroads today, the last visible piece of a settlement that never grew beyond a name.

A marsh drained for farmland

Washington Township sits over part of the Hog Creek Marsh, a wetland that the 1883 county historian's contemporaries were only beginning to tile and drain into cropland; a historical marker on State Route 81 east of the County Road 95 intersection now commemorates the marsh. Early settlers like the Fry family, whose parents Enoch and Mary died of the era's notorious 'milk sickness,' cleared their farms out of this wet, heavily timbered ground by hand, one of the harder pioneering environments in the county.

Photographs

Local history sources: ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · ohioghosttowns.wordpress.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · hardincountyohio.gov

Mostly private wells The water here

• Dunkirk Village63% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Ada Village36% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Hillcrest Estates Mobile Home Court1% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Green Meadow MHP-hancock Co0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Power plants (1)

Public schools (2)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-09-15
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-07-25

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