Washington Township, Lucas County

• Toledo and PerrysburgNearly tied at 1,222 and 1,041 people in 1840, two Maumee River towns split into a glass-making city and a growing suburb. How it happened, from Fallen Timbers to 2020.

How Washington Township, Lucas County began

Washington Township organized in 1840, its first officials elected at Benjamin Mallett's house on June 27 of that year, and once covered perhaps thirty square miles, stretching from Maumee Bay to Talmadge Road. Toledo's growth steadily consumed it: the city annexed the township's Point Place area in 1937, promising paved roads and better policing against the bootlegging and gambling then troubling the district, and absorbed most of the rest piecemeal through the 1960s over the objections of residents who fought and lost seven separate incorporation or annexation votes between 1947 and 1961, including a 1958 bid to found an industrial Village of Greenwood that fell 1,386 to 970. What survives today is two disconnected sections, Alexis Place and Shoreland, with roughly 3,600 residents; the Washington Local School District still exists because the township does.

Incorporated organized 1840; first officers elected June 27, 1840 at Benjamin Mallett's house, by Benjamin Mallett and fellow township organizers.

Where the name comes from

The reason for the township's name is not recorded; Washington is a common township name in Ohio.

Before the town

Waggoner's 1888 history gives two glimpses of the Native presence in what became Washington Township. Before the public lands outside the Twelve-Mile Square Reserve were surveyed, William Sibley settled on Half-Way Creek in the north of the township, got into trouble with the Indians, his only neighbors, and was wounded in a way from which he never fully recovered. In the 1830s, when Cyrus Fisher's block-house tavern and store at Tremainesville was the only post office between Vienna and Maumee, some 1,500 or more Indians lived on the two reservations on the north side of the river and traded there until they sold out and left for the far West. The history does not name the nations or the reservations. No mound or earthwork in the township is documented in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1817 — Major Coleman I. Keeler arrives from Onondaga County, New York, with his large family and later settles on the northwest quarter of section 26.
2. 1824 — Major Noah A. Whitney, an iron manufacturer from Onondaga County, buys land and moves his family of ten children into a large block-house in the fall.
3. 1829 — Cyrus Fisher builds a block-house on the Territorial Road and opens a tavern and store, the first store in the territory of the township and the only house of entertainment between the Bay Settlement and Hubbard's at Miami.
4. 1832 — Calvin Tremaine succeeds Fisher as storekeeper and postmaster; in January 1833 the office is renamed Tremainesville as the distributing office for Port Lawrence and Vistula.
5. 1834 — Morgan L. Collins and later John W. Collins join Sanford L. Collins; the Collins brothers build a tavern at the corner of Manhattan Road and the Turnpike, which burns in 1848.
6. 1840-06-27 — Washington Township's first officials are elected at the house of Benjamin Mallett.
7. 1873 — Auburndale, west of the Detroit and Toledo Railroad and between Monroe and Bancroft streets, is platted in October by Amasa Bishop with 171 lots.
8. 1937 — Toledo annexes the township's Point Place area, citing paved roads, sidewalks, city services and stronger policing against Prohibition-era bootlegging and gambling as the case for annexation.
9. 1958 — Voters reject, 1,386 to 970, a proposal to incorporate about half the township -- including its General Mills, Chevrolet transmission, Toledo Scale, AP Parts, Doehler-Jarvis and DuPont plants -- as the Village of Greenwood.
10. 1960 — A second incorporation attempt seeks to form the Village of Trilby from 3.8 square miles in the township's northwest corner, complete with its own volunteer fire department.
11. mid-1960s — Toledo absorbs most of the remaining township piecemeal through county commissioner petitions, leaving only the disconnected Alexis Place and Shoreland sections.
12. 1965-01-25 — Toledo annexes the Trilby area despite the earlier incorporation bid.
13. 2020 — The census counts 3,055 people in the township's remaining portions.

Stories

Greenwood and Trilby: two tries at becoming villages

In May 1958 voters in Washington Township voted down annexation to Toledo. The move to incorporate came after residents learned that Toledo planned to file two annexation petitions covering two industrial areas of the township. The proposed Village of Greenwood would have taken about half the township, a quarter of its population and all of its industrial base, including General Mills, the Chevrolet transmission plant, Toledo Scale, AP Parts, Doehler-Jarvis and DuPont. Observers expected it to pass, but the 1958 election failed 1,386 to 970, with almost two-thirds of eligible voters casting ballots; it was the sixth vote on incorporation or annexation in the township since 1947. A 1960 attempt to create the Village of Trilby from 3.8 square miles in the township's northwest corner also failed, and the area passed to Toledo at 7 a.m. on January 25, 1965. Trilby had its own volunteer fire department, and its chief, Eldon LaFollette, who built a house on Murnen Road in 1927, still maintained in 1980 that it stood in Trilby.

Tremainesville, the village the turnpike made

In 1829 Cyrus Fisher built a big block-house on the Territorial Road in what is now Washington Township and opened it as a tavern and store. It was the only house of entertainment between the Bay Settlement and Hubbard's at Miami, and the only post office between Vienna and Maumee. In 1832 Calvin Tremaine from Vermont took over as storekeeper and postmaster, and by January 1833 the office, renamed Tremainesville, was the point where mail for the two river towns of Port Lawrence and Vistula was distributed. Between 1834 and 1838 the crossroads had two stores, a tavern, blacksmith, wagon, tailor and shoe shops, and a good Indian trade, because some 1,500 or more Indians lived on the reservations on the north side of the river and there was no store nearer than Maumee. Then the travel moved off the turnpike, the depression of 1838 to 1843 crippled business, and the mail route went down the river to Toledo. The post office was discontinued, and Tremainesville went back to being a farming community.

Local history sources: washington-twp.com · toledohistorybox.com · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Lake Erie, intake crib roughly 3 miles offshore of the Collins Park plant in Maumee Bay near Oregon, OH The water here

• Toledo City Of100% of residentsLake Erie

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-12-30

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