Washington Township, Stark County

How Washington Township, Stark County began

Washington Township, in eastern Stark County, was largely bought early by Pennsylvania investors who moved west later, so settlement came slowly; Ezekiel Marsh, found clearing land on Section 14 in 1810, is its first known settler. Quaker families, among them Ellis N. and Job Johnson, founded Mount Union on the Lexington line in 1833, ran a station of the Underground Railroad, and led a temperance movement that closed the township's distilleries. Freeburg and Strasburg were laid out in 1842, and the Fairmount Children's Home for Stark and Columbiana counties opened on Section 13 in 1876. The township was organized on December 3, 1821, and had 4,443 residents in 2020.

Settled by 1810 (Ezekiel Marsh), incorporated December 3, 1821.

Where the name comes from

Named for George Washington, one of 43 townships of that name across Ohio; no source consulted gives a more specific local naming account.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or trail within Washington Township is recorded in the 1881 county history's chapter on the township or in the other sources consulted. Land east of the Tuscarawas River had its Native title extinguished by the Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785, a boundary confirmed at Greenville in 1795, according to the 1881 county history.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Fort McIntosh and Greenville treaty cession (land east of the Tuscarawas) (treaty) — Stark County east of the Tuscarawas River, including Washington Township, 1785 and 1795 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810 — Ellis N. Johnson, following the surveyors' blazes from Salem, finds Ezekiel Marsh clearing land and living in a fourteen-foot log cabin on Section 14.
2. 1821 — Washington Township is officially organized on December 3.
3. 1821 — Two children from southern Portage County, lost while hunting cows, are found after a two-day search in a slashing near Isaac Tinsman's farm.
4. 1823 — Ellis N. Johnson returns from Pennsylvania with his family and settles in the north of the township.
5. 1824 — Around this year the township is first divided into school districts, and two or more schoolhouses are built soon after.
6. 1830 — Around this year the Baptists build a small brick church at Mount Union near the graveyard.
7. 1833 — The township's economy includes one gristmill, three sawmills, and a tannery.
8. 1833 — In August Richard Fawcett, John Hare, Ellis N. Johnson and Job Johnson lay out 40 lots as Mount Union, 20 in Washington Township and 20 in Lexington.
9. 1834 — Louisville, to the township's west, is formally established, part of the wider settlement wave in this part of Stark County.
10. 1842 — Freeburg is laid out in February on Section 28, and Strasburg in August on Section 8 by Gregory Gross and a partner.
11. 1854 — Alliance is founded to the township's north, drawing regional trade toward the new railroad junction.
12. 1874 — Commissioners of Columbiana, Mahoning, Portage and Stark counties meet at Alliance on September 18 to plan a joint children's home; Portage and Mahoning later withdraw.
13. 1876 — Fairmount Children's Home, on a 154-acre farm on Section 13, is dedicated in October and receives its first 16 children from the Stark County Infirmary on October 31.
14. 2020 — The U.S. Census records 4,443 residents in Washington Township.

Stories

The bonfire at Mount Union

Ellis N. Johnson, a Quaker settler of Washington Township, became the leading temperance speaker of the area, and the Mount Union Temperance Society he helped form pledged its members against the use and sale of liquor. Robert Hilton, who was selling liquor at Mount Union, heard him speak and the next day asked what he should do; told to stop selling, he went to burn $400 worth of notes owed him for liquor. Johnson persuaded him to wait and do it in public. Before a crowd of more than four hundred, Hilton's stock of whiskey was piled on a heap of sticks and burned, a hat was passed to repay him, and he threw the notes into the fire. Distiller Michael Miller later invited Johnson to speak in his neighborhood, was converted, and broke a contract to deliver 400 gallons of whiskey. When the buyer sued before Johnson, then a justice of the peace, Johnson awarded him $27.50, telling him the money was his legally but not morally.

The lost children

About 1821 a brother and sister, six and eight years old, from a family in southern Portage County, got lost while bringing in the cows. Neighbors gathered and formed a line under an experienced hunter, with signals blown on a horn for each sign found, and the parents were kept at home so they would not trample the trail. On the second day the searchers followed the trail south through Lexington Township into Washington Township, near Isaac Tinsman's farm, where the hunter found a spicewood twig with the marks of a child's teeth. In a five-acre slashing he found the girl, who ran from him, and then the boy asleep beside a log. The children were fed at the Tinsman house and carried home; the next morning the boy asked for his little ax, and neither could remember being lost.

A station on the Underground Railroad

The 1881 county history says that because several Quaker families lived in Washington Township, a station on the Underground Railroad was set up there, and that the Johnsons helped more than one fugitive reach Canada. It describes secret landings on the shore of Lake Erie where vessels from the Canadian side called on set days for fugitives hidden in the nearby forest, places the Quakers knew and probably paid the vessel owners to use. It also records that a fugitive family who stopped in the woods in the northeastern part of the county without seeking the Quakers' help was surprised by their owner and taken back to Virginia.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Alliance City88% of residentsWalborn Reservoir + Deer Creek Reservoir + Mahoning River
• Louisville City9% of residentsLocal groundwater wells (Stark County)
• Minerva Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Premier Park Estates Llc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Canton Public Water System0% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Skyland Hills MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-08-12: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2016: 6 of 6 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-10-21

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