Washington Township, Van Wert County

How Washington Township, Van Wert County began

Washington Township was set off as a civil township on March 2, 1840, its first settler Oliver Stacy having arrived from elsewhere in February 1836. Its early roads followed the old Wyandot trail between Upper Sandusky and Fort Wayne, long known locally as the Sugar Ridge road, and its story is dominated by two towns: Middle Point, platted within the township and incorporated in 1874, and the western half of Delphos, a canal town split down the middle between Van Wert and Allen counties by the Miami and Erie Canal.

Settled February 1836 (Oliver Stacy, first settler), incorporated organized as a civil township March 2, 1840, by Van Wert County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted gives a documented reason for the choice of 'Washington'; it is one of the most common township names in Ohio (43 statewide), most often a generic patriotic naming rather than a reference to a specific local circumstance.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to Washington Township was located in the sources consulted. One concrete trace does survive in the township's road network: its earliest road, called the Bucyrus and Fort Wayne road and later the Sugar Ridge road, followed 'the Indian trail from Upper Sandusky to Fort Wayne' according to the county's 1906 history -- meaning the modern road bed traces a Wyandot travel route that predates the township by generations.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Sugar Ridge road / Bucyrus-Fort Wayne road (trail) — crosses Washington Township, following the historic Upper Sandusky-to-Fort Wayne route, pre-contact into the 19th century (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1836-02 — Oliver Stacy becomes the first settler in what will become Washington Township; he later builds the township's first log house, still standing and occupied as of 1882.
2. 1836 — Nathan Davis, the Burright family, David King and John Summersett take up homes in the township through the summer and fall.
3. 1837 — The township's first schoolhouse is built on David King's land; the first church organizes at the King schoolhouse in 1848, settlers having attended church in Ridge Township before that.
4. 1840-03-02 — Washington Township is set off as a civil township by the county commissioners; the first township election is ordered for the first Monday in April.
5. 1840-06-08 — Ten votes are cast in the first election for justice of the peace in the township; Thomas W. Bowdle receives seven and Oliver Stacy three.
6. 1841-10-12 — Eleven electors cast votes in Washington Township for state legislature and county officers.
7. 1843 — Butter sells for 4 cents a pound, wheat 40 cents a bushel, cows $8 and horses $40 a head, and a labouring man earns 25 cents a day.
8. 1848 — The first church in the township is organised at the King schoolhouse in the fall; before that settlers attended church in Ridge Township.
9. 1851 — Middle Point is laid out within the township, originally as Sykestown.
10. 1852 — The 1906 county history says Middlepoint was laid out in 1852 by L. B. and H. N. Sykes, between Van Wert and Delphos on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway; Wikipedia gives 1851.
11. 1874-11-10 — Middle Point incorporates as a village, with William Foster elected its first mayor.
12. 1900 — Middlepoint counts 604 residents; the 1906 history describes two elevators and a stone quarry employing 70 to 80 hands.

Stories

A town split by a canal, and its borrowed name

Delphos grew up straddling the Miami and Erie Canal at the meeting point of Van Wert and Allen counties, and for years it was really four separate settlements wearing one shared address: East Bredeick and Section Ten on the Allen County side, West Bredeick and Howard Town on the Van Wert County side, platted piecemeal by Ferdinand Bredeick, his brother the Reverend John Otto Bredeick, and other proprietors through the 1840s and 1850s. Reverend Bredeick, laying out his addition on the canal's east bank, set aside a generous plot for church purposes on the sober theory that the town would someday need it -- foresight the county's 1906 historian singled out for praise. When the four sections finally agreed to unite under one name, it was Father Bredeick who proposed 'Delphos,' explaining that it meant, roughly, 'from nothing to a great city' -- a founder's optimism for a canal town that, by 1900, had grown to over 4,500 people split almost exactly down the middle between the two counties.

The dance invitation on a shingle

Pioneers in Washington Township in the 1840s wrote their invitations to a dance on a shingle and sent it round by messenger, each person reading it and passing it on: you are invited to attend a dance tonight, someone will call at seven o'clock sharp, do not forget your boots. Prices were low then: in 1843 butter was 4 cents a pound, wheat 40 cents a bushel, cows $8 and horses $40, and a labourer earned 25 cents a day, or 50 cents or a bushel of wheat in harvest. The county historian also told of two neighbours hauling wood near Delphos, one of whom sank his axe into his boot and, seeing what he took for blood, grew sick, had to be helped onto the sled and carried into his house, where it turned out that his foot was uncut and the red was the flannel he had wrapped around it.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Delphos City90% of residentsLittle Auglaize River, stored in city reservoir
• Middle Point Village10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

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