Washington Township, Wood 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, Wood County began

Washington Township, first settled as early as 1819 near Wolf Rapids, saw one of Wood County's earliest recorded killings in 1822 and a genuine settler panic in 1837 -- the unfounded 'Huckleberry War' scare -- before its formal establishment on June 5, 1837. It sits in the northwestern part of Wood County along the Maumee River, bordering Lucas County's Providence and Waterville townships across the water. It holds the village of Tontogany and the unincorporated community of Otsego, and its river frontage sits directly across from the historic canal town of Providence and the Isaac Ludwig Mill, both of which lie on the Lucas County side of the Maumee rather than within the township itself.

Settled 1819 (Samuel Ewing at Wolf Rapids); the settlement of the interior began 1830-32, incorporated township established June 5, 1837, by Wood County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

The township is one of forty-three Washington Townships in Ohio, part of the near-universal early-19th-century practice of naming a township for George Washington; no township-specific naming story was found in the sources consulted.

Before the town

No mound, earthwork or named Native village within the township is recorded in the 1897 county history, which says no such evidence exists in Wood County. Native history appears in the settler record: the Fort Meigs and Wapakoneta road ran from the Presbyterian Indian 'Mission station' on the Maumee into the prairie on the east bank of the Tontogany; the road petitioned in 1833 and the Haskins and Bear Rapids roads followed old routes inland from the river; and in 1837 a half-Native messenger named Tibault carried the false report of an Ottawa and Potawatomi rising that sent the Rev. Isaac Van Tassel's mission family into a boat and armed settlers into Nearing's mill at Otsego and John Crom's log house. The historic Ottawa village at Providence lies across the river in Lucas County.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa, Potawatomi.

Timeline

1. 1819 — The township is surveyed in 1819 and 1820; Samuel Ewing settles opposite Wolf Rapids in 1819.
2. 1822 — Samuel Ewing is killed instantly at Richardson's tavern, Roche de Boeuf, when a man named John Lewis strikes him and dislocates his neck during a quarrel; Lewis is jailed at Maumee but escapes the same night.
3. 1830 — William North and Samuel Hamilton settle on the site of Tontogany in the fall; Michael Sypher moves in from above Miltonville in spring 1831, John Crom comes in 1831 and John Skinner in 1832.
4. 1833 (about) — The township's first school, a 12-by-14-foot log building, is constructed near the future site of the Washington chapel.
5. 1833 — John Whitehead and the mason Close build the Stone House, later the Morehouse place, on the Ewing farm; settlers petition for a road from Miltonville to Green Encampment (Bowling Green).
6. 1834-35 — Guy Nearing sells his sawmill at Otsego to Asa Gilbert, and the place is called Gilbert's Mill.
7. 1836-05 — South Otsego is surveyed by Hiram Davis for Samuel B. Campbell, agent for investors of Cherry Valley, New York, at Bear Rapids.
8. 1837 — The 'Huckleberry War' panic sweeps the township: a false report that the Sac, Fox, Potawatomi and Ottawa nations had allied to exterminate white settlers sends missionary Rev. Isaac Van Tassell's family fleeing by anchored boat and drives armed pioneers to garrison Guy Nearing's mill at Otsego and John Crom's log house near Tontogany.
9. 1837-06-05 — Washington Township is established by the Wood County commissioners, its boundaries taking territory from Middleton, Plain and Weston townships.
10. 1837-07-04 — The first township election chooses John Crom Sr., Elias W. Hedges and Robert Bamber Sr. as trustees; Emilius Wood becomes the first justice.
11. 1839-40 — A flood carries away the first mill at Otsego, which Samuel Flanders rebuilds with three buhrs and a sawmill.
12. 1845 — Dr. Nieblung buys the unfinished Gwynn house at Gwynndale, two miles south of Tontogany, and tries to found a German colony nicknamed Germany.
13. 1853-04-04 — Township voters back stock in the Dayton and Michigan Railroad, 56 to 28; trustees sign $10,000 in bonds that May, and in 1868 take 280 fifty-dollar shares.
14. 1861-62 — The Otsego post office, held in turn by Samuel Flanders, Henry Mandell, Joseph A. Creps, Edwin Tuller, P. H. Durphy and Samuel Clymer, is discontinued.
15. 1885-04 — The first brick schoolhouse in the township, 26 by 36 feet, is authorized in District No. 3 at not more than $1,101.88.
16. 1888-04 — A vote on $4,000 in bonds for a town hall goes 127 for and 123 against, with 19 neutral.
17. 1890 — The census counts 1,212 residents.
18. 2020 — The census finds 1,864 people in the township.

Stories

Guy Nearing's honey business

Pioneer Guy Nearing was remembered for many stories, but one of the best concerned a business deal he struck with the Decker family sometime in the 1830s: a dollar a tree for every wild bee tree they could locate. Wildflowers grew so thick on the prairies north of the future Bowling Green in those days that wild bees outcompeted any tame hive, and the skilled bee-hunting Deckers had no trouble marking tree after tree in the openings around the prairie's edge. Nearing brought his men, ox-wagons, barrels and supplies -- including whiskey -- out to harvest the find, and by his own crude but effective method packed the honey by climbing into each barrel and stamping it down with his own famously large feet. The full cargo went by wagon to the river and by steamer to the Buffalo market, a small but vivid picture of frontier enterprise built entirely on wildflowers, bees and one man's willingness to get his feet sticky.

The Huckleberry War panic

In 1837, a half-breed messenger named Tibault rode into the township with alarming news from Gilead: the Sac and Fox nations, he reported, had persuaded the Potawatomi and Ottawa to take up the war-path and wipe out the white settlers. The Ottawa, the county's own historian was careful to note decades later, were entirely innocent of any such plan -- but the rumor was enough. On the night after the first new moon following the reported Native council, missionary Rev. Isaac Van Tassell put his family in a boat and anchored it in mid-river, ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. Armed pioneers garrisoned Guy Nearing's old mill at Otsego, and another party fortified John Crom's log house north of Tontogany, waiting out a threat that, in the end, never materialized.

Germany: Dr. Nieblung's colony on Gwynn's hill

The name Germany was never platted as a village in Wood County, but it was given to Gwynndale, two miles south of Tontogany. Gwynn, from Ireland or England, came after the panic of 1837, built a three-story house he never finished, failed to build a corduroy road from it to Otsego, and fled. In 1845 Dr. Nieblung, a wealthy German, bought the house, had it sawed in two, turned the upper stories into a hen-house and sold the lower to Dr. Waitz, who lived in it in 1876. Settlers who followed him included Ernest Miehe, Guido Marx (mayor of Toledo in the Centennial year), E. W. E. Koch and Albert and Robert Just, with a party of merry young men and musicians. The doctor's wealth did not save him from mosquitoes and ague; having lost money and patience, he moved to St. Louis and practiced medicine there. The best-told story of the colony, the county history says, was the musicians' attempt to amuse the cattle, which destroyed their domestic character and turned them into a herd as wild as buffalo.

Benton and Otsego, the river towns that vanished

David Hedges, an admirer of Senator Thomas Benton, laid out the town of Benton on the northeast corner of his farm at Wolf Rapids a few years after he settled, and built a dam and a sawmill. Emerson H. Eaton moved from Otsego to open a store and Alexander Alcorn set up a chair shop; but circumstances opposed his plans and left nothing but the cellar of Eaton's store. Otsego, upriver at Bear Rapids, had begun as Guy Nearing's sawmill, was Gilbert's Mill after 1834 or 1835, and was platted as South Otsego in 1836 for New York investors. In 1839 Samuel Flanders was the most prominent man on the river above Perrysburg, a captain named Wilson kept store, and a little steamer named Crockett ran between Otsego and Defiance when the water was high. By 1861-62 the post office was gone, and the county historian wrote that scarcely a trace of the old town remained. The Stone House of 1833 on the Ewing farm is the one building he names as still standing.

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

Maumee River, pumped from a riverside intake on Ohio 65 into the 170-million-gallon Bowling Green Reservoir for storage before treatment The water here

• Bowling Green City93% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
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• Northwestern W and SD - Weston3% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Northwestern W and SD - Portage0% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Tontogany Village0% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)
• Whispering Winds Mhc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Maurers Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-08-11
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-07

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