Waynesfield

How Waynesfield began

Waynesfield was surveyed July 1, 1848, in Wayne Township, and the plat was signed that November 20 by its founder, E. G. Atkinson, who also opened the town's first store and served as its first postmaster. It takes its name from the township, which honors General 'Mad' Anthony Wayne, whose 1794 victory at Fallen Timbers and the resulting Treaty of Greenville opened this part of Ohio to American settlement. Early residents included Henry Payne, a formerly enslaved Virginian who bought his own freedom, entered 200 acres at the edge of the new town, and whose descendants platted one of its first additions; the village grew slowly around Atkinson's store and post office, then a sawmill and grist mill the Bennett brothers built after 1860, and has stayed small and agricultural, giving its name to the local Waynesfield-Goshen school district.

Settled 1848, platted 1848-11-20, by E. G. Atkinson (the 1880 county history gives B. G. Atkinson).

Where the name comes from

Waynesfield takes its name from Wayne Township, itself named for General Anthony Wayne, whose victory at Fallen Timbers (1794) and the Treaty of Greenville (1795) opened this part of Ohio to American settlement.

Before the town

No Native villages, mounds or treaty sites specific to Waynesfield itself are recorded. The land fell within territory the Shawnee and Miami held before the Treaty of Greenville (1795) and the later treaties of 1817-1818 that set off the Wapakoneta and Lewistown reservations elsewhere in the county.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. 1848-07-01 — The town of Waynesfield is surveyed, the same year Auglaize County is organized.
2. 1848-11-20 — E. G. Atkinson signs the plat of Waynesfield, laying out lots numbered 1 through 24.
3. 1851 — A second building goes up to serve as Waynesfield's post office, after Atkinson and Wapakoneta postmaster Mr. Young secure a mail route; Atkinson is appointed the village's first postmaster (the 1905 history gives both 1851 and 1857 for the appointment).
4. 1851 — The Waynesfield post office opens with E. G. Atkinson as postmaster; the mail goes on foot or horseback from St. Marys to Kenton on Fridays and back on Saturdays, and before it came settlers fetched letters from St. Johns at 25 cents postage.
5. 1857-08 — Dr. Seaman arrives with his wife and two children, remembered as the first family to settle within the platted town itself.
6. 1860 — The three Bennett brothers, John G., H. S. and G. B. Bennett, come to the village; two years later they build one of the first sawmills in this part of the county, later adding a grist mill.
7. 1866 — Waynesfield's two churches, a Methodist Protestant church and a Baptist church, are both built.
8. 1866 — T. S. Bennett opens a general store in October and runs it until 1894; he is also postmaster, 1867 to 1884 by his own account.
9. 1872 — Dr. R. I. Krebs, who succeeded Atkinson as postmaster, is replaced by T. S. Bennett, who serves ten years in a row; the 1905 history gives slightly different dates for these appointments.
10. 1876 — The Uniopolis and Waynesfield Pike, the first improved road in Wayne Township, is built.
11. 1880 — The census counts 306 residents.
12. 1880 — The county history counts three stores, one hotel, two churches, two physicians and a steam grist and saw mill in the village.
13. 1887 — John G. Bennett, one of the three Bennett brothers who built the village's sawmill and grist mill, dies at 75; the brothers had forty children among them.
14. 1890 — The census counts 480 residents.
15. 1903 — The village has a four-room brick school in a special school district with a graded course, two Sabbath schools of about 200 pupils, and a Methodist Protestant church of 147 members and a Baptist church of about 100.
16. 1950 — The census counts 733 residents, up from 592 in 1940.
17. 2020 — The census counts 749 residents.

Stories

A freedman's family among the founders

When E. G. Atkinson surveyed Waynesfield in 1848, the southeast corner of his new town was all woods, owned by Henry Payne, a Black Virginian who had bought his own freedom and brought his family out of slavery. Payne had entered 200 acres there and raised a large family. He deeded the corner forty acres to his daughter, who married Robert Woodly; a few years later Woodly sold part of that tract to Aaron Dawson, who platted one row of Waynesfield's early lots running west from the Methodist Protestant church. Payne's name does not appear on Waynesfield's list of merchants and postmasters, but his land, and his daughter's marriage into the Woodly family, put his household among the small group of landowners whose farms became part of the town's earliest additions, a fact the county's own 1905 history recorded without further comment.

The building of a crossroads store

The first building in Waynesfield was a log house sixteen by twenty-six feet, built by Henderson Brown as a residence for E. G. Atkinson; the hewed, clapboard-covered body cost sixteen dollars. Atkinson had bought the ten-acre town tract from M. R. Pepple for six dollars an acre, paying partly in a two-year-old colt, a set of harness and a cow. The first lot sold, lot seven, went for eight dollars to William Whetstone, who later resold it for twelve. A mail route from St. Marys to Kenton, running by foot or horseback on Fridays and back on Saturdays, gave the settlement its post office in 1851, with Atkinson himself as postmaster; before that, residents walked to St. Johns for their mail and paid postage of twenty-five cents a letter if it was not paid in advance.

Hairtown and Kindleburg

In his reminiscences printed in the 1905 county history, E. G. Atkinson recalled that the early villages of Wayne Township had nicknames. Waynesfield was 'Hairtown' and New Hampshire, laid out by John Kindle, was 'Kindleburg,' and there was once a rivalry over which town a man could do best in. Atkinson gave the reason for the name Hairtown: two young men who had had too much to drink, both with long, thick hair and full beards, got into a fight and pulled each other's hair, and Bob Woodly remarked that with the price of ashes down and cash demanded for whiskey, the town would end up 'nothing but a little hair-pulling town.' The ashes mattered, for the town ran two asheries for several years, where farmers clearing land sold black salts leached from burned log heaps and were generally paid in goods, tobacco, coffee and salt.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Waynesfield Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (2)

Public libraries (1)

Police stations (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-12

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

Cite this page