West Elkton

How West Elkton began

West Elkton, in Gratis Township in southeastern Preble County, got a post office in 1844 and was formally laid out in 1847 by surveyor J. L. Street for eleven proprietors, including several members of the Stubbs family. Its name began as a shipping mistake: goods ordered for the Society of Friends' nearby Elk quarterly meeting were addressed to 'Elkton' instead of 'Elk,' and the misdirected name stuck, gaining 'West' once a second Elkton turned up elsewhere in Ohio. One of its founding proprietors, Jesse Stubbs, was by his own later account a director of the Underground Railroad who in 1858 travelled to Kentucky and personally financed the purchase and freedom of an emancipated man's wife and seven children still held in slavery. The village's population rose slowly through the nineteenth century, from 156 in 1870 to a peak of 345 in 1960, before declining to 164 by the 2020 census, making it one of the smallest villages in the county.

Settled by 1828-1829 (first store), platted 1847, by J. L. Street, surveyor, for proprietors J. N. Gift, R. W. Swain, J. H. Stubbs, Jesse Stubbs, Nathan Hornaday, Walter Wheeler, Isaac Wright, P. S. Patton, Stephen Leas, James Smith, Henry Maddock and J. P. Brown.

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history gives a specific and, by its own description, 'somewhat singular' origin: the Society of Friends held a quarterly meeting nearby called the Elk quarterly meeting, after Elk creek. A local merchant named Dix, ordering goods shipped to 'Elk,' had them mistakenly addressed and sent to 'Elkton' instead; the mistaken name was adopted for the town, and 'West' was added once it was discovered that another Elkton already existed elsewhere in Ohio.

Before the town

No mound, village, trail or treaty site specific to West Elkton was found in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Miami, Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1828 — The first store in what became West Elkton was opened by a man named Rockhill, on the spot where Dr. J. S. Weinland later resided; the first building on the site had already been put up earlier by wheelwright David Taylor, who also dug the town's first well.
2. 1844 — A post office called West Elkton began operating, three years before the village itself was platted.
3. 1847 — West Elkton was laid out by surveyor J. L. Street for eleven proprietors, including Jesse Stubbs and his brother J. H. Stubbs.
4. 1858 — Jesse Stubbs, a West Elkton proprietor and self-described director of the Underground Railroad, travelled to Kentucky and personally advanced most of the $5,062 needed to purchase the freedom of Craig Langford's wife and seven children, who were still enslaved after Langford's own emancipation.
5. 1869 — A school building, funded two-thirds by the Society of Friends, was erected in West Elkton and ran for years as the West Elkton academy before being sold to the public school district in 1878.
6. 1870 — West Elkton's population was recorded at 156.
7. 1960 — West Elkton's population peaked at 345.
8. 1880 — West Elkton's population was recorded at 247 in Henry Howe's 1891 'Historical Collections of Ohio,' with a school census of 115 by 1888.
9. 2020 — West Elkton's population had declined to 164, a 16.8 percent drop from 2010.

Stories

A shipping mistake became the town's name

West Elkton did not set out to be named after a mistake. The Society of Friends who settled the area held a quarterly meeting nearby that took its name, the Elk quarterly meeting, from Elk creek. When an early merchant named Dix ordered a shipment of store goods, he addressed them for delivery to 'Elk.' Somewhere along the line the shipping label came out wrong, and the goods arrived addressed to 'Elkton' instead. Rather than correct the record, the town took the accidental name for its own. Only later, on discovering that Ohio already had another town called Elkton, did the settlers add 'West' to keep the two apart -- leaving Preble County with a village named, in effect, after somebody else's clerical error.

A West Elkton man's trip to buy a family's freedom

Jesse Stubbs was born in 1809 on the land near West Elkton where he lived his entire life, one of the village's eleven founding proprietors in 1847 and later a township justice of the peace. By his own account, recorded in the 1881 county history, he served as a director of the Underground Railroad -- never encouraging anyone to escape slavery, he was careful to note, but feeding and helping along those who reached him on their own. In the winter of 1858 he went further: hearing that a freed Black man named Craig Langford had left his wife and seven children enslaved in Kentucky, Stubbs travelled there himself to buy the family's freedom, raising part of the $5,062 price by subscription and advancing the rest from his own funds despite friends' fears that the trip could get him killed. He returned safely, and much of what he had advanced was eventually repaid. The following year Preble County voters sent him to the Ohio General Assembly, where he helped push through changes to the state's laws on settling estates that remained on the books, with small revisions, into the twentieth century.

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

Four wells on a 100-acre district wellfield over the Great Miami valley aquifer, St. Clair Twp, north of Hamilton The water here

• Southwest Regional Water District100% of residentsGreat Miami Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 2004-09-16, released 2013-05-28. source
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-10-14

Cite this page