Westfield Township, Morrow County

How Westfield Township, Morrow County began

Westfield Township, in the southwestern corner of Morrow County, was organized in 1822. The 1911 county history credits the Shaw family as among its earliest settlers, arriving around 1808-09, possibly before the War of 1812, making them one of the very first families in what became Morrow County. The township, bordering both Delaware and Marion counties, remains a rural farming area of 27.1 square miles with no incorporated village of its own; its land drains partly to the Whetstone (Olentangy) River.

Settled 1808 (Jonathan Shaw's cabin on Shaw Creek); family scouting trip 1804, platted Westfield village laid out 1829, originally called Tyrone, incorporated 1822 (organized as a township), by John Shaw, Jr. and his son Jonathan Shaw.

Where the name comes from

Perrin (1880) records a 'well-authenticated tradition' about the name: settlers petitioned for a post office on the Mansfield and Delaware road, fourteen miles from the nearest, but forgot to say what to call it; the congressman who received the petition, thinking the place so far 'out West,' proposed Westfield, and John Elliott was made postmaster. The post office, established March 17, 1821 while the area was Oxford Township of Delaware County, gave the township its name when it was set off from Oxford in 1822. The village itself was first Patee Town, then platted in 1829 as Tyrone before taking the post office's name.

Before the town

Perrin (1880) and Baughman (1911) record Native presence in Westfield Township well after settlement began. John Shaw's tract abutted the Greenville treaty line of 1795 at the township's north edge, so the township was within the lands ceded in 1795. For years after the War of 1812 Indians came each spring from the Wyandot reservation to make maple sugar on the Whetstone bottoms; the old sugar trees were said to bear tomahawk marks. An Indian trail crossed the Whetstone at the iron spring on the Goodhue farm and followed the west bank of Shaw Creek toward Upper Sandusky. The visitors were Potawatomi, Mohawk, Seneca and especially Wyandot, 'peaceably inclined and usually honorable'; the Seneca Johnny Sandstone, the Wyandots Big John and Daniel Damish and a man called Tom Lyons are named. Lyons, who rode through showing what he said was the hand of a white child and a string of tongues of white women, was said to have been shot by a settler named Russell, who confessed on his deathbed; bones found in 1844 were thought to be his. An iron spring called 'red sulphur,' opposite the village on the west bank of the Whetstone, is where 'many an Indian tradition' gathers, though the traditions are not recorded.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Seneca, Mohawk, Potawatomi.

• Red sulphur (iron) spring (other) — west bank of the Whetstone (Olentangy) River, nearly opposite the village of Westfield, on the Goodhue farm, unrecorded Indian tradition, before settlement (archive.org)
• Indian trail from the iron spring up Shaw Creek toward Upper Sandusky (trail) — crossing the Whetstone at the iron spring and following the west bank of Shaw Creek, before and after settlement, to the 1820s-30s (archive.org)
• Spring sugar camps on the Whetstone bottoms (camp) — elm swamps and river bottoms along the Whetstone, after the War of 1812 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1804 — John Shaw, Jr., of Chester County, Pennsylvania, sets out in spring with his wife, four sons and four daughters to settle 400 acres of military land in the extreme north part of what becomes Westfield Township; on arriving at a settlement on the Whetstone twenty miles north of Franklinton (now part of Columbus), he learns his land is twenty miles further north still and makes what becomes a four-year halt.
2. 1808 — John Shaw, Jr. offers his married son Jonathan a choice of one hundred of the family's four hundred acres if he will settle it at once; Jonathan selects a site on a stream later called Shaw Creek and builds a cabin there, described by the 1911 county history as 'the first settlement made within the boundaries of what is now Morrow county.'
3. 1808 — Delaware County is organized and the future Westfield area becomes part of Marlborough Township; Oxford Township is set off in 1815.
4. 1811 — Elisha Bishop, a Tennessee native, settles a mile south of the site of Westfield village.
5. 1812 — After Hull's surrender about twenty to twenty-five men of the Wyatt and Cole settlements form a company under Capt. William Drake and march toward Fort Seneca; a night alarm raised by Drake as a joke scatters the camp, and the expedition goes into history as Drake's Defeat.
6. 1814 — Jonathan Shaw, Sr. builds the township's first mill on his farm on Shaw Creek, sparing settlers the forty-plus-mile trip to Franklinton to have grain ground.
7. 1814 — David Cook, a Virginian who served in the War of 1812, settles beside the later village; John Elliott enters the land at Bartlett's Corners and becomes postmaster of the first post office in Oxford Township.
8. 1817 — John F. Place, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, settles beside David Cook's farm; Daniel Peak follows in 1819 and Jacob Conklin in 1821, opening the Claridon road.
9. 1821 — On March 17 a post office named Westfield is established, named, by tradition, by the congressman who received the settlers' petition, which had left the name blank.
10. 1822 — Westfield Township is formally organized.
11. 1829 — A town is laid out at the site formerly called Patee Town, where the stage changed horses between Mansfield and Delaware; the original proprietors, Henry Patee, Simeon Smith and Josiah Goodhue, name it Tyrone. Adam Wolfe, who had been peddling notions from a pack, opens a store, and a post office is soon established under the name Westfield.
12. 1848 — Morrow County is organized from parts of Delaware, Marion, Knox and Richland counties; Westfield Township becomes part of the new county.
13. 1880 — The township has 1,204 residents; its Whetstone (Olentangy) River, Shaw Creek and four mill sites furnish power and drainage.

Stories

Drake's Defeat

After General Hull's surrender at Detroit in August 1812, rumors of British and Indian attack ran through the Delaware County frontier. The two exposed settlements in what was then Marlborough Township, Wyatt's and Cole's, moved their families into the blockhouses at Fort Morrow and Delaware, and some twenty or twenty-five able-bodied men formed a company under Capt. William Drake and Lieut. John Millikan, a surveyor, to join General Harrison at Fort Seneca. They stopped the first night after only a short march and agreed that if attacked they would each run home to their families. Then Drake, a good-natured man fond of fun, slipped out of the camp, fired a gun and ran in shouting that the Indians were coming. Men who had tied red handkerchiefs on their heads against the cold were mistaken for foes; James Trindle stood his ground and fired, grazing John Foust's ear. Less than half the company could be mustered afterward, and the expedition was disbanded in shame. Perrin says the commonly printed account, in which the men marched on to relieve Sandusky, is wrong in several particulars.

A four-year detour before the first cabin in the county

John Shaw Jr. set out from Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1804 with his wife, four sons and four daughters, bound for four hundred acres of military land he had bought sight unseen in the extreme north of what is now Westfield Township, abutting the Greenville treaty line. At a settlement on the Whetstone twenty miles north of Franklinton they learned that their land was another twenty miles north, and there they stopped for what became four years. In the spring of 1808 he offered his married son Jonathan the choice of a hundred of the four hundred acres if he would settle it at once; Jonathan picked a site on a stream later called Shaw Creek and built a cabin. Baughman (1911) calls it the first settlement made within the bounds of what is now Morrow County. During the War of 1812 the Shaws at Shaw Town, so named for the number of families of that name, would often take refuge for weeks in the blockhouse at Fort Morrow.

Sugar bottoms and the pony the Indians claimed

Perrin's township chapter says the Whetstone was always a favorite resort of the Indians, who for years after the War of 1812 came each spring from the Wyandot reservation to make sugar on the river bottoms, catching sap in troughs of elm bark and boiling it down with deer's blood for clarifying. They also passed through with ponies loaded with cranberries from the marshes in Crawford County, bound for markets in the east. When David Cook's pony went missing, he and a neighbor tracked it to the Tymochtee in what is now Wyandot County and brought it home, only to have three Indians walk into his house at breakfast, point and say, 'You steal Indian's horse.' After some talk Cook accepted that the pony had been stolen from them by a renegade white man, paid them $4 and gave them a gallon of whisky, and they went away satisfied. The same pages remember the Seneca chief Johnny Sandstone, the Wyandots Big John and Daniel Damish, and a hated 'renegade' called Tom Lyons.

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

Olentangy River intake at Del-Co's plant on Olentangy River Rd, Liberty Twp, south of the city of Delaware The water here

• Del-co Water Company, Inc.67% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Ashley Village19% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Cardington Village15% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-01: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Cite this page