York Township, Van Wert County

How York Township, Van Wert County began

York Township was set off as a civil township on June 3, 1837, with its first organizing election held at the home of Sylvester R. Woolery. John Arnold, who settled south of the future village of Venedocia in 1836, is remembered as one of its earliest settlers, and the township holds most of the Welsh settlement of Venedocia in its northeast -- and a branch of its Calvinistic Methodist congregation, the Zion church -- with the village only partially extending into neighboring Jennings Township. General Anthony Wayne's army crossed the eastern third of the future county, including this area, in August 1794 on its way to the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Today the tiny village of Elgin, once known as Yorktown and once home to Welsh Civil War volunteers, sits in the township's southeast corner.

Settled 1836 (John Arnold), incorporated organized as a civil township June 3, 1837, by Van Wert County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted documents a specific reason for the choice of 'York'; it is a common Ohio township name used widely across the state (Wikipedia counts ten York Townships statewide), most often honoring either the English county or New York State rather than a specific local namesake. The township's own village of Elgin was itself first called Yorktown, after the township, before a duplicate post office forced a rename (see that unit's file).

Before the town

The 1906 county history prints the recollection of J. B. Brodnix, whose family came to the Long Prairie in York Township in 1839 and found "a village of Wyandot Indians on the Little Auglaize a mile and a quarter from us"; he calls them very kind and hospitable. No other Native site in the township is recorded in these sources. A state historical marker at Venedocia also places the 1794 camp of Wayne's army near here: in August 1794 the U.S. Legion of about 2,800 men marched across the eastern third of the future Van Wert County, camping west of the marker near a present-day cemetery on the night of August 4, on its way toward the Auglaize-Maumee junction at present Defiance. Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville (1795) opened this ground to settlement.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Wyandot village on the Little Auglaize (village) — a mile and a quarter from the Brodnix cabin on the Long Prairie, section 3, York Township, 1839 (as remembered by J. B. Brodnix in 1906) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1794-08-04 — General Anthony Wayne's army of about 2,800 men, marching across the future Van Wert County toward the Auglaize-Maumee junction, camps for the night near the site later marked at Venedocia.
2. 1836 — John Arnold settles south of the future site of Venedocia, one of York Township's earliest documented settlers, on land later known as the Alban farm.
3. 1837-06-03 — The Board of County Commissioners, meeting at Van Wert, sets off York Township as a civil township, ordering electors to meet at Sylvester R. Woolery's house on June 15 to choose officers.
4. 1838 — Edward Smith comes from Champaign County; the 1906 history lists the township's early settlers as including Lewis and Asa Culver, John Keith, Joshua and Jacob Goodwin, David Walters, Sylvester R. Woolery, Samuel Moore, Robert Thomas and Evan B. Jones.
5. 1839 — J. B. Brodnix's family settles on the Long Prairie, living in a pole pen on Evan B. Jones's farm until a log cabin is finished on section 3; the nearest neighbours are two and a half to four miles off and a village of Wyandot lies a mile and a quarter away on the Little Auglaize.
6. 1839 — The heads of families in York Township are Levi Rowland, Evan B. Jones, John McCollum, John Heath, Jesse Tomlinson, R. Ross, Leonard Varner, George Wooten, Robert Thomas, Benjamin Griffin, Lewis Culver, John Arnold, W. H. Peasley and John W. Conn.
7. 1840-10-18 — Twenty-three qualified electors vote in York Township at the October election for state and county officers.
8. 1843 — The first school in York Township is opened, one for the whole township.
9. 1844 — Daniel Walters builds a small water mill where Venedocia now stands, at the outlet of the Coil Prairie.
10. 1848 — Welsh immigrants William Bebb, Thomas Morris and Richard Jervis and their families arrive from North Wales and settle in the York-Jennings township area, founding the Welsh community centered on Venedocia.
11. 1859 — In what becomes the village of Elgin, in the township's southeast corner, church services are held in a log schoolhouse under the name Yorktown before a duplicate post office elsewhere forces a rename to Elgin.
12. 1861-1865 — Welsh residents of York Township's Elgin community, including James Thomas, Richard T. Hughes, William J. Hughes and Lucius Price, serve in the Union Army during the Civil War.
13. 1862-07-21 — John F. Baxter, who came to the county in 1848, enlists at age 18 in the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Stories

The branch church at Zion

As the Welsh settlement radiating out from Venedocia grew through the second half of the 19th century, the walk to Sunday and midweek services at Salem Church became too long for families on the settlement's outer edges -- a real problem for a community, the county's 1906 historian noted, unusually devoted to 'sermon and song.' Rather than let attendance lapse, the congregation planted branch churches at the edges of the widening settlement: Zion, across the line in York Township, and Horeb, in Jennings Township, both later rebuilt in brick and stone within what was then the new 20th century. It is a small piece of a larger story -- four churches raised in the farming community in just the ten years before 1906, at a combined cost of about $41,000 -- but it captures something specific about York Township's own corner of that story: a rural Welsh-language congregation that grew fast enough, and stayed close enough, to need a satellite church of its own within a single generation of its founding.

A Revolutionary War general's army passes through

Long before Welsh families or John Arnold arrived, the ground that became York Township saw one of the pivotal military campaigns of the early republic pass directly across it. In early August 1794, Major General Anthony Wayne led the roughly 2,800 men of the U.S. Legion across the eastern third of what would become Van Wert County, camping for the night of August 4 near a site later chosen as a cemetery, not far from present-day Venedocia. Wayne's army was marching on a major Native village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers, hoping to force a decisive confrontation; finding the village abandoned, he pushed on down the Maumee and was attacked by a Native force on August 20. His victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Northwest Indian War of the 1790s, and the Treaty of Greenville he signed with representatives of twelve tribes the following year opened much of Ohio, including this township's own ground, to the wave of American settlement that would not reach it in earnest for another four decades.

A dream, a hickory club and a wolf

Soon after Levi Rowland settled in York Township he dreamed that a wolf attacked him as he crossed the prairie. The next day he went to hunt his cows and, hearing the bell on the far side of the prairie, remembered the dream, went back to the woods and cut a heavy hickory club before wading into the tall grass. He had gone only a short way when he met a large wolf that showed fight, and he killed it with the club. He always felt the dream had been sent as a warning. The same neighbour once left a saddle of venison in a tree fork for the Bickfords, who had come in 1840 and were tired of salt meat; Frank, 8, and Will, 12, fetched it after sundown and ran home with the wolves following almost to the door.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Van Wert City87% of residentsTown Creek via two impounding reservoirs
• Ohio City Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

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