A Short History Of Old Deerfield Township

Those of you who have knowledge of the statistics of the State of Ohio know that it consists of 88 counties. The first county, Washington, was organized in 1788 and the last, Noble, was conceived in 1851. A Constitutional requirement of Ohio states that no county shall contain less than 400 square miles, and that no county shall be reduced below that amount. Ohio itself was never formed as a territory, only as a portion of a territory of the United States.
Governor Arthur St. Clair was appointed Governor of the vast Northwest Territory and established the first counties to his choosing. Josiah Morrow has written about the different counties and townships before Ohio was formed. I shall now draw from his writings.
As was mentioned before, a county in Ohio forms 400 square miles or more, but Hamilton County in the Northwest Territory contained an estimated 5,000 square miles. A report of Jacob Burnet, treasurer of Hamilton County, lists all monies paid into the county treasury by the different townships in the year 1799, the total amount being $3,633.49.
A list of these fourteen townships are: Columbia, Cincinnati, South Bend, Miami, Anderson, Springfield, Colerain, Fairfield, Deerfield, Dayton, Franklin, Washington, Ohio and St. Clair. As you will notice many of these township names are the same as those towns or settlements, which are now so-named.
William Mounts, the tax collector in Deerfield Township, had made the settlement called Mount's Station on the east side of the Little Miami, about three miles below the mouth of Todd's Fork in 1795.
Obed Denham, the tax collector of Washington Township (not to be confused with present Washington Township in Warren County), was a Baptist preacher who came from Kentucky and founded the town in Clermont County now called Bethel.
We shall now concentrate on old Deerfield Township. This large township comprised nearly all of the present county of Warren, except the current township of Franklin, the western portion of sections in Clearcreek, and ten sections of the fourth range in the northwest part of Turtlecreek. This area totaled about 30,000 acres in the neighborhood of Franklin.
Deerfield Township was much larger than the present County of Warren. It encompassed a strip three miles wide now in Montgomery and Greene, and extended eastward to the site of Wilmington, comprising about one-half of Clinton County. It also extended into Hamilton County along the southern boundary of present Deerfield Township. The commissioners of Hamilton County organized this large township in 1797. It was given the name Deerfield, in honor of the first settlement, which was made in 1795. Elections of township officers were to be held at the house of David Sutton, then the most prominent pioneer in Deerfield.
By 1797 there were many settlements in progress in Deerfield Township, some being Beedle's Station, Mount's Station, Waynesville, Turtlecreek and Todd's Fork.
The old township was fairly new in 1799, but was beginning to become a force amongst some of the other townships. Among the tax receipts of this year Deerfield ranked fourth in Hamilton County.
On June 10, 1797, the commissioners of Hamilton County chose Benjamin Stites, Jr., assessor, and Isaac Lindley, constable and tax collector of Deerfield Township. The tax return for that year for the entire township was $111.15. Stites' fees were $5.20 and Lindley's, $2.30.
In 1798, Peter Drake was assessor and Joshua Drake, constable and tax collector. The fees of the assessor were $11.21; of the tax collector and constable, $4.13 each.
In 1799 Michael H. Johnson was assessor; his fees were $8.22; William Mounts was tax collector.
Timothy Boothby was "lister" of the township in this year, and made an inventory of the white male inhabitants twenty-one years of age and over. His fees amounted to $21.
Several attempts were made to make Deerfield Township a county. The Territorial Legislature, which met at Cincinnati in 1799, passed an act for this purpose but Governor St. Clair vetoed the bill and it failed to become a law.

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This page created 22 July 2004 and last updated 28 September, 2008
© 2004 Arne H Trelvik  All rights reserved