Warren County: A Pulchritudinous Place (Part I)

Warren County's political subdivisions. Map plucked from Wikipedia.

If Ross County is a candy store, Warren County may be the ice cream parlor which occupies the adjoining storefront. Like Ross, Warren comprises some of Ohio's earliest-settled lands, straddles a major north-to-south-running river (in its case, the Little Miami), and occupies a surveying boundary zone. The Little Miami River splits the county, roughly, into two regions: the Virginia Military District (east) and Symmes — or Miami — Purchase (west). A few sections of Congress Lands exist in Franklin Township, at the county's northwestern corner, where the Great Miami River skirts the city of Franklin. Warren County's terrain is, as Howe noted, "gently undulating" (1), though broken by the valleys of Clear Creek, Caesar's Creek, Todd's Fork, and — of course — the Little Miami River.

Warren County's first permanent residents arrived in the 1790s. In November 1795, one William Bedle, a New Jerseyan, purchased Section 28 of modern Turtle Creek Township, where he erected a fortified log house, thereafter known as "Bedle's Station." (This home stood due south of Union Village.) Concurrently, a party of Marylanders — led by William Mounts (1762 – ca. 1808) — selected a spot on the Little Miami River's south bank, and built "Mounts' Station," a collection of log dwellings arranged in such a fashion as to dissuade attack. In 1796, less than a year later, surveyors platted Deerfield (now South Lebanon), Franklin, and Waynesville. By 1803, when it was cleaved from Hamilton, Warren accommodated 854 adult males (2); and, by 1810, nearly 10,000 souls called the county home. The Irish writer Thomas Ashe visited (or claimed to have visited) Warren County in August 1806 and described Lebanon (and its environs) thusly:

The remaining fifteen miles to Lebanon [from the Hamilton County border] were nearly the best I ever viewed, and settled considerably for so new a country. The farms were numerous, well improved, and the houses and barns on them built with great care and industry. 

Lebanon contains about two hundred inhabitants, dwelling in about forty neat log and frame houses. A place of worship and school-house are also erected, and the town in every respect bids fair to prosper and encrease with unprecedented success. Seated in the midst of the finest tract of land in the world, and that tract already thickly settled by a hardy and industrious people, it cannot fail to succeed[.] . . . The inhabitants, though few, are composed of several nations, who unite in forming a character of a laborious and religious cast. Their industry is manifest in the extensive improvements and comfortable abodes; all effected within the space of five years[.] (3)

Hyperbole notwithstanding, Ashe's anecdote is accurate enough. In the nineteenth century's opening decades, Warren County far outpaced its northern and eastern neighbors in prosperity. Yes, portions of Harlan and Washington townships — those marked by level, ill-drained, silty Illinoian till — remained little-populated until mid-century, but the county, in toto, enjoyed a prosperous existence.

I'll end my bloviating here, and save a discussion of Warren County's architecture (and regional history) for the next post.

1) Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, Volume I (1889), 740.

2) This estimate, provided by Beers' 1882 History of Warren County, Ohio, is no doubt inaccurate, and includes residents of Clinton County's western half, which, until 1810, remained within Warren County.

3) Travels in America Performed in 1806, Volume II (1808), 209–211.