A PAPER ON THE HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, FRANKLIN COUNTY, INDIANA

Prepared for a meeting of the Franklin County Historical Society

At the Springfield Methodist Church

April 12, 1966

By

Wilson Ridenour

Franklin County was created February 1, 1811. Springfield Township was set off from Brookville Township May 12, 1817. Originally, Brookville Township extended all the way across Franklin County (and so did Whitewater Township).

The boundaries of Springfield Township are identical with those of township nine north in the first range west of the meridian of the mouth of the Great Miami River (the Indiana-Ohio state line) according to the congressional survey of the western lands.

The history of Springfield Township is the history of her citizens and families, the history of her churches and organizations, the history of the township school system. The pioneer history of the Whitewater Country is a part of the history of Springfield Township. The history of the revolution in agriculture and the transformation of rural life is the history of Springfield Township. The two most important printed sources for the history of the Township are the Atlas of Franklin County that was published in 1882 and Reifel’s History of Franklin County published in 1915.

According to the tract book in the recorder’s office in the Courthouse, the first land purchased in Springfield Township was the southeast quarter of Section 28. That quarter was entered by John Remy at the Cincinnati Land Office, October 13, 1804. Henry Remy was a son and heir of John Remy. On October 21, 1816 Henry Remy and Patsey Remy of Gallatin County, Kentucky deeded the quarter section to Abraham Bledsoe. On March 31, 1827 Abraham Bedsoe, Gallatin County, Kentucky conveyed the same property to Asa Bledsoe. The deed was acknowledged before a justice of the peace in Switzerland County, Indiana. On October 2, 1827, Asa Bledsoe sold four acres off the very southeast corner to William Low, James Wallace, and William Ferguson, trustees of the Mount Carmel Congregation of Presbyterians and to their successors in office forever, which successors in office still hold that land, the whole four acres, where is located the Mount Carmel Presbyterian Church, the manse and the burying ground. Abigail Bledsoe, wife of Asa, signed the deed with her mark. The consideration was thirty dollars.

In 1811, James McCaw entered the southwest quarter of section 3 and that land is still owned and occupied by descendants of the first owner. Jeanette and Morris Drake occupy the farm. Mrs. Drake was a Miles. Mrs. Howard Miles was a McClure and her grandmother was a McCaw. In 1814, Samuel and Ezra L’hommedieu Bourne purchased the n.w. quarter of section one and that is still in the same family. It belongs to a Bourne and is occupied by a Bourne. The names of some of the other early settlers whose descendents are in the community are Appleton, Barbour, Luse, Shafer, Seal, and Craig.

The histories say that during the War of 1812,when there was fear of trouble with the Indians, a stockade was built on the property of Moses Reardon. We learn from the tract book that Moses Reardon entered the east half of section 14. Frog Pond School is in that half section, the Albert Pohlard and the Riley Appeltons liver there. As one drives past those peaceful acres today it is hard to imagine that Indians ever lurked there about.

There was a noteworthy spring near the stockade and some persons held the opinion that Springfield Township was named for that spring, while others believe that the township was named for some other Springfield, or perhaps someone just liked the name. Springfield is a common place name in America.

The metropolis of Springfield Township is Mount Carmel. Mount Carmel was founded in 1832 and platted in 1853, and was incorporated in 1881. The town was named for the Mount Carmel Presbyterian Church which was there before the town. The post office at Mount Carmel was originally called Sentinel, Indiana. At the beginning of the century in Mount Carmel there were two general stores, two blacksmith shops, a butcher shop, and a harness shop. There was a hotel in Mount Carmel, and a drugstore in the hotel. The grandparents of Mrs. Florence Shriner operated the hotel when she was s girl and she testified that the hotel did a thriving business. Commercial gentlemen would drive out to Mount Carmel in their buggies or their wagons and they would stay at the hotel while they traveled about in the neighborhood. The Sheppard and Vernun saw mill did a big business. Two doctors resided in Mount Carmel when the century was young. There were the three churches in the town, the school and high school, and two lodges (PH). The Scipio Lodge of Odd Fellows had a two-story building in Mount Carmel and the Knights of Pythias had their lodge hall on the third floor of the hotel. The community memory of Mount Carmel remembers there was once a reed factory in the town, and the building that housed this factory is known to be the first house on the north side of the road as one enters from Brookville, but the community memory does not remember what the reeds were used for. The Atlas of 1882 calls the place the steel reed factory and says the reeds were used in weaving. Mount Carmel has always been saloonless, a testimony to the vigilance of its churches.

As early as 1906, Mount Carmel lost its post office. Much else has gone the way of the post office. In recent years some new signs of life have appeared in the town. A large filling station and auto garage, built in 1964, occupies the site of the old hotel. It is fitting that the hotel should give way to a place that ministers to the needs of the machine that made the hotel obsolete. Russell Merrell and Sons is a new and expanding feed, grain, storage and hauling enterprise. Mount Carmel boasts the only airplane landing strip in Franklin County.

At little Scipio nestled between little hills there were in the memory of present people of the neighborhood two stores, two blacksmith shops, a shoemaker, a wagon maker, a sawmill, and a telephone exchange that extended its lines as far as Mount Carmel. The post office at Scipio was Philanthropy, Indiana. The Union Meeting House of Scipio is across the line in Ohio but it is a part of the history of Springfield Township. In the early days, there was a gristmill near Scipio, on Dry Fork (which, in spite of its name, usually has water in it). People came from miles around to have their corn and wheat ground into meal and flour. (PH)

About four miles north of Scipio, also on the state line is Peoria. Peoria might have become an important place when the railroad came, but it didn’t. People can remember when there were two stores in Peoria; the fame of its academy lives in the community memory. There was once a railroad depot at Peoria, Indiana.

Raymond came into being when the railroad came to Springfield Township in the first years of this century. The town was fittingly named for some railroad official, just who he was no one in the community seems to remember (such is fame). It was platted by a local property owner, an O’Byrne. He was a man of vision but circumstances were not favorable and some of the original lots remain unsold to this day. There was a C&O depot at Raymond, and four trains a day stopped there, two in each direction.

Springfield was once a rural center with a store, a blacksmith’s shop, a grange hall, a doctor, and several houses. Very little remains.

Palestine was platted on the western edge of the township. There was a post office there: Wynn, Indiana. This anecdote is told of the town of Palestine. A newcomer to Springfield Township traveled to Brookville and in Brookville was asked what route she used to come to town. The reply was, "We came through Jerusalem." (WC)

Pisgah was never platted but the name is still attached to a rather picturesque hollow where there is one house, an old two-story brick building--once a store downstairs and an assembly hall upstairs, and an old pioneer burying ground is there and that is Pisgah.

At the beginning of the century and presumably soon after the 1852 common school law, there were nine schools in Springfield Township, one school for every four sections. Their locations are shown in the 1882 Atlas. Their names should be remembered:

No. 1 Holliday School—named for property owners and a pioneer family in the neighborhood.

No. 2 Athens School—a very educated name for a school in the rough territory along Big Cedar Creek.

No. 3 Beech Grove School—there are beech groves near the school.

No. 4 Springfield School—near the hamlet of Springfield.

No. 5 Center School—at the very center of the Township.

No. 6 Mount Carmel School—in Mount Carmel.

No. 7 Bartlow School—named for the adjoining property owner, a member of which family was a prominent politician in Butler County in the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.

No. 8 Frog Pong School—the land about the school was low and wet, a home for frogs in the summer and a fine place for skating and games on ice in the winter during recess.

No. 9 A school without a name, only a number.

Of the nine schools that were in the township, five are still standing, in varying degrees of mutilation and dilapidation, Beech Grove, Center, Mount Carmel, Bartlow, and Frog Pong. I once heard a paper on the little red schoolhouses of Butler County and the historian said that the schools there were built in the 1870’s and 80’s. I perked up by ears at that for I know the inscription carved in stone over the door of the Mount Carmel School said that it was built in 1859, and the inscription over the Bartlow School says "School No. 7 – 1856". The Mount Carmel School was by no means a little red schoolhouse. It contains three large rooms with high ceilings and windows, and an ample vestibule. The building is in the Anglo-Italian style, and a good example of that style with its over hanging eaves and the roof that projects beyond the walls and the elaborate brackets under the eaves and the roof projections. The tall narrow windows with rounded arches at the top that are found in the vestibule are marks of the Italian style. There is an air of tattered elegance about the Mount Carmel School even in its present mutilated and abused condition.

The eighth grade commencement was a big thing in the lives of the graduates and the community in the days before a high school education was common. The Springfield Township commencements were held alternatingly at the Mount Carmel Presbyterian Church and the Springfield Methodist church. Each graduate had to write an essay of a prescribed length and the essay had to be declaimed from memory at the commencement. Those essays appear to have made an indelible mark on the memory of those who experienced them. I asked Park Heard what was the subject of his eighth grade essay and without a moment’s hesitation he replied, "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." Harvey McClure wrote on cotton and he can still recite the opening sentences of his essay. Mrs. Orpha Robertson still has the manuscript of her paper on the American Red Cross, a timely subject for it was written during the Spanish-American War. Mrs. Robertson recalls that her commencement was at the Mount Carmel Presbyterian Church and the large auditorium of the old church was filled and people sat in the windows and stood around the back of the hall. Her teacher at Bartlow took his eighth graders out in the woods and there they practiced their recitations for the commencement. Mrs. Howard Miles has a printed program for the commencement of 1891. (Mrs. Miles did not herself graduate from the eighth grade in 1891.)

Commencement

Of

Springfield and Bath Townships

Saturday, May 16, 1891

-Program-

Class motto—"Still There is Room"

Anthem…. choir

Invocation…. Rev. H. Morrow

Music

Presentation of class…. J.A. Stanley

"Poor Boys and Eminence" Miss May Meeker

"Our Government" A.S. Johnson

"Little Things" Miss Myrta Bourne

"What are Books Good For?" Miss Nora Dare

Quartette

"Poor Girls and Eminence" Miss Etta Hamilton

"The Cotton Gin in Politics" Harry Jones

Recitation Miss Mary Craig

Duet Mrs. R.M. & Miss Luta Barbour

"Success in Life" Miss Abbie Carson

"Luck and Pluck" D.O. McClure

"Woman’s Mission" Miss Edith King

Music

"The Power of Personal Influence" Miss Edith Davis

"There is Room at the Top" Miss Lotta Heard

"An Interrogation Point" Miss Myrta Shera

Instrumental solo Miss Myrta Scott

Address to the Class Miss Nora Alexander

Presentation of Diplomas Charles Phenis

Doxology Choir

Benediction

In the days of the academies in Indiana, in the 1850’s, there were two academies in Springfield Township. The histories speak of Peoria, the Mount Carmel, and the Springfield Academies, but apparently the last two are one institution, the Springfield Academy in Mount Carmel. This school was founded in 1851 by George A. Chase. We are told that it offered among its various courses of study, algebra, geometry, astronomy, Latin, rhetoric, and natural philosophy. The school was in operation as an academy for only two years. Chase was long associated with education in Franklin County. The academy at Peoria had a longer history and more fame. The grandfathers and fathers of some of the present citizens of the Township were educated at Peoria Academy. There is an excellent article on this school by Mrs. Herman Gurr in the Franklin County History. The old Academy Building at Peoria stood until about 1935.

The histories say that the academies that were once numerous in Indiana passed out of existence when the state-wide free public school system was organized on a firm basis after 1852. However, it is hard to see how the one room district schools as we have heard about them could have taken the place of the schools that offered instruction in algebra, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, and moral and natural philosophy.

High School work was offered at Mount Carmel in 1900. At first, there was a two-year course and later a three-year course, all taught in the west room of the Mount Carmel School. I once asked an alumnus of those days if after the two years at Mount Carmel they went on to finish high school in Brookville. The answer was, "No, that wasn’t necessary, after two years at Mount Carmel, we had a complete education." (HM)

Consolidation came to Springfield Township in 1922. As early as 1902 or 03 Bartlow School had been closed and the children from that neighborhood were hauled to Mount Carmel in a horse-drawn hack (PH). There is a bronze tablet on each side of the entranceway in the Springfield school. One says "Springfield School –1922—C.E. Condo, trustee-advisory board, John B. Nutty, R.T. Appleton, T.O. Appleton" inscribed on the other tablet is "This building site of five acres was donated by Adam M. and Matilda A. Redelberger—dedicated to education and recreation." When the consolidated school was built the school township bonded itself for $60,000 and the civil township for $30,000 (HM). Because of the method of financing the building, it has always been considered that the gymnasium-auditorium was paid for by and belongs to the civil township and not the school building, and from the beginning the gymnasium-auditorium has been a community center and is used by organizations of the Township and for community meetings without charge. When the Springfield School was built, the four-year Springfield Township high school was inaugurated and the building was considered to be the last word in higher education. The commencement of 1961 was the last graduation in Springfield Township High School. Thereafter, the high school was discontinued and the high school students were transferred to neighboring Whitewater Township. Grade school children are sent from Whitewater Township to the Springfield building, and during the current school year, more than half the children in the Springfield School are from Whitewater Township. Thus the beginning, the rise, the flourishing, and the conclusion and end of one rural high school has happened in the lifetime of the older citizens of the Township.

Along with the school system, the women’s clubs of the Township have made an important contribution to the education and the culture of the people of the community. These clubs have been a significant influence in the lives of their members and their members’ families. They have done much to broaden the interests and push back the horizons of the people of the Township.

The M. Louisa Chitwood is the first women’s Club in Franklin counting (not counting schoolgirl clubs) or it is the oldest literary club in the county with a continuous existence. Six young women organized the club in 1898. It was organized in the home of Mrs. William E. Dickson and she was the first club president. The original name of the club was the Ladies Literary Social Club of Philanthropy (that is Scipio). The aim of the club was "social, educational, and civic betterment." Later, the name of the club was changed to the M. Louisa Chitwood Club to honor the memory of the local poetess, and under that name the club has a noteworthy record of continuous service to the community (GH).

The older histories of the Township testify that in the early days Mary Louisa Chitwood was the pride and glory of Springfield Township. She was born in 1832 on a farm just north of Mount Carmel, and at this day the sign on the barn there proclaims that that is the "Chitwood" farm. "The beautiful but brief story of her life" closed when she was twenty-three years of age. A bronze tablet on a granite boulder in the front lawn of the Presbyterian Manse at Mount Carmel commemorates Mary Louisa Chitwood and the life, so full of promise, that was lived in the vicinity of Mount Carmel. In the Indiana State Library there are four editions of her poems and in the Brookville Library there is a fifth (really different printings of the same edition). These editions range in date from 1857 to 1891. They were all published in Cincinnati, and since publishers are in business to make money, we may assume that the five editions of Miss Chitwood’s poems are ample testimony to her popularity.

The Hoosier-Buckeye Club, as its name indicated, is an interstate club. The Club was organized in Springfield Township in 1913 in the home of Mrs. Clifford Moore on the State Line Road. At Lena Moore’s invitation, five friends and neighbors met for an initial meeting. Those who were at the first meeting each brought a guest to a second meeting. Mrs. Harvey McClure was one of those present at the second meeting of the society. Originally, it was a home economics club, but later became a community women’s club.

The membership of the Chitwood and the Hoosier-Buckeye Clubs ranges over two states and several counties and townships. In 1929, the community club was organized to be a Springfield Township Women’s Club. The organizational meeting was held in the home of Mrs. Frank Brower, but the club has thereafter met in the Springfield School. Blanche Seal, now Mrs. Alex De Armond was the first president and Mrs. Carl Cook was the second. The community club is a study club and its members exercise their brains in many directions in preparing papers for the club meetings.

Another important factor in the community life has been and is the Springfield Township Farm Bureau organized in 1919 at Clyde Stone’s house. Meetings are held at Springfield School. To improve the quality of rural life is the objective of the Farm Bureau.

Before there was a Farm Bureau, there was the Farmers’ Social Club, or the Social Farmers. Twelve couples belonged to the Farmers Club. The club met each month, thus each couple were hosts to the group once a year. The club met for dinner (in the middle of the day, of course) and after dinner there were papers on important subjects in the field of agriculture and rural life and politics and public issues. A discussion followed the papers, and the ladies participated. The members of the club were farmers of standing, men of ability and sound thinking, and the papers and discussions were solid and profitable. Some of the dgtrs and dgtrs-in-law of members have in their homes a great quality of fine linen and china and silver, reminders of the days when the twenty-four members of the Farmers’ Social Club were entertained for dinner. The Indiana members of the organization were Mr. and Mrs. Clement Conn, Mr. and Mrs. William Dickson, and Mr. and Mrs. Peter Heard.

Some of the topics gleaned from the printed programs of the Social Farmers Club in the possession of Howard E. Dickson:

1899 The Farmer as Businessman

1899 Which is of Most Importance in our Public Schools, Book Knowledge or Character Building?

Arrangement and Beautifying of the Lawn

By Guerel Beard

How Life on the Farm can be Made More Attractive

1905 The Wife as Business Partner

1907 Labor Versus Capital from the Farmer’s Standpoint

Opportunities for Social Life and Culture Open to the Farmer

Mrs. W.E. Dickson

Topic for Discussion: Annexation of Canada by the United States

1918 Are the Gasoline Truck and Tractor Practical for the 160-acre Farmer of Today?

Are War Price Fixing and Government Control Strengthening Socialism?

W.E. Dickson

1919 Shall We Build Our Highways of Brick, Concrete or Macadam?

Clem Conn

Will Farm Produce Prices Get Back to Where They Were Prior to 1914?

J.F. Gillespie

1903 Do Farmers Need to Organize?

W.E. Dickson

Why are the Private Rights of the Farm so Little Respected by the Public?

W.E. Dickson

Format of the meetings in 1905:

Current events

Sketch on a literary subject

3 or 4 papers, or subjects for discussion or debate

Recitations or an occasional musical number interspersed

In 1919, the sketch was on a war hero, Pershing and Haig, also Harry Lauder and Mle Schumann-Heink, Herbert Hoover, and John R. Mott. In the bylaws: "The refreshments shall be plain and simple, limited to the production of the farm, except beverages and condiments." Preamble…. we do form ourselves in a union or association…for the purpose of improving ourselves not only upon topics relating to the farm and kitchen, but upon any and all subjects which we see fit to discuss, except those of religion and politics." Beginning in 1898 the programs mention joint meetings with the Wayne, the Oxford, Practical, and Social Farmers’ Clubs.

I have endeavored to collect some information on when the modern world came to Springfield Township.

About 1896, the telephone line from Brookville was extended to Mount Carmel. But when the telephone line from Brookville arrived, there were already telephones on the Scipio exchange in Mount Carmel (RB). The Home Telephone Company was organized in the early 1890’s by some Beards and Gillespies and other Butler county men, but the exchange was first in the Indiana part of Scipio. The company started as a project among friends and neighbors. The men of the company cut their own locust trees for poles. The lines were extended west along the road to Mount Carmel and north along the State Line Road. Later, the base of operation was moved from Scipio to Reily, Ohio. The local company was acquired by the Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone and people who live in the eastern part of Springfield Township can say they have a Hamilton, Ohio, telephone.

In the 1890’s the northern part of the township received telephone from College Corner. They are now a part of the Oxford, Ohio, system. In the vicinity of the Springfield Church, the College Corner and the Brookville lines cross each other and the two territories overlap.

The railroad came late to Springfield Township. The Chicago, Richmond, and Muncie (the clod, rough & muddy) which soon became the Chesapeake and Ohio began its line in 1902. Bath Township voted to give the railroad a subsidy of $12,000 and Springfield Township gave a subsidy of $20,000. The grading and roadbed making was done by local contractors along the way. As many as sixty or seventy teams of horses and mules would be working on a mile or two of the right of way at one time. The dirt was moved with slip scoops and two wheel shovels. The track itself was laid by a track-laying machine. That track-laying machine was a wonder of the new age and brought people from miles around to see it. Harvey McClure was inspecting that machine when his eye was caught by a young lady in a pink sunbonnet on the other side of the track. Then and there he determined to further his acquaintance with the young lady in the pink sunbonnet and in time she became Mrs. Harvey McClure.

I have inquired among people who were here at the time to discover who owned the first automobile in Springfield Township. The authorities do not agree. Dr. Frank Seals in Mount Carmel has strong recommendation as the owner of the first automobile in the Township. Clement Conn had an Overland that was one of the early cars in the territory. Newton Samuel’s Maxwell (?) was another early car. Jeff Hamilton sold Cadillacs at the beginning of the automobile era. Adam Redelberger had an early Buick, the only car her ever owned and he drove it until it was fit to be a museum piece.

When one travels east from Brookville toward Mt. Carmel and Scipio, and Hamilton, Ohio on Indiana 252, he enters Springfield Township at Palestine. Soon, the road winds down into the valley of Big Cedar creek. There is a log cabin in a hollow by the side of the road near the creek. It is the real thing and appears to be in a good state of preservation. The road rises out of the rough Big Cedar Creek territory onto the rich flat tableland of eastern Franklin County. All along this road from Brookville to Hamilton there are fine old brick farm houses built in the days and the architectural style of the early republic. Just west of Mt. Carmel on the north is the Thompson Homestead and a good example of the style. Beyond Mt. Carmel on the north also and close to the road is the Clarkson house, in its plain simple functional design of the pioneers that we most admire. We see illustrated the qualities of the now home of George Luechauer. It was built in 1836 and built of bricks that were made on the farm. The next house on the same side of the road is the Craig Homestead. It has been in the same family since it was built in 1837. The farm has been in the family since 1829. It is now the home of Willard Craig. The white trim of the door and windows and the corners of the house accentuate the chaste, foursquare no-nonsense character of the early republic or federal style of building. From the standpoint of the history of architecture, the Craig house is probably the most outstanding landmark in Springfield Township.

Across the road is the Shank place, once Jeff Hamilton’s, a large farm and a large house in several styles. Dr. Shank is apart of the more recent history of Springfield Township. The local people will speak of Dr. Shank to a stranger or a newcomer as tho all the world knows who he was. Reed Shank was an eminent surgeon in Cincinnati. On July 29, 1938, he purchased a farm in Springfield Township, and the large house was a summer home or weekend home in the country. Other farms were bought later. Dr. Shank was a lover of fine horses, draft horses and he had the finest that were obtainable. There were as many as 50 horses on the farm at one time, and about 30 there as late as 1953 (WJBL).

Beyond the Craig homestead on the south side of the road are a pair of houses in the Italian style, very graceful and outstanding examples of that mode of building.

Further east is the Heard residence, a house with a one-story columned front porch that gives it the look of a southern plantation house. The house was built in the days of the early republic and the father of Dr. Frank James, a pioneer physician who attended to the ills of the territory on horseback. The bricks for the house were burnt on the farm. There is a story in the family that during the Civil War a traveling stranger received hospitality by the Jameses and he stayed over night in the house. His identity was not learned until later. During housecleaning, it was discovered that he had written his name, John Morgan, on the wall of the bedroom, in the back of a mirror. When word got out that Dr. James had entertained Morgan the Raider, persons in the community were incensed and a mob appeared at the house, rope in hand, ready to hang the suspected rebel sympathizer. At the right moment, a hired hand appeared on the scene with a shotgun and the mob dispersed.

The father of Peter T. Heard purchased the farm from the Jameses. His son, Park Heard, is the third generation of his family to live in the house. Mrs. Park Heard is a descendant of the James who built the house, and she testified that the story about General Morgan is history in her family. The Heards have the original government deed to the land, dated 1818, and signed by President James Monroe.

The road now descends into the rough land along Dry Fork of Whitewater. There is a split-level house along the road, a split-level at least 125 years old. One floor is on the level of the road and the downstairs is on the ground level at the side and back. This house, which was once larger, was a hotel in former times, and once it had the name of Westside Inn. In the back and the side of the old hotel, between the road and dry Fork, the observer can see that the lay of the land in the creek bottom has been much disturbed. Various channels cut up the ground. These are the remains of the millraces that once supplied the waterpower for three mills that once stood near there.

A few more turns and dips in the road brings the traveler to Scipio. Two states, two counties and four townships come together in the heart of Scipio. But unfortunately, everything seems to be on a slant in Scipio and it is very hard to tell what is where.

The Stateline Road winds north out of Scipio, not at all on the state line at first. Quite a number of interesting and outstanding old houses are built along Stateline Road. The most prominent is the former Squire Beard home. This house in the Italian style was built by William S. Beard in the 1880’s. Squire Beard is said to have owned over 1,100 acres of land on both sides of the state line and he sold 160 acres to pay for his new house. There is in existence a printed program for a reception given by Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Beard in honor of the Social Farmers’ Club on July 23, 1903. The Squire Beard residence is now the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Zellner.

The Springfield Methodist Church is one of the landmarks of the countryside and a small gem in the Greek Revival Style of Architecture. This building was built in 1865. The church was founded in 1824 in the home of David McCaw. An earlier church stood in the Springfield Cemetery, to the sough and west of the present church. At that time, the Carolina Trace, from Harrison to Liberty ran past the cemetery. Among the trustees at the time the building was built were men named O’Byrne, Miles, Shera, and Barbour.

West of here not very far is the Joseph Shafer homestead, now the property of Howard E. Dickson, the grandson of Joseph Shafer. This elaborate Italian-style brick house was built in 1886. The large house and avenue of maples that lead up to it make a very imposing layout.

One further landmark in the township, the Big Cedar Baptist Church on Big Cedar Creek Road, between the road to Reily and the Oxford Pike. The original church was established in 1817as an arm of the Little Cedar Baptist church. The plain, simple brick building, but impressive in its simplicity was built in 1838. This church, like all, or nearly all of the pioneer Baptist groups in the county was originally Primitive Baptist or Hardshell. In the 1830’s or there abouts, modernism came upon the scene, modernism and human inventions, like Sunday Schools, Missionary Societies, and organs. Organs were particularly anathema to the Primitive Party; an organ was Arron’s golden calf. The Big Cedar congregation divided into two congregations, but the two groups arrived at an amicable settlement and both congregations continued to use the same building. The Primitives, or Hardshells, had church there on the first and third Sabbath of each month, and the Modernists or Missionary Baptists used the church on the second and fourth Sundays. Each congregation had its own wood shed. The building is now maintained in connection with the Big Cedar Cemetery Association.

I will conclude this essay on the history of Springfield Township with a paragraph on the Old Settlers Picnic that was once a high point in the year in the Township.

In 1810 Moses Rairden came to Springfield Township. His son, Aquila Rairden, came to Springfield in 1810 too and he lived on the same farm until he died in 1896 at the age of eighty-eight years. It was in Aquila Rairden’s woods near Frog Pond School that the annual picnic was first held of the Pioneer Association of Franklin, Union, and Butler counties. The association was founded in 1883 to honor the memory of the pioneers, the brave men and women who made a home in the wilderness and did their share to create the empire of the west. The annual picnic was held on the last Saturday in August. In the old days, that woods was full of people. It was still going in 1927. A gold-headed cane was given to the oldest man present, and gold-rimmed spectacles to the oldest lady present.

The Old Settlers Pioneer Association has been discontinued, but in part, the Franklin County Historical Society is a continuation of that older organization whose purpose was to honor the early settlers in this territory and preserver the memory of the past that is our heritage.

Sources:

CU Charles Urban

HED Howard E. Dickson

HM Harvey B. McClure

PH Park Heard

RB Roscoe Black

RG Robert D. Gillespie

WC Willard K. Craig

WJL William J. Lackey