Ohio
Norwich Township
Huron County
This is a provisional page, here as a starting point for this family community.
We welcome more details, photographs, history, or even a complete re-write.
And of course
web links to your communities web sites.
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Norwich Township, Huron County, Ohio
Administration: Three trustees and a clerk.
Population: 1200
Area: 26 square miles
A History of Norwich Township
The Township was named after its Connecticut namesake and at the original survey it contained 16,529 acres and the land was valued to the original grantees at $1.50 per acre. From 1808 to the end of the 1812 war many of the grantees had sold or left their land to heirs.
The first road was made by the men of General Beall's army in 1812.
A survey of that trail shows where it crossed the later B & O railway.
Sections were surveyed into 100 acre lots and a village was laid out... the latter was never occupied save for the skeleton of the village house. This was named Barbados and now there is a village named Havana ...one wonders at the possible connections.
The first surviving birth was in 1817 and the first marriage was in 1819. The first frame building was a barn in 1832 and then the first house in that style was built in 1835 but unfortunately it soon burned down, to be followed by a brick built home.
The Post office was named North Norwich so as not to be confused with that of Norwich, Muskingum County and the first postmaster was there for some 20 years.
The first corn (maize) and wheat were grown in 1817.
 The first school house was built in 1819 and consisted of a bare oak log cabin covered in elm bark - only split oak benches and the windows were cracks between the log walls.
In 1827 the first elections were at great risk because on the return journey from Norwalk the two yoke Ox wagon overturned in the river and the ballot box had to be rescued by diving in and collecting it before it was washed away.
Deer, coon skins and beeswax were the main money spinners but at one time there were some five stores in the neighbouring areas and gradually the winding tracks could be called roads where teamsters drove their six horse teams with immense wagons called 'Land Schooners'
 The soil is loam and the subsoil brick clay - all well adaptable to agriculture whilst the township was heavily wooded at the outset.
Today the land is well fenced and farmed and 90% own their own homes, stock yards and grain barns.
Left: Huron County Fair - a familiar picture in all county fairs worldwide!
Willard is the largest community in the Township, and it is from the generosity of their librarian Beverly R Brandt that much of this information has been gathered.
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