Hill, Jediah, Covered Bridge

The need of a new township, to be carved from the northern part of the originally great Cincinnati township, was not felt with any pressure or made necessary by the pushing of settlement up the Miami purchase, until after Wayne's victory in 1794. This greatly stimulated removal from the hamlets along the river to the rural districts and invited rapid immigration from abroad. The next year the court of general quarter sessions of the peace for Hamilton county answered a demand of the growing settlements and somewhat numerous stations up the Mill Creek valley for a new municipality. Springfield township was accordingly created, to begin at a point in the meridian bounding the east side of township three, in the first entire range, two miles south of the southeast corner of said township three (that is, the present corner of Springfield township); thence north two miles to said southeast corner of township three; thence east two miles to the meridian; thence north six miles to the northern line of the entire range one; thence west to the east boundary of Colerain, which was then as now; thence south along Colerain and South Bend townships eight miles; thence east to the place of beginning.

Passage source: History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, published 1881.

In 1792, Mr. Henry Tucker, who had come froin New Jersey to Columbia the same year with his relative, John Tucker; Henry Weaver, who came to the same place from New York, two years before; Luke and Zebulon Foster, Jonathan Pittman and James McCasken, formed a company to push up the valley of Mill creek, estabUsh a station and improve a farm. They found a suitable tract on what is now section four of this township, on the west branch of Mill creek, a little below Glendale, half a mile north of the site of the well-known tavern, afterwards kept by Mr. Pittman, and about as far east of the tracks of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton railroad. . The site known as Foster's Hill transmits the memory of their occupation here. It was then on the military trace cut through between Forts Washington and Hamilton. East of this, and at a point about a mile and a half northwest of the present Lochland, the party began the erection of a block-house. Mr. Olden says: "The old station-house stood on the east side of the road, immediately opposite the late residence of Manning Tucker, now owned by Mr. Horace Bugher." The farm owned by Mr. Bugher is identical, in part, with the location made by the Tuckers and their company. Cabins were also commenced; but the settlement, although unmolested by the Indians, was presently disturbed by a dissension between Henry Tucker and Luke Foster, the former alleging that Foster, in making the lines of his own division (for the settlers were not to hold in common), had encroached upon the site Tucker had selected for his home. The trouble was serious, and the complainant, unable to obtain satisfaction, seceded from the colony and returned to Columbia. During the winter of 1793-4, however, the difficulty was composed, Luke Foster accepting an offer of ten acres in the southwest corner of the section, and Zebulon Foster five acres next north of it, as compensation for their improvements made on section four. This was now divided again between the two Tuckers and Pittman, while the Fosters, with Weaver and McCashen, and two new men named James Seaward and Ziba Wingent, agreed to settle on sections nine and ten, next on the west and southwest. Under this arrangement Henry Tucker, with the rest, who had also returned to Columbia on the advice of Captain Wells, an experienced Indian fighter, to await the advent of Wayne's army, went out again in the spring of 1794 and recommenced their improvements.

Passage source: History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches, published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Springfield Township - 25,313 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.