The History of Warren County, Ohio

Contributor::

[The writer of the following township and town history desires to be regarded as its compiler rather than its author. Several papers by other hands have been consulted and freely used. Records have been examined wherever it was possible to find them. On the subject of the early settlement of the township, the chief authority is A. H. Dunlevy. During the last twenty-five years of his life, Mr. Dunlevy wrote and published in various newspapers a number of articles on the early settlement of Lebanon and vicinity. These articles, which give much of the pioneer history of the township, were collected and preserved by the writer, and it has been his purpose in the following pages to give all the important facts contained in them. Mr. Dunlevy wrote from memory, and scarcely ever took the trouble to verify his dates by an examination of records. The dates given by him are sometimes changed in the following pages, and the facts derived from his papers are united with those obtained from other sources. The writer desires to express his obligations to Anthony Howard Dunlevy, who wrote more than any other person concerning the early history of the Turtle Creek Valley, in which he lived for eighty-four years, and who died at the venerable age of eighty-eight years, while these pages were being prepared for the press. At the time of his death, he believed, after investigation, that he was the oldest living man born north of the Ohio River. The valuable journals of the Shaker Society at Union Village, extending over a period of more than seventy-five years, have been freely opened to the examination of the writer. Much assistance has been derived from the files of the Western Star. The officers of various societies and churches have freely given the aid which could be derived from the records under their charge. Acknowledgments are due to many intelligent persons in different parts of the township, and in other places, for generous assistance. Fully sensible of its imperfections, the compiler trusts that the history will be found trustworthy in all important matters.]