TOWNSHIP TIMELINE

1807

The future Chippewa Township is surveyed and plotted by the Federal Government.

Doylestown is founded by William Doyle, who built a log cabin that served as a local tavern.

Samuel Chidester establishes the Chidester Woolen Mill on the banks of Silver Creek. Today the building serves as the museum of the Chippewa Rogues’ Hollow Historical Society.

John and James Sieberling begin manufacturing agricultural equipment under the name Excelsior Mower and Reaper Works in Doylestown. The company operated under several different names until the early 20th century. John’s sons Frank and Charles would go on to found Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron.

An 1807 federal surveyofthefuture ChippewaTownship lands.Chippewa Creek,SilverCreek, and Red Run are visibleinthemap.

Rogues’Hollow

1816

The community of Easton (formerly Chippewa and then Slankerville) is established.

Chippewa Township is established on September 4, 1815 by order of the Wayne County commissioners. The township was named after the native Chippewa (Ojibwe) people, who lived primarily around Lake Superior, but had resisted American expansion into the region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

1815

1840

David Galehouse operates the first commercial coal mine west of Rogues’ Hollow. In the following decades, dozens of coal mines operated in the township. Most coal mining operations had been depleted and closed operations by the mid-20th century.

1867

Doylestown is incorporated as a Village.

MapofChippewaTownshipfromCaldwell’s

The Zimmerman Bury Octagon House is constructed on Wadsworth Road in the southeastern portion of the township. The house was part of a national trend inspired by Orson Squire Fowler’s 1848 book “Octagon House: A Home for All”. The style became popular due to their supposed ease of construction and health benefits. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and is one of 6 in Ohio and 68 nationally that remain standing.

The citizens of Doylestown erect a monument to the soldiers of the First World War at the intersection of Portage and Clinton Streets. The “Doughboy” statue was dedicated on Armistice Day (now Veterans Day), November 11, the third anniversary of the end of the war.

The postWorld War II era sees the growth of suburban communities in nearby Medina and Summit Counties.

The City of Rittman detaches from Chippewa Township.

The Wayne Salt Company is founded in nearby Rittman. The company began mining salt deposits in Rittman and Chippewa Township. The company would later become the Ohio Salt Company and merged with Morton Salt in 1948. Morton Salt remains a major employer in the area.

The Bauman family opens an orchard in Rittman, OH. Today Bauman Orchards has multiple locations in and around the Chippewa Township area.

The Village of Marshallville detaches from Chippewa Township.

Chippewa Township was established in 1815 and is a statutory, non-home rule township with estimated 2021 population of 9,892, including incorporated areas. It is the most heavily populated unincorporated subdivision in Wayne County. The largest municipality in the township, Doylestown, was founded in 1827 and incorporated in 1867. From 1840 to 1946, Chippewa Township was a major supplier of coal, with the mining centered around the area known as “Rogues Hollow”. Doylestown was then a significant industrial center, owing to the local coal supply and until 1903 was the manufacturing site of the Empire Reaper, the largest selling horse-drawn reaper in America. A small portion of the City of Norton extends into Chippewa Township.

Norton has not conformed their boundary to the township lines (i.e. not seceded territory from the township). In the northwestern end of the township, the City of Rittman detached from Chippewa Township in 2011. In the southern end of the township, the village of Marshallville detached from the township in 2012.

Chippewa was the first township in Wayne County to enact zoning, doing so in 1966. It was the first township in the county to have a comprehensive plan, written in 1997. Chippewa is one of the few townships to have its own fire department and the only one with its own training facilities. Most of the township has a Doylestown mailing