TP. 2, S.
AREA 15,360 ACRES

R. 10, E.
POPULATION, 1,011

    At a session of the County Commissioners held March 7, 1831, this entry was made on the records:
     "A petition of sundry inhabitants of Hancock County was presented for setting off the original surveyed townships, numbered one and two, in range 10 south of the base line, into a township, which was accordingly set off, to be known and designated by the name of Van Buren.
     At the March session of 1834, the Commissioners ordered that township 2 south, in range 9, be attached to Van Buren township for corporate purposes.
     In June, 1840, at the formation of Madison township, sections 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 23, 24, 25, 26, 35 and 36 of Van Buren were made a part of the new township, so that this township is now composed of sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 and 34 in township 2 south.
     This township 1hich was named for President Van Buren, is situated on the south line of the county, and is bounded on the north by Eagle township, on the east by Madison, on the south by Hardin County, and on the west by Orange township.
     The first entry of land was the north-west quarter of section 27, on the 4th of January, 1831, by Benjamin SPARR.  In April of the same year, Samuel GREEN entered the east half of the south-west quarter of the same section and in July, James WEST entered the east half of the north-east quarter section 23.
     May 16th, 1833, John DILLER entered the north-east quarter of the south-east quarter of section 10, and in December of the same year Solomon BERGMAN, of Licking County, entered the west half of the south-west quarter of section 17.  Peter  PIFER and C. PRICE, both of Pennsylvania, on the 20th of May, 1834, made entries of land, the one took up the north-east quarter of Section 8, and the other the east half of the north-east quarter of section 9.
     In October, 1834, Robert SHAW, of Portage County, Peter FOLTZ, of Fairfield County, Isaac ASHBURN of Knox County, Joseph SMITH of Columbiana County, Henry FREED and Daniel BESSERMAN, both of Stark County, Ohio, made entries of lands here.  Other entries speedily followed, many of them by newly arrived emigrants of Germany.
     The first settlement was made by Nicholas ESSINGER, Adam GASSMAN and Peter PIFER, as early perhaps as 1833.  Not far from the same time Adam REDDICK, Peter and Henry HELDMAN came in, and were quickly followed by Philip HELDMAN, Michael and Peter WILCH all from Germany.  Soon the STINEMANs, the FREEDs, the BESSERMANs the HASSONs, the BARMOUTHs, the PRICE and others, nearly all Germans, followed and began to open up farms.  These pioneers were industrious, thrifty, honest and moral, and their robust health, the result of frugal living, their energy and solid strength, backed up by a fixed determination to succeed in the land of their adoption, soon enabled them to open up valuable farms, and to-day we have not a more industrious, honest, peaceable and contented people than those found in this township.
     The timber found here consists principally of walnut, the different varieties of oak, ash, maple and elm, with beech, sycamore and buckeye.  It required much time and great labor to remove this great mass of timber in clearing up the land and preparing it for cultivation.
     The soil in the low lands is a black loam, on the uplands clay, but all so mingled and enriched by other substances as to be very fertile.
     The township is watered by Ottowa and Riley Creeks, both of which have their sources here.  Good drainage can be had anywhere in the township by these and their small tributaries.
     Log school houses, the first built in the township, were at FULHERT's and John TILLES', and were erected about the same time.  The school houses here, as elsewhere in the county, followed close on the settlements, and these were perhaps built as early as 1834.  There are now six school houses in the township with an enumeration of youth amounting to three hundred and twelve.
     The German Reformed Church building at Jacob TRAUCHT's was the first erected in this township.  There are now one Methodist Episcopal, one Dunkard, one German Reformed, and one German Lutheran Church building in the township.
     The emigrants to this place were many of them directly from Germany.
     This table exhibits the number and value of live stock, and the acreage and bushel of cereals, as returned to the County Auditor, by the Assessor of the township in the year 1881.