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Historical Collections of Ohio

By Henry Howe

Vol. I.

©1888

 

DARKE COUNTY

 

Page 529

DARKE COUNTY was formed from Miami county, January 3, 1809, and organized in March, 1817. The surface is generally level, and it has some prairie land. It is well timbered with oak, poplar, walnut, blue ash, sugar maple, hickory, elm, and beach, and the soil is exceedingly fertile. It is a granary of corn, oats; and wheat—the yield immense and the quality excellent—and it is a first-class agricultural county, a large proportion of the land being a deep black soil and apparently inexhaustible. Area unusually large 600 square miles. In 1885 the acres cultivated were 214,522; in pasture, 23,247; woodland, 72,333; lying waste, 7,207; produced in wheat, 996,331 bushels; oats, 472,201; corn, 3,066,476; broom brush, 36,545 pounds; tobacco, 3,152,425; butter, 867,560; flax, 91,457; potatoes, 215,809 bushels; sorghum, 49,559; largest in the State; eggs, 867,493 dozen; horses owned, 13,548 ; cattle, 25,517; hogs, 36,977.School census 1886, 13,881 ; teachers, 255.   It has 158 miles of railroad.

 

 

 

 

Population in 1820 was 3,717; in 1840, 13,145; 1860, 26,009; 1880, 40,496, of whom 3,3,062 were Ohio-born, 1,846 Pennsylvanians, and 1,208 in Germany.

 

Gen. William DARKE, from whom this county derived its name, was born in Pennsylvania, in 1738, and removed at the age of five years with his parents to near Shepherdstown, Va. He was with the Virginia provincials at Braddock’s defeat, taken prisoner in the Revolutionary war, at Germantown, commanded as colonel two Virginia regiments at the siege of York, was a member of the Virginia Convention of ‘88, and was repeatedly a member of the Legislature of that ancient commonwealth. He distinguished himself at St, Clair’s defeat, and died Nov. 20, 1801. Gen. Darke was by profession a farmer. He possessed a herculean frame, rough manners, a strong but uncultivated mind, and a frank and fearless disposition.

 

This county is of considerable historic interest. The defeat of St. Clair, November 4, 1791, took place just over its northwestern border, near the Indiana line, on the site of the village of Fort Recovery. Under the head of Mercer county, a very full account of’ this event is given, with individual narratives and incidents.

 

On his march north from Cincinnati St. Clair built a fort five miles south of the present site of Greenville, which he named fort Jefferson. His army left on the 24th of October, and continued their toilsome march northward through the wilderness, which in less than two weeks was brought to its disastrous close.