Where we are

About Hanover Township

Hanover Township sits in western Columbiana County, Ohio, along U.S. Route 30. It holds the village of Hanoverton and the communities of New Garden, Kensington, Dungannon, and Gillford.

County
Columbiana County, Ohio
Organized
June 3, 1806
Survey
Township 15, range 4, six miles square
Land area
35.81 square miles
Population
3,459 (2020 Census)
School district
United Local School District
Main routes
U.S. Route 30, State Route 9, State Route 172
Historic district
Hanoverton Canal Town District, listed 1977

A short history

Hanover Township was organized on June 3, 1806, as township 15 in range 4, and it still holds its original six miles square. Most of the first families were Quakers. William Winder crossed into the township in 1806 and settled in section 33, and Griffith John brought his wife and seven children from Pennsylvania in 1807. A log Friends meeting house stood east of New Garden by about 1806, and a brick one replaced it in 1840. The early settlers are believed to have named the township after Hanover, Pennsylvania, their own home town.

James Craig laid out the village of Hanover in 1813 on land he bought from Joseph Milner. The post office took the name Hanoverton because Ohio already had a Hanover. New Garden was laid out in 1810, and Kensington took its present name in 1876, after the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad reached it.

The Sandy and Beaver Canal changed the township. The company was chartered on January 11, 1826, and once the route was set to pass near Hanoverton, Michael Arter, George Brown, and Horace Potter drained swamp land and laid out the addition that is now Canal Street, still the business part of the village. The canal work was heavy here: a tunnel nearly three quarters of a mile long ran east of Hanover, a second tunnel of about 350 yards lay north of Dungannon, and two reservoirs stood at Gillford, the larger one 490 acres. The panic of 1837 stopped the work. It restarted in the 1840s and then failed, and the village boom ended with it.

That canal era is still standing. The Hanoverton Canal Town District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 3, 1977, under reference number 77001050. The Hanover Township Historical Society, founded in 1974, keeps a museum on State Route 9 next to Hanoverton Hardware.

A note on dates. The county history of 1879 says the village of Hanover was laid out in May 1813; the 1908 township history says 1811. Both are printed here as they stand rather than settled by us. Corrections are welcome at hanovertownshipohio@gmail.com.

Communities in the township

  • Hanoverton laid out 1813, incorporated 1836, the canal-era village on U.S. 30.
  • New Garden laid out 1810, three miles north of Hanoverton.
  • Kensington a railroad stop, renamed from Maysville in 1876.
  • Dungannon post office established about 1836.
  • Gillford laid out 1835 on the canal route, named for the canal engineer.

Sources