The story
Welcome to Clinton Township
Clinton Township, east of Goshen, is rolling farm land that Deahl in 1905 called capable of “unending abundance.” Its Amish and Dunkard settlers worshipped for years in their homes, and its only town, Millersburg, did not appear until the railroad came in 1855.
Chapman (1881) says the township was named in 1836 by one of the county’s earliest pioneers in honor of his son Clinton, by then a physician near Ligonier. The first election was held on the first Monday in August 1836, when seventeen men voted, among them Solomon Benner, William Pearman, William Carmien, Wilson McConnell, Samuel Thomas, Peter Mont, the Bileses, the Denneys and George Zullinger. The first trustees were Zullinger, McConnell, Mont and Jacob Bockenover, and Elias Simpson was the first child born in the township.
Chapman tells pioneer stories of the practical joker Samuel Ulery, who led a moonlight log-rolling and raided a neighbor’s smokehouse, and of William Pearman, whose family lived on hominy while he made long trips to mill.
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Faith shaped the township. Chapman says the Amish worshipped in private houses until about 1858 and then built a meeting house, rebuilt about 1876, with some two hundred members; the German Baptists, or Dunkards, met in barns in summer until they built a church; and the Lutherans had a brick church. Deahl (1905) adds that the Amish and Dunkard custom of worshipping at home helped delay the growth of a town.
Solomon Miller laid out Millersburg on section 34 in 1855, beside the new Lake Shore railroad, and it became the township’s trading place. The township has at least six cemeteries, among them Clinton Brick Mennonite, Clinton Union, Nisley and Rock Run, and the 2020 census counted 4,870 people.