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    Lithograph of a two-story hotel on a street corner, a sign reading Bradley House, with a stagecoach and a buggy passing in front and a church spire behind.

    Noble County · Indiana · St. Joseph River Valley

    Albion Township

    Four square miles cut out around the county seat.

    Discover its storyThings to seeDirectionsThe valley map

    The Bradley House hotel at Albion, Mrs. S. A. Bradley proprietor, from the 1874 county atlas. Lithograph from Illustrated Historical Atlas of Noble County, Indiana (Chicago: Andreas & Baskin, 1874), via the Internet Archive, Public domain.

    • Townshipin Noble County
    • 1854organized
    • 2,326people, 2020 census

    Project Scroll is an independent local-history website. This is not an official page of Albion Township or Noble County, and it does not speak for them. For official business, contact the township office directly.

    The story

    Welcome to Albion Township

    Albion Township is the smallest township in Noble County: two miles square, set off in 1854 around the village of Albion, which had been chosen as the county seat in 1846. Most of the town of Albion lies within it.

    Albion Township was created on June 4, 1854, when the county commissioners took sections 18 and 19 from Jefferson Township and sections 13 and 24 from York Township, a tract two miles square. It took in the place known in early days as “The Center,” which had been selected eight years before, in 1846, as the site for the county seat. When the new township was made, the 1882 county history says, it claimed a share of the school funds of York and Jefferson and was awarded a portion based on the population of the sections taken from them.

    Among the early settlers around the Center was Abel Barnum, who in 1844 bought land about three-quarters of a mile north of the present town and cut the first road into the village. The first log cabin was built by Isaac Swarthout, at one time sheriff of the county, who boarded during the work with William Skeels, settled there in 1844. The first frame house in Albion proper is said to have been built by James Gillespie.

    Read the full story

    The survey and map of the new Albion were made on November 3, 1846, the first frame courthouse was finished in 1847 at a cost of $4,045, and the county records were moved there on September 16, 1847. After it burned, a brick courthouse was finished in 1861, and the present courthouse was built in 1889 by Malone Brothers of Toledo at a cost of $113,000. Owen Black of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who came in 1853, built the first flouring mill and two sawmills in Albion.

    The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, for which Albion Township voted a tax in 1872 without opposition, began running trains in 1874. Albion was incorporated as a town the same year; the census counted 430 people in the township and town in 1870 and 926 in 1880. The township today is essentially the town of Albion and its edges, and the 2020 census counted 2,326 people in it.

    Plan a visit

    Things to see

    • Noble County Courthouse

      Courthouse square, Albion

      The third courthouse at Albion, built in 1889 by Malone Brothers of Toledo; the 1920 county history calls it “still the pride of the county.”

      Directions

    • Albion

      Albion Township

      The county seat, platted in 1846 at the place long called “The Center”; it has its own page on this site.

      Directions

    In the township

    Villages and settlements

    Quick facts

    At a glance

    Organized
    June 4, 1854, from two sections each of Jefferson and York townships
    Size
    Two miles square (four sections)
    Town
    Albion, the county seat (site chosen 1846; incorporated 1874)
    First cabin
    Isaac Swarthout
    Railroad
    Baltimore & Ohio, trains from 1874
    Population
    2020 census: 2,326

    Know a story about Albion Township?

    Old photographs, letters, a school picture, a story your grandparents told: if it belongs to Albion Township, we would love to see it. A phone photo of the front and back is enough, and we credit you by name if you like.

    Send it to us Contact page

    Keep exploring

    Nearby in the valley

    For researchers: records and sources

    Where the records are

    Albion is the county seat, and Noble County’s deeds, court and probate records are kept by the county offices there. Albion Township is covered in History of Northeast Indiana (1920), vol. 1, ch. LXXII, ‘Albion, the County Seat,’ pp. 457–463, and in Counties of LaGrange and Noble (1882), part II, ch. IX, ‘Town of Albion.’

    Sources

    • History of Northeast Indiana: LaGrange, Steuben, Noble and DeKalb Counties, ed. Ira Ford, Orville Stevens, William H. McEwen and William H. McIntosh (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1920), vol. 1, ch. LXXII, ‘Albion, the County Seat’: creation of the township June 4, 1854, the Center, Barnum, Swarthout, Skeels and Gillespie, p. 457; courthouses, pp. 457–459; Owen Black, p. 459; population 1870–1900 and incorporation in 1874, p. 463. link
    • Counties of LaGrange and Noble, Indiana: Historical and Biographical (Chicago: F. A. Battey & Co., 1882), part II, History of Noble County, ch. IX, ‘Town of Albion,’ pp. 177–178 (division of the York and Jefferson school funds when Albion Township was created). link
    • History of Northeast Indiana: LaGrange, Steuben, Noble and DeKalb Counties, ed. Ira Ford, Orville Stevens, William H. McEwen and William H. McIntosh (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1920), vol. 1, ch. LIX, railroads: Lake Shore & Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana, pp. 342–343; Grand Rapids & Indiana, p. 343; Baltimore & Ohio, tax vote of 1872 and trains running in 1874, p. 346. link
    • ‘Albion Township, Noble County, Indiana,’ Wikipedia (coordinates; 2020 census population 2,326). link

    Dates and names are from the county histories and official sources listed here. Where they disagree, we say so. Know better? Send a correction.