Who Built the Stone House on Todd’s Fork?
The stone house near Todd’s Fork, Union Township, Clinton County, Ohio. Photographed October 2, 2026.
The house stands in the woods near Todd’s Fork, in Union Township, Clinton County, Ohio. It has a two-storey main block and a one-storey wing, both of coursed stone, with chimneys at the gables. Moss has turned the walls green and gold. I photographed it on October 2, under an overcast sky, with the yard gone to weeds.
The question that came with it was a plain one. Who built it, and when?
A local researcher had an answer, drawn from the county’s tax books: John Leonard, in 1833.
The Entry Is Right
In the 1833 tax list for Union Township, John Leonard is charged with 100 acres on the waters of Todd’s Fork. The column for a house is blank. His tax is $1.92.
In 1834 the same line carries a note: “House $300.” His tax is $4.32.
That is exactly what the researcher reported. A house went onto John Leonard’s line between one list and the next.
The Land Is Not
Every line in those books also names a survey. This part of Ohio was laid off in numbered military surveys, and each tax line says which one the land is in.
John Leonard’s line is Survey 523.
A 2017 survey of the tract the house stands on places that tract in Surveys 1556, 1558, 4693 and 15507. None of it is in Survey 523. The county’s map layers put the stone house itself in Survey 4693.
So the 1834 note describes a house on John Leonard’s farm. It was not written about this ground.
Whose Ground It Was
On March 31, 1818, John Hobson sold William Wickersham 95¾ acres in Survey 4693 for $1,149. Wickersham’s tax line shows no house in 1826 and none in 1828. In 1829 it reads “House $300.”
Wickersham died on June 17, 1839. His widow, Rachel, and two of his sons were named to administer the estate. On January 1, 1841, his heirs set off fifty acres to Rachel as her dower. On May 23, 1853, Rachel and the heirs sold their land in Survey 4693 to Ezekiel Leonard and John Leonard Jr. for $3,100. In 1856 the Leonards bought 44 more acres from Wickersham’s son David.
The 1859 county map letters “J & E Leonard” on one tract and “J. Leonard” on the next. It also marks two stone quarries on Todd’s Fork.
Two Candidates
The records leave two.
The first is William Wickersham’s house, first taxed in 1829. It stood on this land. Plotted from the bearings and distances in the 1841 instrument and laid on the county map, the widow’s forty-acre block takes in the stone house and the buildings beside it. That is a working plot, not a survey.
The second is a house the Leonards built after they bought the land in 1853.
The records read so far do not choose between them. One thing weighs against the first: from 1835 the tax book values Wickersham’s house at $100, below the $150 it puts on Leonard’s. And none of these records uses the word “stone.”
There is also a tradition that the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Nothing in these records ties this house to it.
What Could Settle It
The county’s tax books after 1838 could. A house value that jumps after 1853 would point to the Leonards.
Wickersham’s estate inventory does not. It was returned to the court on September 30, 1839, and it lists his goods, not his buildings. Among them are two trowels, a stone auger and a stone pick, and a mason’s hammer was sold at his sale. He owned the tools to work stone. No record yet says he built with them.
The building can also speak for itself. Someone who dates old stonework, framing and hardware could narrow the answer from the walls.
The stone itself did not travel far. The 1882 county history says stone “in large quantities and of good quality has been quarried for many years” on Todd’s Fork. An 1849 deed for the strip just north of the Wickersham land reserves a neighbor’s right to go on quarrying stone there.
If your family papers mention the Wickersham or Leonard farms on Todd’s Fork, I would like to hear from you.
Sources: Clinton County Auditor, duplicate tax records, Union Township, 1826–1836 (via FamilySearch). Clinton County, General Index to Deeds, grantee volume 1, pp. 322 and 578 (via FamilySearch). Clinton County deed records (via FamilySearch): John Hobson to William Wickersham, March 31, 1818, recorded January 8, 1830; Instrument No. 392, recorded February 17, 1841; Benajah Ballard and others to David Wickersham, December 29, 1849; Deed Book X, pp. 14–15 (May 23, 1853); David Wickersham to John Leonard Jr. and Ezekiel Leonard, January 21, 1856. Center Monthly Meeting (Hicksite), birth and death record, in Records of the Society of Friends in Ohio (via FamilySearch). Clinton County Probate Court, administrators’ bond, estate of William Wickersham, July 1, 1839 (via FamilySearch). Clinton County Court of Common Pleas, Testamentary D, pp. 77–81, inventory of the estate of William Wickersham, returned September 30, 1839 (Clinton County Records & Archives). Democrat and Herald (Wilmington, Ohio), July 12, 1839, p. 3 (via Newspapers.com). Henry Francis Walling, Map of Clinton County, Ohio (1859). The History of Clinton County, Ohio (W. H. Beers & Co., 1882), p. 537. Clinton County Auditor and Clinton County GIS, parcel, structure and survey layers, read October 2026. Clinton County Engineer, Record of Land Division, survey plat of October 18, 2017 (volume and plat number on file). Photographs by the author, October 2, 2026.
