The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Settled 1830 · of Ohio
The tie, exactly: settler, 1830 — the man Harris Prairie and Harris Township are named for. Howard's sentence is the record's core: "The prairie and the township both received their name from Jacob Harris, who settled in the township in 1830."
The course: Chapman adds the working detail. Harris came from Ohio in 1830, and he raised the township's first crop of wheat, harvested in 1831 — Jacob Meyer, newly arrived that spring, helped cut it. His son-in-law Samuel Bell came with him and stands beside him in the first land entries of April 1830. That is the whole of what the two histories give of the man: no birth or death dates, no sketch, no list of children beyond the marriage that brought Bell into his household. The township kept his name on every map and form for two centuries; the record kept almost nothing else, and this entry prints the proportion as it stands.
Named gap — the namesake's vitals: Harris's birth, death and burial are not in either county history. The settling sources are the 1830–1850 federal census schedules for the county, the Harris Prairie cemetery records, and the county probate record.
Sources:
- Howard (1907), ch. V, §3 — the naming sentence and the settler roll.
- Chapman (1880), Harris Township chapter — the Ohio origin, the first wheat crop of 1831, the Bell marriage.