Colerain Township

Colerain Township was first settled in the spring of 1790 by a surveyor, John Dunlap, who named the settlement after his birthplace of Coleraine, Ireland. The settlement, Fort Coleraine, commonly called Dunlaps Station, was located on the bend of the great Miami River several miles below the bridge to Ross, Ohio. Only one year after it had been settled, Dunlaps Station was temporarily abandoned following a brutal attack it sustained by Native Americans. John Dunlap and the 11 families living at the Fort moved down river to the settlement at North Bend. In 1794, Coleraine was established as a Township. The e at the end of Coleraine was dropped sometime later, Americanizing the name Colerain. The villages of Barnesburg, Bevis, Dunlap and Groesbeck were established in the early 1800s along Blue Rock and Colerain Roads, two of the oldest roads in the area. German immigrants farmed the southwestern portion between 1840 and 1870, heavily influencing the townships cultural and archit...