03/13/2026
History of Plain City: On June 11, 1818, our community took its very first official shape.
Isaac Bigelow and his wife, Polly, arrived in Madison County, Ohio, with plans to start a stock farm. But after noticing the steady flow of travelers along the Urbana Post Road and the Chillicothe Road, Isaac saw something bigger: possibility.
Right at that busy crossroads, he decided to lay out a town. He called it Westminster, though many simply knew it as Bigelow’s Corners.
Surveyor David Chapman mapped out the town on June 11, 1818, carefully measuring streets, alleys, and lots. His handwritten report (with its wonderfully old-fashioned spelling and punctuation!) described a 60-foot-wide Main Street and narrow alleys stretching north toward Big Darby Creek.
Just five years later, in 1823, the town was surveyed again and renamed Pleasant Valley. Growth was slow at first, but everything changed in 1853, when the railroad came through, opening the door for new families, businesses, and the community roots that still hold strong today.
It’s amazing to think that what started as a few measured lines on paper became the town so many of us call home.
More than 200 years later, we’re honored to continue serving the families of this same community, caring for neighbors on the very ground first mapped out back in 1818.
Presented by Rosemary Anderson, Plain City Historical Society
