As we researched this exhibition, we discovered many unusual stories about the earliest settlers of these townships.  Some of the most entertaining tell about Big Island Township.  A few of them follow.

THE NEVIL FAMILY OF BIG ISLAND TOWNSHIP
 Among the “squatter sovereigns” of this township were a widow Nevil and her two bachelor sons, William and John, who settled about a mile from the “chops” of Nevil’s Run in 1821.  They were “entered out” by Mr. Day in 1825 or 1826, and then squatted on the south part of section 2.  They made their living by hunting, – farming as little as possible.  It is said the game was not thinned out much by them, for they were not “mighty hunters.”  They left Marion County in 1835, going northwest through the Black Swamp, cutting their way as they went, and late in the fall arrived at the St. Joe settlement in Indiana.  (Atlas of Marion County, Ohio, 1878)

THE COUNTY SEAT
 Soon after the lands north of the Greenville treaty line came into the market in 1819, there were a number of families who located in this [Big Island] township . . . Quite a settlement was thus early formed near where the town of Big Island now stands, and although there was no laid out or platted town there at the time, yet it was thought by the inhabitants of that vicinity that there was the most suitable site for the government seat of the county soon to be organized, and they strove to make it such; but they were too far from the geographical center. The Commissioners appointed for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for the county seat in the year 1822, after viewing several localities, among which were Claridon, Big Island, and Marion, selected the last-named place, which, in the judgment of a great number of the settlers of the county at least, was then the most unsuitable and unpromising situation of all in contemplation. The people of Claridon and Big Island were sorely vexed and disappointed; and although the town of Big Island was not platted until in 1826, the settlers there and in the surrounding community contended for the county seat, even for many years after it was established at Marion, and the hope of success was not wholly abandoned until at the time the court house was erected in Marion in 1832. Then they quietly yielded to the inevitable, and the place remains a mere hamlet to this day.  (History of Marion County, Ohio, 1883)

SAM BRITTON’S WOLF STORY
 Sam Britton, an eccentric young man, who was not afraid of anything or anybody, used to lend a hand in the sugar-making season and make himself generally useful, and sometimes, when he took it into his head, obnoxious. On one occasion, a dark and rainy night, he became irritated by something that occurred and bade the boys good-bye, saying that he was going home, when, in fact, his intention was to visit a neighboring sugar camp. He had not trudged his way through the darkness long, before a pack of wolves took after him, and he was obliged to drop in at an old, deserted cabin, at one end of which was a shelf about thirty inches wide, and some eight or ten feet from the ground. Sam lost no time in securing this place of refuge, for he had hardly got into his quarters before the whole cabin floor was crowded with wolves, some howling, some snapping their teeth and others jumping up for their prey. When Sam looked down on those “varmints,” he saw their eyes glistening in the darkness like balls of fire, and had serious fears of becoming food for the beasts; but as he had about eight inches to “count on,” he hugged the cabin wall so close as to make him sweat.

 All night long the wolves kept up their revelry, seemingly taking their turns in jumping at him.  It was fortunate for him that the shelf was so high from the floor, or he would have been a “gone Sammy, sure!”  As daylight approached, his tormentors left him - greatly to his relief.  On examining the front part of the shelf, it was found that at least two inches of it had been torn off in pieces by the wolves, in their desperate efforts to capture their prey.
 Sam returned to the camp he had left in such high dudgeon the previous night, a wiser boy, and relished a square meal of fat pork and corn bread.  (History of Marion County, Ohio, 1883)