A quick look at a map of Warren County will remove all the intrigue regarding why Southwest Township is called Southwest Township.

Formed from part of Deerfield Township in 1838, the population of the township in the 1880s didn’t exceed 1,000 and that is similar to today, through the current population is closer to 500.

But Schenck’s History of Warren County notes that the portions of the county west and north of the Allegheny River were settled earlier than the south and east meaning that Southwest was “settled almost as early as any part of the county.

“We have no means of ascertaining the exact date of the first settlements, but they were probably about contemporary with the birth of the present century.”

Schenck writes one of the first settlers “if he was not the first” was a man named Richard Henderson “who had made quite a clearing here at the time the first list of taxables of the county was made out in 1806, lived about two miles east of the site of the village of Enterprise.”

He was known as a “Pennamite” — a “settler from the eastern part of Pennsylvania, as opposed to those who came from New York and England. There was considerable ill-feeling between the Pennamites and the other settlers; and Richard Henderson, though a quiet, peaceable man, was not exempt from this dislike, and would not mingle much with his Yankee neighbors.”

Schenck writes that Henderson was “a man of sterling character, however, one of the kinds fitted by nature to fell the forests of a new country and aid in establishing schools and comfortable homes in the wilderness.”

Farms started to pop up between 1806 and 1825 but accelerated between 1825 and 1836. By the 1880s, there were potentially as many as 20 sawmills operating in the township.

With that expanded population came some of what was at the time considered modern amenities.

“The post-office was established at Enterprise a short time previous to 1850. (Up) to that time the mail was obtained from Holland post-office (now Pleasantville), once a week,” Schenck wrote. “The first religious services in the township were held in private houses. This style of edifice gave place in time to school-houses, and about 1870 the present church edifice was erected by a union of all denominations.”

Schenck notes that the first school in Enterprise “was taught in the winter of 1836-37, by Mrs. Benedict, in a little tailor shop, twelve by fourteen feet. Twelve pupils were in attendance. The term was three months in length. The teacher received twelve dollars per month, and had the rare privilege of boarding herself.”