Most of Bentonville was built recently: 0.0% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 2003. Below: maps from 1986 on and old-book passages.
Bentonville was laid out in 1839. It is named for Thomas Hart Benton, a senator from Missouri. A post office has been in operation at Bentonville since 1842.
Bentonville is the home of the Anti-Horse Thief Society monument. Horse theft is no longer a problem in Adams County. However, the Society continues to exist and hold meetings.
Verna Naylor, a former postmaster of Bentonville, was the oldest postmaster in the nation and the oldest employee of the U.S. Postal Service when she died on July 6, 2010, at the age of 94. She ran the one-person post office from her home for more than 40 years after she took over the position from her husband, the former postmaster.
Passages that mention Bentonville, cut from the printed page as they were published.
A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth ..1900 · page 786Read the page →
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Joseph Leedom was a man of public spirit. He gave the ground for the Methodist Church in Bentonville and donated the material for the first building in 1841. The home was logs replaced by a frame in 1851 and which stood till 1899. In his later life, in 1852, Joseph Leedom left the Methodist Church and connected with the Cumberland Presbyterians.
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A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth ..1900 · page 801Read the page →
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He left the furnace region and returned to Adams County. He went into the dry goods business at Bentonville, but only remained in it for six months. At the end of that time, he built the flour mill in Bentonville in connection with Thomas Fpster. He remained in this business until the Spring of 1857, when he sold out and went to Missouri. By August, 1857, he tired of that experiment and returned to Adams County. He established a dry goods business at North Liberty and continued in it six months, when he sold out to William L. McVey. He bought the flour
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (6), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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