Bentonville, OH

Bentonville is a small Adams County community at the meeting of State Routes 41 and 136 in southern Ohio. The roads share pavement through town before separating again at the southern edge, giving Bentonville the look of a crossroads built for passing through. The community was laid out in 1839 and named for Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton; its post office has served the area since 1842. Those dates put Bentonville in the early nineteenth-century pattern of Ohio settlements that grew around roads, mail, and farm country.

The place has one wonderfully specific piece of local history. In March 1853, area landowners formed the Bentonville Anti-Horse Thief Society to recover stolen horses and pursue thieves, a serious concern when horses were central to farming and travel. The group later became a social club, and its annual April banquet keeps the old organization in the present. A monument in town recalls the society, while Adams County roads connect Bentonville with larger communities and the Ohio River country. Bentonville is a small southern Ohio crossroads with an old post office, a very unusual civic tradition, and a name that still points back to a senator from Missouri.