Gratis, OH

Gratis is a Preble County village in western Ohio, with 842 residents in the 2020 census and a place in the Dayton metropolitan area. A post office has operated here since 1823, and the village took its name from Gratis Township. The community sits among farm roads and small settlements west of Dayton, with Eaton serving as the county seat and larger local service center.

Gratis has the compact map of an Ohio village: a main street, homes, churches, local businesses, and a post office gathered within the surrounding agricultural landscape. The village’s name and township remain paired on county maps and local mail. The postal address still matters to residents today. Its long postal history gives the place a continuity that reaches back before the modern Dayton region, while county roads connect residents to Eaton, Dayton, and neighboring Preble County villages. Gratis is an Ohio community where a township name, an old post office, a small village grid, and the farm country around Eaton meet.