Philip was among the very first to enter Seneca County as an agriculturalist, for the first sale of farm land in the county was in 1819. Eden was the first township to have a settlement. Survey into sections occurred in 1820 and the township was named for its remarkably fertile soil. Honey Creek has trenched about 50 feet into the ground moraine surface of the township. Melmore was named for Honey Creek. The township organized the year it was surveyed. Philip Bretz is named among the first settlers coming there after the sales opened in 1821.
Township trustees included the following Bretzes,
The township had 819 inhabitants by 1830 and Melmore contained 250 people in 1847. Among�enterprising citizens listed for Eden Township in 1847 were John Bretz and Philip Bretz. It was in this year that Philip built the stone house on Honey Creek, where the 1887 re-union was held. Issac Bretz and A. K. Bretz were subscribers to Butterfield�s History of Seneca County, published in 1847. Issac was a son of John, son of Valentine. A. K. may be a misprint, referring to Andrew J., son of Conrad, who is listed in the Bretz Register as living in Sycamore, a few miles from Melmore. Jacob Bretz was listed as a settler on Honey Creek in 1823. This was Jacob, son of Philip. A Charles Bretz lived near Rocky Creek in 1821 and a Charles Bretz was listed as a prosperous farmer in a Seneca Co. history in 1840. In neither case can this name belong to John's family.
Early conditions in Seneca County duplicated those encountered 20 years earlier in Fairfield County. Houses were built of logs, roofs were made of split logs with a gutter hewed on the upturned flat side of toe under tier. The upper tier covered the cracks of the lower and had the semicircular surfaces uppermost, the edges thus resting on the verge of the gutters in the lower tier. Floors and doors were made of puncheon staves. Fireplaces were constructed of clay mixed with small twigs; chimneys of crossed sticks. Raisings were held for the erection of these cabins. Willing help was secured by a liberal supply of whiskey. Temperance raisings gradually developed because of the evils of the usual affair.
Wolves were plentiful in the country in the early days; nights were described as hideous with their howls. They were particularly vicious on the east side of Sandusky River where Philip made his land purchases.
The known span of activity of that eccentric Swedenborgian, Johnny Appleseed, (1801-1847), almost exactly covers the Ohio history of John and Philip Bretz, and some of the counties receiving his attention, (Licking, Richland, etc.), were close to the country of these Bretzes. Always on the move and everywhere welcomed by the settlers, Johnny might have been known, and must have been known of, by some of John's sons.
No soldiers with the name Bretz are listed from Seneca Co. during the Civil war.
Although life under these frontier conditions was hard, leisure was non-existent, comforts were few and culture was limited to the Lutheran or the United Brethren church, these forebears were not driven from Pennsylvania to Ohio, nor from Fairfield to Seneca County, by economic, religious or political pressure as were the immigrant Germans a generation or two earlier. Philip came well-heeled and played the part of an affluent patriarch in setting up his offspring on their own farms. The reason for these moves can be only that these people sought the opportunities a newly opened land offered, and did not greatly dislike the simple, rugged life required.
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