Aurelius township was originally a part of Monroe County, being admitted into Washington County, December 15, 1818. In that year John S. Corp and Judah M. Chamberlain headed a petition to the commissioners of W'ashigton County, praying the establishment of this addition as a township.

On the commissioners' journal, dated December 15, 1818, appears this record:

On petition of John S. Corp. Judah M. Chamberlain, and others, praying for the establishment of a new town in the county of Washington, therefore

Resolved, by the Board of Commissioners, That township, numbered five in the eighth range, excepting sections No. 25, 26 and 27, and fractional sections No. 34, 35 and 36 be and the same is hereby declared and established into an incorporated town, to be hereafter known and distinguished by the name and denomination of Aurelius, and the inhabitants residing in said district are hereby declared entitled to all the privileges and immunities of incorporated towns in the State. The electors in said town will meet at the house of Mr. Judah M. Chamberlain on the second Monday of January, 1819, at 10 o'clock A. M., to elect their township officers agreeably to law.

At this meeting Gilead Doane and Judah M. Chamberlain were elected justices of the peace but nothing else is known of the meeting.

It will be noticed that the establishing act did not give Aurelius sections 27 and 34. The date of this accession, as ascertained from the commissioners' journal, was that of their June session, 1842. For they

Resolved, that section twenty-seven and fractional section thirty-four, in township five, range eight, heretofore belonging to township Salem, is hereby annexed to Aurelius.

Aurelius was reduced to its present small diimensions by the act of the Legislature forming Noble County. It was passed March 11, 1851.

Among the earliest settlers in Aurelius were the Dains, Duttons, Bousers and Hutchins. Dr. John B. Regnier, who came about 1819, has well been considered "the father of the township," being a leader in the formation and development of it. He was appointed first postmaster in 1819, built the first grist mill about the same time, and secured the building of the first road from the mouth of Cat's Creek to Macksburg.

William W. Mackintosh opened the first store about 1827. Free Will Baptist Church was organized between 1810-12; a "regular" or "hard-shelled" Baptist Church was organized soon after. In 1818 the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized.

A public school was started as early as 1809 with Nancy Dutton as teacher.

The two villages of the township are Macksburg and Elba, which have owed their prosperity to the oil development which has been very profitable here, there being now 75 producing leases in the township. This is equaled by only one other township in the county as shown by the table of leases in the chapter on "The Oil Industry."