History: 

Stryker is located at the intersection of States Routes 2 and 191 in southeastern Williams County's Springfield Township. The township, the oldest in the county was organized on March 30th, 1835. James Guthrie, the first settler in the township and in the county settled along the Tiffin River in 1827. The township continued to grow and by 1840 Springfield Township was ranked as one of the leading agricultural townships in the United States. At that time the following were the statistics for the township; 44 horses and mules, 345 beef cattle, 51 sheep, 711 hogs, 3235 bushels of wheat, 556 bushels of rye, 7895 bushels of corn and 2387 bushels of potatoes. Forty years later, most of these numbers had increased 10-fold.

The village of Stryker was surveyed on September 19, 1853 beside the preposed Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad (now known as Conrail) by John H. Sargent, Epaphras L. Barber and Jesse McCart. The village was officially recorded in Bryan on January 15th, 1854 with a legal description for 97 lots. The original streets were named Defiance, South, Church and Depot. The village was named for John Stryker, a lawyer and politician from the state of New York. In 1847, he gave up law and politics to concentrate on railroad enterprises.

Stryker and Edgerton are both railroad towns in the sense that they owe their existence to the railroad. Railroads were very important since in the 1850's, roads were very bad, little more than trails, and mud and snow often made them impassable. Men who knew of a proposed railroad route often would purchase land at 10-mile intervals and surveyed lots where it was expected to go. Bryan was already on the proposed route so Stryker & Edgerton were surveyed out at about 10-mile distances each direction from Bryan.