Founded by Michael Pearce, who came to the area in 1801, Trenton began as the village of Bloomfield, a plat of 33 lots in 1816, was renamed when a post office was established in 1820 to honor Pearce's home state of New Jersey, was incorporated as a village in 1895, and became a city in 1971. Pearce's son-in-law, Squier Littell, was the first resident doctor in Butler County. Originally settled by the English, Trenton saw a migration of Germans by 1840, became a grain center by 1851 with the introduction of the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad, and developed further after a franchise was granted in 1896 to operate interurban electric traction cars through the village. Early commercial enterprises included the Dietz, Good and Company grain elevator, Trenton Foundry, and Magnode Corporation, and by 1991 the largest industries were Miller Brewing Company and Cinergy/Cincinnati Gas and Electric. Trenton's first church, Elk Creek Baptist, was organized in 1802 by Elder Stephen Gard, Michael Pearce's son-in-law, and was the earliest church organized in Butler County. Pearce donated ground for both the church and cemetery, where the first burial was Phebe Gard, Stephen Gard's sister, in 1804, and where both Michael Pearce and his wife Phebe Pearce are buried. Elder Gard served as pastor for 39 years and went on to found many Baptist churches in the Miami Valley. The cemetery, now called the Pioneer Cemetery, is no longer used for burials. The congregation first met in a log building, which by 1820 was replaced with a brick structure forty feet wide and sixty feet long that accommodated 250 people; the congregation disbanded circa 1900, and the building was demolished in 1924.