USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume I > Part 32
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VIEWS OF CLIFFTON.
CHAPTER XVII.
Ross TOWNSHIP.
Ross township was one hundred and seven years old on March 4, 1918. It started off its career as an independent political unit on the same day with Silvercreek township. Ross was a part of Caesarscreek township from May 10, 1803, until the organization of Xenia township on August 20, 1805, and was set off from the latter township on March 4, 1811. Therefore all its settlers from 1803 to 1811, a period of eight years, are to be found listed with the settlers of one or the other of the two previously formed townships.
The order on the commissioners' records for the formation of Ross township was set forth in the following language :
Ordered that Xenia Township be divided in the following manner (Towit) Beginning at the Northwest corner of Silver Creek Township and running thence North to the Miami Township line; the said new Township shall be called and known by the name of Ross Township; that the first meeting of Electors in Ross Township for the purpose of electing Township officers shall be at the house of John Bozorth in said Township.
Its original limits have been changed on three different occasions : First by the addition of a part of Miami township in 1819; secondly, by the loss of a considerable portion at the time of the creation of Cedarville township in 1850; finally, by a small loss of territory in 1853, when New Jasper township came into existence. A study of its original limits show that it was laid out about six miles wide north by south, and seven miles from east to west. Its present perimeter shows straight boundary lines on all except the western side, which is about as irregular as could be imagined. The township is bounded on the north by Clark county, on the east by Madi- son and Fayette counties, on the south by Silvercreek township, and on the west by New Jasper and Cedarville townships.
The origin of the name given to the township in 1811 has always been more or less obscure. It is certain that it was named Ross in honor of a pioneer of that name who was prominent in the decade prior to the War of 1812, but just who this man Ross was and what became of him are questions which will probably never be answered. The historians of forty years ago were unable to find anything about him, and at that time there were living some of the pioneers who were very early residents of the township. He left no descendants, and, as far as the official records of the
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
county are concerned, never seemed to have held any office. The names of Robert and James Ross appear in the tax duplicates of 1813, and it was probably one of these who was responsible for the name.
MILITARY SURVEYS.
All of the land in Ross township lies within the Virginia Military Sur- vey. The official records show that there are thirty-six surveys wholly or in part within the township. Strange to say only eight of these contain in excess of one thousand acres, two of the eight being for an even two thou- sand acres. Of the remaining surveys, six call for less than a hundred acres. A complete list of these thirty-six surveys, together with the names of the proprietors, and the number of each survey and its acreage, is given in the appended table :
Proprietor
Survey No.
Acres
William Washington
516
2,000
Thomas Christie
872
5,56
Jacob Brown
880
559
Henry Fauntelroy
784
1,000
William Pierce
816
810
Pickering and Hodgden I
1094
800
James Wilson
1158
600
John Marshall
I432
1,000
George Monroe
1446
2,000
Smith Snead
2070
560
Thomas Posey
3080
1,000
William Taliaferro, heir to Col. William Taliaferro
3176
500
Benjamin Spiller
39II
1,220
Thomas Browder
4620
294
James Galloway, Jr., and James Fowler
4671
1,059
Hughes Woodson
5035
250
Samuel Harrod and James Hiller
5149
50
Simpson Foster (representatives)
5353
250
William Smith (representatives)
5993
333
James Galloway, Jr.
6007
100
John Campbell
6171
50
Reuben McDaniel
6172
25
Moses Trader
6173
150
James Galloway, Jr.
6174
50
James Galloway, Jr.
6976
60
Reuben McDaniel
8213
100
Alexander Breckinridge
9539 and 9540
740
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31I
GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
Proprietor
Survey No.
Acres
James Galloway, Jr.
10618
300
Joseph Spencer
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I2953
45
James Morton
5993
814 1/2
Alexander Balmain
1092
1,200
Smith Snead
2068
560
John Storey
I330
870
John Robbins ( representatives)
4888
444 2/3
William Tompkins
1450
666 2/3
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GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.
Ross township is perhaps the most level of any of the townships of Greene county. With a deep, sandy loam covering practically the entire township it is pre-eminently a farming region. It is drained to the west by two forks of Massies creek, and to the southwest by two branches of Caesars creek, the whole surface of the township falling in the basin of the Little Miami river. Unlike its sister township of Cedarville to the west, it does not have a single outcropping of limestone within its limits, the stone being covered to such a depth that it is far below the surface, and so far below that stone will never be quarried within its precincts. That the town- ship is practically all tillable is shown by the last report of its township assessor, who reported only one hundred ninety-six waste acres out of a total acreage of twenty-one thousand two hundred seventy-eight. This same report gives woodland still in the township to the extent of one thousand forty acres.
EARLY SETTLERS.
The first complete list of the settlers of the township which has been found is given in the lister's report of the taxable property in 1813. This report, it must be remembered includes not only those living in the town- ship as it is constituted today, but also most of the settlers living in what is now Cedarville township as well as some of those in the present New Jasper township. The lister was Wilson McDonald, and his list of tax- payers, dated May 26, 1813, is as follows: Daniel Burrows, John Bozarth, Joshua Bozarth, David Brown, John Bergin, Benjamin Bloomer, Margaret Baal, William Burk, Isaac Bice, John Campbell, William Campbell, Benja- min Cutler, John Cullum, Andrew Cronk, Michael Casada, Joel Dolby, Andrew Douglas, Edward Flood, Sr., Jonathan Flood, Edward Flood, Jr., Upton Farmer, Jacob Follis, John Ferguson, William Ferguson, William Frazier, Mary Farmer, William Farmer, Frederick Goodheart, Angeline Gilmore, Abel H. Gibson, John Harrow, Samuel Herrod, Benjamin Harner, Alexander Irvin, Arthur Johnson, David Johnson, Benjamin Johnson, Isaac Johnson, Reuben Johnson, James Junkin, William Junkin, Philip Jackson,
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
James White, John Watson, Jr., John Watson, Sr., William Wilson, Eliza Young, Aaron Lambert, John Lambert, Chancey Lawrence, John Mercer, William Miller, Wilson McDonald, Reuben McDonald, Robert McFarland, Jacob Paullin, Rebecca Paullin, Alexander Rowen, Robert Ross, James Ross, Isaiah Sutton, James Selby, Boncan Stout, Aaron Saunders, Samuel Sheley, David Sheley, Monos Shock, John Shigley, Michael Spencer, Sr., Michael Spencer, Jr., Francis Spencer, James Stanford, Thomas Stanford, Rev. Moses Trader and Samuel Teel.
It will be noticed that there are a number of women in the list of tax- payers. The names of several of these pioneers have a doubtful spelling, but the spelling from the original record has been followed. Most of these undoubtedly lived in that part of Ross township which was later set off as Cedarville township, but there is no way to tell from the record where they lived in the township. It is not even certain that all of the settlers found their way onto the lister's record; in fact, it is certain that some of them had no property and consequently escaped being listed.
The question as to who has the honor of being the first white settler in Ross township will never be definitely ascertained. The year after the county was organized in 1803 a large number of settlers began pouring into it from Virginia, Pennsylvania and the states of Kentucky and Ten- nessee. If tradition may be believed the first settler of Ross township was John Harper, of Harpers Ferry, Maryland, who located somewhere in the northern part of the township with his family in 1804. He purchased one thousand two hundred acres of land and with his four boys began making a home in the wilderness. The family consisted of the father and mother and seven children, and so well did they apply themselves to the making of a new home that they soon had one of the best farms in the county. The Harpers have been prominent landowners in the county for more than a hundred years, several of the descendants of the original Harper having accumulated large tracts of land, especially in Cedarville township.
NAMES OF LATER COMERS.
The state of Virginia contributed the next three most prominent of the first settlers: Peter Huffman, William Harpole and Joseph Butcher. Huff- man came with his wife and six children to Ross township in 1805 and located on one hundred twenty-eight acres of land which he bought imme- diately upon his arrival. It is said that for twenty years after the family located here that the log cabin in which they lived had only a large cloth for a door. In 1825 Huffman erected a hewed-log cabin and in this he lived the remainder of his days. Harpole came first to Ross county, Ohio, from Virginia, but by 1806 he was located in Ross township of Greene
313
GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
county. He settled with his family on two hundred acres near the Madison county line, part of his farm being in that county, and there he lived and reared a large family of children to lives of usefulness. Butcher, who came to the county also in 1806, was married and had a family of three children when he settled here in Ross township.
David Larkin, of Maryland, an unmarried man, became identified with the township in 1806, and soon became the son-in-law of John Harper, above mentioned as the first settler in the township. Larkin erected a brick house in 1827 which was probably the first in the township. He was one of the large landowners of his day.
The year 1808 saw three settlers with their families locating in Ross township : Robinson Fletcher, Peter Woodring and Richard Beeson. Fletcher came from Virginia with his family of six children and bought three hundred acres of land off the Monroe Survey. He continued to reside on the farm until 1855 when he retired from active life and sold his farm to Cyrus Little. Woodring came with Fletcher, and bought three acres of the Monroe Survey and on this he built a small cabin for his family and lived there until they had all died. He then sold his little tract and bought one hundred acres in the southern part of the township where he lived until his death in 1860. Beeson, the third of the 1808 group, was another Vir- ginian, and, like the other two settlers of the same year just mentioned, bought from the Monroe Survey, buying fifty acres of Fletcher for fifty cents an acre. He erected a cabin, but by 1817 he was ready to move on farther to the West and he left the county never to be heard from again. He was one of hundreds of the early settlers of this part of the state who did the same thing.
TWO EARLY METHODIST PREACHERS.
Zara Insley was one of the Marylanders to settle in the township prior to the War of 1812. He had two wives, twelve children and one hundred acres of land. Levi Haines came from Kentucky about 1807, bought one hundred acres, built his cabin, and a few years later was killed by falling from a barn which he was helping to erect. Jonathan Flood was one of the first itinerant preachers to locate in the township, and one of the first in the county. He was one of the shouting Methodist preachers, a great worker in the field, in the church, a justice of the peace for years, and one of the most valuable men of the township in its infancy. Joel Dolby, who was, like Flood, a Virginian and a Methodist exhorter, came to the town- ship in 1808. He bought sixty acres of land and continued to divide his attention between the plow and pulpit until his death. There are no mem- bers of his family left in the county. John Shigley came from Virginia
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
in 1808 and lived in Ross until 1828 when he removed to Indiana, where he spent the remainder of his days.
Francis Brock came to the township from North Carolina about 1810. Starting in life with nothing, he located on a small farm which he bought of Insley. He lived in a rude round-log cabin for a few years and then erected a hewed-log house. This gave way in 1839 to a brick house, the second in the township. He kept adding to his holdings until he owned more than two thousand acres, about half of which was in this township. He was a great worker in the Methodist church, and contributed very lib- erally to its support until his death in 1857.
David Paullin, one of the most prominent of the earliest settlers of the township, became the father of a large family who are still represented in the county. Paullin located here about 1809 and at once purchased a large tract of land, which he and his six sons soon had in condition to yield good crops.
The Towel family made its first appearance in the township shortly after the close of the War of 1812, John Towel, wife and two children coming from Frederick county, Virginia, to Ross township on the backs of a couple of horses. Their household effects consisted of two feather beds, a skillet, a few pans, and a little extra clothing. It is needless to say that a family with such determination would succeed once they got settled. In a few years Towel had a farm under cultivation, a comfortable home and was taking an active part in the life of the township.
The state of Maryland furnished Allen Rickstraw to Ross township in 1816. He came with his wife and two sons and leased land of Fletcher in the Monroe Survey and soon had a comfortable cabin and a few acres cleared. He remained in the township until his wife and two sons died, and then located in another part of the county.
COMING OF THE LITTLES.
In 1817 Jacob Little and his family came from Frederick county, Vir- ginia, and bought the fifty-acre farm of Richard Beeson, previously men- tioned. He lived in the one-room hut of Beeson until 1825 when he erected a fine hewed-log house. He prospered from the start and within a few years bought three hundred acres from Fletcher for one dollar thirty-seven cents an acre. His descendants are still in the county, several of them being among the county's largest landowners.
There were three other Littles from Virginia who arrived within the next few years : David Little, 1820; Martin Little, 1821; John Little, 1823. David Little arrived in Ross township with one wife, twelve children and twelve and a half cents. He at once bought of Jacob Little one hundred
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
acres for two hundred dollars, giving his two horses and wagon as the first payment. He worked out the remainder of the purchase price, and at the same time cleared, with the assistance of his family, his own tract and soon had crops growing. Martin Little first purchased two hundred acres and John Little took upon himself the task of paying for four hundred acres.
In 1815 Joseph Atkinson, of Pennsylvania, located in Caesarscreek township, but in 1822 he became a permanent resident of Ross township. He settled on three hundred acres with his wife and two children, the land costing him three dollars an acre. When he looked over his purchase he found a number of empty log cabins on it, the former homes of squatters who had lived there a while and then moved on. Atkinson moved into one of these little cabins and lived there until his family had been increased by nine more children. Atkinson was a thrifty sort of a man, an unusually successful farmer for those days. He combined stock buying with his farming, and in later years he and his son Levi drove cattle through over- land to Baltimore and Philadelphia. This proved to be a very profitable business, and in the course of time Atkinson became the largest landowner in the township. His son, Levi, later became the owner of one thousand two hundred forty-eight acres, considerably more than his father owned.
AGRICULTURAL CONDITIONS.
Ross township is probably the most level township in the county and has less waste land in proportion to its total area than any other township in the county. It is essentially an agricultural community, there never having been a village in the township, nor has there ever been a townsite platted within its limits. It has had a number of railroads proposed which would cross the township, but so far none of them has ever materialized, although one company got so far along with the building of a road that its right- of-way was graded across the township.
The soil is a sandy loam with enough humus to make it very produc- tive, while the farmers of today have made the soil even more productive than it was a few years ago. Ross township farmers in 1916 used five hundred one thousand one hundred twenty pounds of commercial fertilizer, and plowed under seven hundred thirty-one acres of clover sod. They also had fifty-seven acres of alfalfa, which produced one hundred fourteen tons of alfalfa hay. They cut seven hundred ten tons of timothy and six hundred forty tons of clover hay, while their clover also yielded them one hundred sixty-nine bushels of seed.
The chief crops for the year ending March 1, 1917, were reported by the county assessor as follow: Wheat, 37,146 bushels; rye, 937 bushels ; oats, 53,914 bushels; corn, 81,746 bushels; sugar corn, 36 tons; tomatoes,
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
190 bushels; Irish potatoes, 370 bushels; ensilage, 731 tons. The township had twenty-nine silos in use up to March 1, 1917, and a number were planned for the following year. There was a return of one hundred forty maple trees, which yield a total of eighty gallons of syrup which found its way into the assessor's records. There were also eleven stands of bees reported; apples, nine hundred forty bushels.
The live-stock statistics of Ross township for the same period were as follow : Horses, 1,003; cattle, 1,488; sheep, 2,516; wool clip, 8,940 pounds ; hogs, 6,011 ; hogs died from cholera, 940; cholera infested farms, 27; hens laid 79,250 dozen eggs; cows produced 9,217 gallons of cream for sale, 2,154 gallons of milk for sale and 16,846 pounds of home-made butter.
Ross township holds the best record for the total amount of wool clip, although Cedarville township had the largest number of sheep, hav- ing 3,012 to 2,516 for Ross, but Ross had 8,940 pounds of wool as against 8,721 pounds for Cedarville. Ross reported thirty-six renters on farms who were working for wages, as against twenty-nine renters who worked farms on the share system.
VILLAGES OF ROSS TOWNSHIP.
Grape Grove and Gladstone are two embryonic villages of the township, but neither has ever been platted. For nearly a century there has usually been a store at one or the other of the two places, and for several years there was a post office at Grape Grove, but since the establishment of free delivery it has been discontinued.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SILVERCREEK TOWNSHIP.
Silvercreek township was organized on the same day with Ross, March 4, 18II, the eastern third of the county being divided between these two townships on that day, Ross included the northern part and Silvercreek the southern half. According to the order of the commissioners on March 4, 1811, the newly created Silvercreek township was cut off of Caesars- creek township, one of the four original townships of the county organized on May 10, 1803. The order for the setting off of Silvercreek reads as follows :
Ordered that Caesar Creek Township be divided in the following manner Towit :- Beginning at the South line of Greene County one mile east of the old Ross county line and running Thence north eight miles thence East to the East line of said county. Said new Township shall be called & known by the name of Silver Creek Township.
This description of the Silvercreek of 1811 is not exact in more ways than one, or, at least, as the township was laid out at the time, it failed to get the limits here set forth. It actually was set off by a line starting on the south line of the county eight miles from the southeast corner and then running eight and a half miles due north, thence east to the eastern boun- dary of the county. The above description would make the Silvercreek of 18II a township exactly eight miles square, whereas, as a matter of fact, its north and south extreme was eight and a half miles, putting its northern boundary where it is today. It seems that the line between Silvercreek and Ross townships as established on March 4, 1811, has never been changed. Hence the Silvercreek of 1811 included all of its present territory, all of the present Jefferson township, together with a strip of about a mile in width off the present New Jasper township. New Jasper township was set off on June 9, 1853, and Jefferson township on June 7, 1858, the creation of the latter township decreasing the size of Silvercreek township by more than half. There has been no change in the limits of the township since the organization of Jefferson in 1858.
'VIRGINIA MILITARY SURVEY.
Silvercreek township falls within the Virginia Military Survey lands, the township as it stands today being included in fifteen different surveys, wholly or in part of the township. These surveys, their original proprie- tors, their numbers and acreage, are set forth in the appended table :
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
Proprietor
Survey No.
Acres
Richard Claiborne
889
2,666 2/3
Robert Rose
1079
1,150
Thomas Posey
1084
1,000
John Watts
II66
1,000
David Walker
II7I
1,000
George Baylor
II88
2,166 2/3
Thomas Posey
308I
1,000
Martin Mendenhall
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4620
500
Samuel Jones
3279
500
Thomas Parker
3280
1,500
Samuel Jones
108I
140
James Galloway, Jr.
1
10954
40
Joseph Spencer
1 3269 and 13270
95
James Browder
14717
IO
John Marshall
1429
1,000
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TAXPAYERS OF THE TOWNSHIP IN 18II.
The first election in the new township was held at the house of Noah Strong. Prior to the election it was necessary to list all the property owners of the new township, a list of whom is given in this connection: James Bryan, Morris Bryan, Herman Browder, Jonathan Browder, William Browder, Thomas Browder, Daniel Browder, Ezekiel Best, George Bone, Cornelius Cruzen, John Campbell, Lemuel Cottrell, Hiram Cotrell, John Curry, Lewis Chance, Thomas Shaner, John. Copeland, William Copeland, Edward Chancy, David Davis, Andrew Downey, Christopher Ellis, Bazel Foster, William Gilmore, Uriah Hunt, William Hibben, John Hazlett, Stephen Hussey, Mary Hussey, Jonathan Hussey, Samuel Johnson, John W. John- son, Michael M. Johnson, Joseph Johnson, John S. Johnson, Christopher Johnson, Moorman Johnson, Jesse Kelsey, Joseph Lucas, Thomas Leonard, Nathan Leonard, Samuel Lee, Andrew Moorman, Pleasant Moorman, Thomas P. Moorman, Chiles Moorman, Micajah C. Moorman, Thomas Moorman, Sr., Aaron Mendenhall, Martin Mendenhall, Stephen Mendenhall, John Myers, Michael Mann, James Medley, John Mickle, Mary Ross Mullinick, John Oliver, Ebenezer Perry, Thomas Palmer, John Pierson, Jacob Rum- baugh, George Rumbaugh, Asher Reeves, Mahlon Stratton, George Shaner, Sr., George Shaner, Jr., Adam Shaner, John Sheeley, Michael Sheeley, Will- iam Saunders, Noah Strong, George W. Strong, Robert Stewart, James Stewart, Mahlon Suard, William Skates, William Stanberry, Hercules Tur- ner, Walter Turner, Levi Townsend, Abraham Townsend, Richard Thorn-
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GREENE COUNTY, OHIO
berry, John Watson, Sr., John Watson, Jr., David Watson; Stephen Williams, Joseph Wilson, Sr., Joseph Wilson, Jr., George Wilson, Edward Warren, Eleanor Wood, Philip Wikle, Abraham Young. Those living in that part of the township later set off as Jefferson in 1858 are indicated by italics.
TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES.
Silvercreek township is uniformly level, the most broken parts of the township being in the southeastern portion. Caesars creek and its many branches afford ample natural drainage for most of the township. The soil is very fertile and the farmers have been raising good crops now for more than a century. By crop rotation and fertilizing they have kept the soil in such a condition that it has been possible to get good crops year after year. The land was originally heavily forested, but the forests have gradually dis- appeared and in 1916 there were only eight hundred seventy-six acres of woodland reported in the entire township. Formerly the eastern part of the township was covered with water during the spring months, but careful drain- age has reclaimed all of the land which was once considered useless for farming purposes.
EARLY SETTLERS.
It is difficult to keep the names of the settlers of Silvercreek township separated from those of Jefferson township, since the latter township was a part of the former from 1811 until 1858. Of course, all of the settlers of the present Jefferson township up to 1858 were classed as residents of Silver- creek. There was also a strip about a mile wide along the eastern side of New Jasper which was a part of Silvercreek until 1853. As near as possible the present discussion of the early settlers of Silvercreek is confined to those who settled within the limits of the township as it is constituted at present.
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