USA > Ohio > Guernsey County > History of Guernsey County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 27
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GUERNSEY COUNTY, OHIO.
POSTOFFICE.
With the laying out of Byesville it had a postoffice and the following have served as postmasters at one time or another: L. K. Thompson, George Conner, Lloyd Selby, E. L. Allman, E. F. Meek, John Nicholson, D. S. Burt and the present incumbent, Dr. C. A. Austin. The office is conducted in all departments in a very careful manner and is centrally located.
Of the banks, churches, schools and lodges, the reader is referred to chapters on those subjects in this volume, covering the county in general.
A few points to be remembered are these: That natural gas was piped into the village in 1898; the electric railroad from Cambridge entered the place in November, 1899; coal mining started as an industry in this county in 1866, but Byesville was not identified with it until 1877, when old Central mine started up. Pick mining was then employed altogether. It is esti- mated that enough coal was taken from these mines if the same had been loaded upon thirty-ton cars to reach across the continent in a solid train of cars. The following six men lost their lives in this first Byesville vicinity mine: Eli Wilson, William Mackley, Thomas Allender, Hollis James, Wil- liam Collins and John W. Hesse.
BUSINESS DIRECTORY OF 1910.
Banks-First National and Byesville State Bank.
Drugs-J. M. Combs & Company, G. A. Heiner.
Dry Goods-J. A. Prior, E. L. Grossman, J. H. Meek.
Feed Store-G. W. Collins, B. G. Witten Sons Company.
Furniture-S. W. Conner, Eberle & McCormick.
General Stores-A. C. Outland, F. W. Johnston, Byesville Co-operative Company, Burkhard Brothers, E. L. Gary, Graham & Son, J. A. Prior, Hutton & Clay.
Hardware-Guernsey Hardware Company, H. C. Egger.
Hotel-J. H. Thompson.
Groceries-W. L. Foraker, T. F. Slay, Mclaughlin & Osler.
Livery-S. W. Stage, E. O. Beckett.
Newspaper-Byesville Enterprise.
Millinery-Ina Hilderbrand, Lilly Williams, Yoho & Yoho. Meat Market-J. W. Culbertson, J. H. Dickens.
CHAPTER XXIV.
KNOX TOWNSHIP.
Knox township, taken from the north end of Westland and a part of Wheeling township in March, 1819, is now a five-mile square civil precinct of Guernsey county, bounded on the west by Muskingum county, on the north by Coshocton county and Wheeling township of this county, on the east by Liberty and Cambridge townships and on the south by Adams township. There are no towns of any commercial importance within this township and, without railroads or large water courses, it depends largely on Cambridge as its trading place. This township is devoted largely to agricultural pursuits and has a number of excellent places, well improved, which yield up their annual harvests.
At the time of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876, a canvass of the old settlers was made which resulted in the showing of the following list of pioneers who had attained the age, or passed the age, of seventy-six years, then residing in the township: Jared Terrell, Margaret Terrell, Jane Patrick, George Eckelberry and wife, Mrs. Sarah A. Estep, Wil- liam Young, Jane Young, James Black, William Scott, Jacob Merlat, Hugh Dyer, James Cullen, Benjamin Hawthorne, George Estep, Edward Beal and John Zimmerman. These old settlers nearly all came to Knox township at an early time and reared large families which have one by one taken their places in the great busy world, in one capacity or another.
William Kenworthy came from England in 1841, and worked for ten years in a cotton factory in Delaware county, Pennsylvania, but in 1851 lo- cated in Knox township and cleared up most of the old homestead found there today.
William Hamilton Clark was four years old when his parents came from Ireland. In 1840 he married and settled in Knox township, this county. Eleven children were born to this worthy couple. Mr. Clark was school di- rector in this township for many years.
Francis Kilpatrick came from Ireland in 1850, and effected a permanent settlement in Knox township, where he and his interesting family spent the remainder of their days.
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GUERNSEY COUNTY, OHIO.
John Clark ( father of Elizabeth Weir) was a native .of Ireland and a blacksmith by trade. Ten years after his marriage he emigrated to America and they were the parents of seven children. They lived five years in Pitts- burg, Pennsylvania, then located in Knox township, this county, and the family have become scattered, but all widely known as men and women of rare industry and integrity.
William P. Ross, son of James Ross, of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, was quite an early settler in Knox township. He was school director for twenty years and lived on and owned the farm known as the "Old Still House Farm," as at one time it had a still on it.
Jacob Marlatt was born in Maryland in 1803. Five years after his mar- riage he settled in Knox township and became the father of thirteen children, including Josephus, who served as a soldier in the One Hundred and Twenty- second Ohio Infantry, and was badly wounded at the battle of the Wilder- ness.
William Addy, born in 1781, in Virginia, and John Kennedy, an Irish weaver, born in 1779, were both early pioneers in Knox township.
The biographical volume of this work will give the sketches of many who located, at a later date, in this township.
CHAPTER XXV.
OXFORD TOWNSHIP.
Oxford is on the eastern border of Guernsey county, midway north and south. It is five miles from north to south and six from east to west, con- taining about thirty sections of excellent land. Belmont county is to the east, Millwood township on the south, Wills and Madison on the west and Londonderry township on the north. Fairview, an historic village, is the only place of much importance within the township. Here begins the first section of the old National pike in Guernsey county. It traverses the town- ship through its central portion, passing through six sections of the township, en route to Cambridge. It was one of the original townships in the county and an account is given of its early settlement, etc., by a citizen, Fred L. Rosmond, whose sketch of the township is as follows:
"At the organization of Guernsey county in April, 1810, Oxford was one of the five townships into which the county was originally divided and, of course, was much larger than it now is. As it lay against Belmont county on the east, with only that one county intervening between it and the Ohio river, and as the 'Zane Trace' traversed it from east to west, it profited by the early immigration from the East, which had no other equally good thoroughfare.
"Oxford township was also on the eastern border of the United States military bounty lands, and at the western border of the 'Seven Ranges.' The latter were the first government lands surveyed for sale, and were also the first public lands to which the rectangular system, affording sections one mile square, was applied. The lands in the 'Seven Ranges' were on the market from 1787 onward at the fixed price of two dollars per acre. The sale of them became slow, partially because the price was comparatively high. Lands in the Western Reserve were offered by Connecticut at fifty cents per acre. Lands in the Symmes Purchase in southwestern Ohio were offered at sixty-seven cents per acre. Moreover when, in 1796, the survey of the military bounty lands was authorized, and these were put on the market by those who earned or acquired bounty certificates, the competition with the land in the 'Seven Ranges' became sharper, and one reason appears why immi-
.
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GUERNSEY COUNTY, OIIIO.
grants would pass just through the 'Seven Ranges' and settle on the bounty lands in Oxford township and the country west of that.
"The Zane Trace was made under contract with the federal government, by Ebenezer Zane, for whom Zanesville is named. It extended from oppo- site Wheeling to what was then known as Limestone, a point on the Ohio river nearly opposite Maysville, Kentucky. At the outset the chief towns along it were Cambridge, Zanesville, Lancaster and Chillicothe. It was neither a highway, nor what would now be considered a road. The makers of it contented themselves with cutting down the timber and clearing away some of the undergrowth, so that the route would be passable for horsemen ; and this seems to have been all that was expected of them. There was no ferry west from Wheeling until the crossing of Wills creek, where Cam- bridge now stands, was reached. In a general way Zane followed an Indian trail. The route was an important one, however, because it connected Penn- sylvania and the Ohio river at Wheeling with the West and Southwest, and, with the so-called Wilderness Trail, connecting Kentucky with Virginia, formed the two great arteries of communication for that day between the East and the West across the Alleghanies.
"The township organization was effected April 23, 1810. It is a tradition that there were then not enough men in the township, large as it was, to fill the offices. As the number of offices at that time seems to have been nineteen, this is likely a mistake. Perhaps it may be that there were then not enough voters to fill the offices, but there were more than nineteen male persons in that region. Later on the population was added to chiefly by settlers who had served in the war of 1812, and in the early years the Irish and Scotch-Irish largely pre- ponderated. A roster of the names of the early residents shows this.
"The first settlement in Oxford township was at Fletcher, where the Fletcher Methodist Episcopal church now is. Nothing except this perpetua- tion of that name, and some faint inscriptions on the stones in the burying- ground hard by, remain to testify to its existence. It was on the Zane Trace. Philip Rosemond settled here on a quarter section of land which he bought early in April, 1810, from Noah Linsley for five hundred dollars. To this he added, in 1819, another quarter section which he bought from John Heskett in January, 1819. He kept here for years a tavern, and is said to have been the first postmaster, and to have kept the first postoffice between Wheeling and Zanesville. Nearby were the Wherrys, Ableses, Kennons, Mortons and Plattenburgs.
"In March, 1814, Fairview was laid out by Hugh Gilliland, containing thirty lots, each one-fourth of an acre in area, fronting on the two sides of
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what is now the National road or Fair street. In December, 1825, Philip Rosemond, John Gibson and John Davenport, joint proprietors, platted an addition containing eleven lots, and in October, 1827, they platted a second addition containing nineteen lots, thus doubling the town in area. The deed records indicate that the best of these lots usually sold for sixty-five dollars.
"By 1828 the National road had been completed through Guernsey coun- ty, and from this time onward Fairview greatly prospered for many years, until that great highway was superseded, in a great measure, by the railroad which passed south of it through Barnesville. It was a division point in the stage traffic, did a large merchandising business, possessed several taverns, and, along in the fifties, when what has been described as the "county-seat fever" existed, had an ambition to become the county seat of a new county which was to be called Cumberland and should be made up of the eastern part of Guernsey and the western part of Belmont.
"The township as it now lies is hilly, but fertile, much of the land being strong limestone soil, and the whole being well watered. The great part of the township is underlaid with coal, and some shallow seams are worked for domestic use, though no commercial mine has been attempted, partially for lack of railroad transportation.
"The citizenship of the township has, as a rule, ever been of high order. From the beginning churches and schools have been provided and main- tained. Before the public school system was established, about 1825, private, or 'select' schools, where pupils paid for their teaching, were maintained. As early as 1818 there was a stone church about where Fletcher church now is, and there was one at Fairview as early as 1820. These were Reformed Presbyterian churches, but in 1832 the Methodist Episcopal society established itself at Fletcher. A public school was established in the southeastern part of the township in 1832, and in 1839 another was located just southwest of Fairview. The school houses of that day were log cabins, with puncheon floors, slab seats and unglazed windows. At St. Clairsville was an academy, to which children were sent from Oxford township for a better education than the public schools afforded.
"The earliest tax duplicates for this township cannot be found among the public records. In 1834 there were in the entire township, large as it then was (according to the tax duplicates), only ten houses that were separately valued, together with four grist mills valued at four hundred and seventy dol- lars, six saw mills at five hundred dollars, three distilleries at one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and three tanneries at two hundred and eighty-five dollars.
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"In August, 1880, what was called the Pennyroyal Reunion was held close to Fairview, and it was established as an annual event and has been kept up. In the beginning old men still living had been among the pioneers and narrated from their own experience incidents of that early time; but no concerted effort to perpetuate their recollections as a whole was made. The region yields the pennyroyal plant in abundance, and for many years the oil has been distilled in domestic stills, hence the name Pennyroyaldom for Oxford township."
FAIRVIEW.
This village is on the east line of Guernsey county, on the southwest quarter of section 2, township 10, range 7, platted by Hugh Gilliland, March 24, 1814. It is the first station point on the famous National pike, as it enters Guernsey county from the east. Many of the old time men, includ- illustrious politicians, have stopped over night or for their meals at this place in the long-ago years. It has been a postoffice point ever since staging was known in the county. Thirty-five years ago and more the office was kept directly opposite from where it is now kept. It was then in the Gil- breth hotel, on Main street. The office now has an annual receipt of about four hundred and twenty-five dollars. The mail is received here twice a day each way, by stage. Among the latter year postmasters may be named Thomas Bond, Dr. James Holt, W. B. Benson, D. E. Morris, E. E. Bond.
Fairview is among the incorporated towns of Guernsey county. Since 1839 (as early a record as can be obtained) the mayors have been :
1839-William Robinson. 1882-V. D. Craig.
1840-William Beymer. 1886-W. R. Scott.
1844-P. B. Ankney.
1887-William Lawrence.
1847 -- Thomas Beaham.
1888-Samuel B. Clements.
1849-Joseph Evitt.
1890-Robert McBurney.
1850-Josiah Conwell.
1892-Samuel W. Colley.
1851-Joel F. Martin.
1894-Robert McBurney.
1896-Benjamin Paisley.
1852-A. Y. Robinson. 1854-Alfred Skinner. 1860-William Barton. 1863-J. M. Patterson. 1877-J. S. Umstot.
1898-S. B. Lawrence.
1903-F. W. Steele.
1905-S. B. Lawrence.
1907-L. L. Young.
1877-J. S. Umstott.
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GUERNSEY COUNTY, OHIO.
The 1910 municipal officers are: Mayor, O. G. Sheppard; clerk, W. L. Anderson; treasurer, W. L. Gleaves; marshal, G. A. Kupfer. The council is made up of these gentlemen: T. K. Peck, T. B. Bratton, John I. Ander- son, W. K. Byrd, Fred Johnson and W. H. Griffin.
The city hall, on Main street, has been in use many years. The only protection against the ravages of the fire-fiend is the volunteer company and a hand-pump service given by the citizens.
BUSINESS INTERESTS.
The commercial interests of Fairview in 1910 were as follows: The J. W. Frost Cigar Company, that has been in existence about twenty years, and which consumes much of the native tobacco which is produced in quite large quantities in the immediate vicinity. The cigar making industry was first started here by Saltsgaver & Frost.
The coal mining interests are quite extensive and are named in another chapter with other mines in Guernsey county. Among the most important mines in this section are the Brown, Riggle, Loy, Cowgill and Carnes mines.
There is also a good creamery, belonging to the United Dairy Company. Other interests are the general stores of E. E. Bond and W. L. Gleaves; the groceries of Dillion and Mrs. Benson ; Morton Sisters, millinery ; livery barns by Doctor Arnold and Charles Ault; T. B. Bratton, stock dealer, and a meat market conducted by J. W. Ault.
Middleton, on the National pike, in Oxford township, was platted on the north half of section 31, township 10, range 7. September 1, 1827, by Benjamin Masters. 'It has never been a place of much significance, a mere post trading place on the pike, formerly having mail facilities. It now has two general stores. J. W. Long and I. Y. Davis, and one excellent hotel.
Benjamin Masters, just spoken of. had eighteen children. He erected a mill of the horse type and the date of its construction was 1805, near where Middleton now stands. In 1810 he built a water mill.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LIBERTY TOWNSHIP.
Liberty township was organized in 1820, ninety years ago. It is the second from the north and second from the western line of the county, and contains about twenty-five sections of land, being five miles square. Wills creek meanders through its territory and through its beautiful valley runs the Pennsylvania railroad line ( formerly the Cleveland & Marietta). This is a good agricultural section of the county and the people seem both pros- perous and contented. The groundwork for this contentment was possibly laid in the labors and self-sacrifice of the earlier settlers, who felled the first trees and plowed the first furrow in the township, long before the sound of the iron horse had ever been heard within Guernsey county. A record was made many years since of the persons who, in 1876, were seventy-six years of age or older, then residing in the township, which list is as follows: Robert Bell, Henry Matthews, James Boyd, George B. Leeper, Ann Milligan, Elijah Phelps, Adam Miller, Thomas Stockdale, James Lacham, James Gil- son, William De Harte, George Bell, Alexander Robinson.
Residents who lived in Liberty township away back in the sixties, sev- enties and eighties, included these : Thomas Alexander, born in Guernsey county in 1815. Joseph C. McMullen, a native of Ireland, born in 1793. emigrated to Ohio when quite young and died in the state in 1865. James Bell, a native of Ohio county, Virginia, born in 1776, married and came to Ohio and lived in Liberty township during the remainder of his days. They reared five children, of whom Robert was prominent in the history and de- velopment of his township. The Bell farm consisted of three hundred and twenty acres of land in Liberty township.
R. R. Miller, born in Canada in 1822, was the son of Adam Miller. a native of Ireland, born in 1795, and who married in 1821 and came to America. He settled in Guernsey county, first in Jefferson township. then in Liberty township, where he remained until his death in 1877. This couple had five children. The Miller family bore well the part of enter- prising, energetic citizens.
William Gibson, Sr., the first settler, immediately after his marriage in
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1794, moved close to Wheeling, West Virginia. He was then just at the age of manhood, while his wife was three years his junior and both descended from good old Pennsylvania stock. Six years later they resided in Belmont county, Ohio, and there remained five years. In 1807 they obtained two canoes at Cambridge and, going down Wills creek, landed where Liberty township is now. They were the only inhabitants of the country round about and here they built a rude hut, or log cabin, later a much better one. They continued to reside there until he died, in 1849, and the good wife in 1873. They were the parents of fourteen children. James, one of their sons, born in Belmont county in 1804, married in 1833 and conducted a hotel in Liberty for thirteen years. He also had a two-hundred-acre farm of well improved land, and finally lived a retired life. John Gibson laid out the village of Liberty (now Kimbolton).
Joseph Bell came from Virginia to Ohio in 1807 and settled in Liberty township. He was a native of Ireland, born in 1775. He died in Liberty township in 1839 and his wife followed in 1842, leaving a family of five children. David and George settled in Liberty township and became men of enterprise and thrift.
Robert Forsythe, born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, in 1796, spent his youth there and in 1818 married Elizabeth Bell. Soon after, with his wife and mother, he came to Ohio, settling in Liberty township, where he remained until 1832, then moved to Wills township, near Washington village, and in 1869 went to Cambridge, where he died in 1873. This truly worthy couple had seven children to honor their names.
James Beggs, one of the sons of the Emerald isle, and his wife, Ellen (Miller) Beggs, also a native of Ireland, emigrated to this country in 1798 and settled in Jefferson township, this county, but soon after located in Liberty township, where he died in 1867. Mrs. Beggs passed away a short time before. Their children were Elizabeth, wife of Gilbert McCully, and James. The latter was born in Ireland in 1817 and in 1841 married Mar- garet Parkison, of this county. They reared a large family of children. The old Beggs farm contained three hundred acres.
Naphtali Luccock, a native of England, was born in 1797 and in 1819 embarked for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which city he engaged in a com- mission business. The next two years he worked in a stocking factory in Germantown (near Philadelphia), and in 1822 married Jane Thompson, who was born at Fort Sea, England. They settled in Wooster, Ohio, and for three years he taught school there. The next four years they lived in Coshoc- ton county, Ohio, and in 1831 finally settled in Guernsey county. One of
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the sons of this pioneer was named Thomas, born in 1823, married in 1848. He served as representative from this county in the Ohio Legislature from 1875 to 1879. He owned twelve hundred acres of land in this county, was an extensive agriculturist and conducted a general store in Liberty town- ship.
TOWNS AND VILLAGES.
Kimbolton (formerly Liberty) is within this township, situated on section 23, in the northern tier of sections of the township. It was platted by William and John Gibson, August 2, 1828. When incorporated, Novem- ber 5, 1884, it was named in the articles as Kimbolton. Its name is after a place like-named in England. It was the birthplace in England of Naph- tali Luccock, the first postmaster, hence he called this place after it, when the postoffice was to be named, about sixty or more years ago. Among the post- masters and postmistresses who have served here are: Naphtali Luccock, Miss Anne DeHart, J. L. Davis, W. H. Ludley, S. D. Ross, O. J. Berry, Mrs. Ida A. Berry. From this postoffice there are four rural routes, ex- tending out about twenty-five miles each. The first was established about 1903. The mail at an early date was carried to and from here on horseback twice each week. There are now two daily mails each way, by rail.
A city hall was provided in 1907. The only fire of importance in the place was when the mill burned in 1909, entailing a loss of about five thou- sand dollars. The present council and officers are: William H. Gibson, John A. Chambers, E. E. McKim, Lafayette Miller, Thomas Morris, B. D. Bumgardner, council; M. V. McKim, mayor; O. J. Berry, clerk; C. F. Rhodes, treasurer. The present marshal is F. M. Fowler.
The business interests of the place are: Two general stores, A. Ledlie & Son, S. A. Clark; grocery, L. J. VanSickle; livery, R. R. Warden; hotel, Central House, by R. R. Warden ; steam flouring mill, by M. T. Kennedy.
The churches (see Church chapter) are the United Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal.
The present physicians are Drs. D. L. Cowden and William Lawyer.
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CHAPTER XXVII.
RICHLAND TOWNSHIP.
Richland is on the south line of the county and the second from the east- ern border line on the east. It is irregular in shape, containing about twenty- seven sections of land. The main line of the great Baltimore & Ohio rail- way system passes through the extreme northern portion of this sub-division of the county, with its Cumberland branch traversing the township from north to south, passing into Valley township on section 3. Richland township was organized July 18, 1810, the first election being held on that date, at the house of Samuel Leath, when township officers were duly elected.
EARLY SETTLERS.
Perhaps no better insight into who were among the vanguard of pioneers in this part of Guernsey county can be obtained than to publish the names of those over seventy-six years of age residing in the township in 1876, the same having been compiled for a centennial history of the township: Mrs. Payne, Mary Halley, George Gooderl, Robert Dilley, Ann Thomas, Mary Morrison, Mrs. George Gooderl, John Dollison, Mrs. Hull, Mrs. Stiers, Mary A. Foreacre, Mrs. John Squib, Mrs. Samuel Lent, Jacob Shafer, Susan Shroyer, Elizabeth Alexander, John Frame, Henry Ledman, Mrs. A. Laugh- lin, Mrs. Bennett, Eleanor Medley, James Buchanan, John Potts, Almira Mc- Clary, James Hartup, Benjamin Winnett, John Winnett, Laban La Rue, Wil- liam G. Keil, Samuel Gibson, James Miller, Mary Baldridge, John Mosier, John Squib, Samuel Lent, Thomas Hunt, James Stranathan, Nancy Arndt, Mrs. F. Goodern, Elizabeth Oliver, William Potts, Lydia Clark, Lucinda Dollison, Margaret Lowry, Catherine Ledman, Henry Popham, John Laugh- lin, James R. Boyd, Tamer Gooden, Tressa Jones, Lydia Lowry, Scott Emer- son, Mary Jackman, Raphiel Stiers, Lucretia Buchanan, Ebenezer Harper. Jeremiah Sargent and Margaret La Rue.
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