{ "type": "place", "slug": "mckean-township-licking-county", "key": "T46116-LIC", "name": "Mckean Township, Licking County", "short_name": "Mckean Township", "place_type": "township", "county": { "name": "Licking", "slug": "licking", "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/county/licking/" }, "population": 1606, "center": { "lat": 40.10667096674621, "lon": -82.48355350453184 }, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/place/mckean-township-licking-county/", "api": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/api/place/mckean-township-licking-county.json", "zips": [ { "zip": "43023", "name": "Granville", "share": 0.0438, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/zip/43023/" }, { "zip": "43031", "name": "Johnstown", "share": 0.0174, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/zip/43031/" }, { "zip": "43001", "name": "Saint Albans Township and Alexandria", "share": 0.0126, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/zip/43001/" }, { "zip": "43055", "name": "Newark", "share": 0.0113, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/zip/43055/" } ], "water": [ { "pwsid": "OH4502314", "name": "Newark City", "share": 0.5846625798554699, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4502314/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4500612", "name": "Granville, Village Of", "share": 0.20858399469334732, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4500612/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4501512", "name": "Johnstown City", "share": 0.09834021876842718, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4501512/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4505412", "name": "Licking Regional Water District", "share": 0.07524422627360684, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4505412/" }, { "pwsid": "OH2101412", "name": "Del-co Water Company, Inc.", "share": 0.008571169144850023, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH2101412/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4504203", "name": "Alexandria Village", "share": 0.0069335212651083725, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4504203/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4501712", "name": "Licking County Prescott Estates", "share": 0.004923638889305522, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4501712/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4500212", "name": "Lakeshore Court Mobile Home", "share": 0.004923638889305522, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4500212/" }, { "pwsid": "OH2504412", "name": "Columbus Public Water System", "share": 0.0034487544488153938, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH2504412/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4504012", "name": "St. Louisville Village", "share": 0.0013286009701300614, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4504012/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4500912", "name": "City of Heath", "share": 0.001172294973644172, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4500912/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4500512", "name": "Winding Creek Estates", "share": 0.0006252239859435584, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4500512/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4503112", "name": "Valley Mobile Home Park", "share": 0.0005470709877006135, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4503112/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4503312", "name": "Wilkins Mobile Home Park", "share": 0.000390764991214724, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4503312/" }, { "pwsid": "OH4500712", "name": "Green Meadows MHP", "share": 0.00030430186313077, "url": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/water/OH4500712/" } ], "history": { "key": "T46116-LIC", "name": "Mckean Township, Licking County", "kind": "township", "county": "Licking", "summary": "McKean Township was surveyed as part of the United States Military District and settled beginning in 1806 by John Price, a Welshman who cleared what was locally remembered as the \"Welsh Field\" near the Granville township line -- the same wave of Welsh emigration that founded the Welsh Hills settlement, whose purchase bordered McKean and gradually spread into its northwest corner. The township organized in 1818 and was named for Thomas McKean Thompson, an early settler of wealth who had served as private secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Thomas McKean. Its two small villages, Fredonia (1829) and Sylvania (1838), never grew much beyond a few dozen households, and the itinerant preachers Joseph Thomas (\"the Pilgrim\") and Lorenzo Dow both passed through and preached here in the 1820s. Today it remains an unincorporated, rural township on Licking County's northern tier.", "founded": { "settled": "1806 (John Price)", "platted": null, "incorporated": "1818", "by": null, "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" }, "name_origin": { "text": "The 1881 county history credits the name to Thomas McKean Thompson, an early settler described as \"a gentleman of extensive information and wealth,\" who came from Pennsylvania after serving a number of years as private secretary to Governor McKean -- almost certainly Thomas McKean, Pennsylvania's second governor (1799-1808) -- and who \"gave the name to the township.\" Thompson went on to serve Licking County as a commissioner from 1822 to 1825.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" }, "native": { "text": "The 1881 county history calls McKean's Indian history \"somewhat meagre.\" It records an encampment on Cat Run, about a mile above its entrance into the Brushy Fork, occupied as late as 1812, when its residents disappeared; a few Indians returned to the site around 1820, but all left except one woman, who lived alone in one of the old huts until she too disappeared a short time later, \"the last of the Indian race that had any kind of residence in the township.\" An unoccupied wigwam reportedly still stood on Edwin Runnels' farm as late as 1819. The Mound Builders left more physical trace: a small mound on the farm once occupied by Thomas McKean Thompson, about four miles from Granville; a circular fort of about an acre, with a shallow interior ditch, on James Barrick's land in the northwest part of the township, much worn down by plowing; and a smaller mound half a mile south of it, on the former Edwin Runnels farm, also nearly leveled by cultivation. The county history adds that \"Mound Builders' works abound in all the townships adjoining McKean,\" including the well-known Newark Earthworks. The land itself was ceded by the Treaty of Greenville of 1795.", "peoples": [ "Wyandot", "Shawnee", "Lenape (Delaware)", "Miami", "Ottawa" ], "sites": [ { "name": "Mound on the Thompson farm", "type": "mound", "where": "about four miles from Granville, on land once occupied by Thomas McKean Thompson", "period": "unspecified (Mound Builder era)", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "name": "Circular fort on the Barrick land", "type": "earthwork", "where": "northwest section of McKean Township, on the land of James Barrick", "period": "unspecified (Mound Builder era)", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "name": "Cat Run encampment", "type": "camp", "where": "Cat Run, about one mile above its entrance into the Brushy Fork", "period": "occupied until 1812, with a final resident remembered into the early 1820s", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" } ], "sources": [ "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Greenville" ] }, "timeline": [ { "year": "1795", "event": "The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio, including the future McKean Township, to the United States.", "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Greenville", "datetime": "1795", "source_host": "en.wikipedia.org" }, { "year": "1801", "event": "Thomas Phillips and Theophilus Rees purchase two thousand acres in what becomes northeast Granville Township, bordering the McKean township line -- the origin of the Welsh Hills settlement, which later extends slightly into McKean itself.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1801", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1806", "event": "John Price, a Welshman, settles near the Granville township line and clears the ground later remembered as the \"Welsh Field,\" becoming the township's first settler.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1806", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1809", "event": "Abraham Wright, later the first justice of the peace in Newark, settles in McKean Township.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1809", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1810", "event": "William Smith, a Revolutionary War soldier, settles at the junction of Cat Run and the Brushy Fork; his son John becomes one of the township's first justices of the peace in 1818.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1810", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1818", "event": "McKean Township organizes, with its first election held on a white-oak log at the future site of Fredonia; thirteen votes are cast, using a hat as the ballot box.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1818", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "c. 1820", "event": "Lorenzo Dow, one of the era's most eccentric traveling preachers, delivers a night sermon in a cabin in the \"Blanchard settlement\" near the township's southern boundary, then continues to Granville and preaches in the street the next morning.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1820", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1827", "event": "A Baptist church is organized in the township, later building an edifice in Fredonia; Rev. Mr. Wileman is its earliest preacher.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1827", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1829", "event": "Spencer Arnold, David Wood Jr., and S. Shaw lay out the village of Fredonia, surveyed by Edwin Runnels.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1829", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1838", "event": "Jesse and Abraham Gosnell lay out the village of Sylvania.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1838", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "year": "1880", "event": "The federal census counts eighty-six residents in Fredonia and fifty in Sylvania.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "datetime": "1880", "source_host": "archive.org" } ], "stories": [ { "title": "The Pilgrim in the Woods", "text": "One of the most memorable preachers ever to pass through McKean Township was Rev. Joseph Thomas, known everywhere as \"the Pilgrim,\" who preached in the still-standing woods where Fredonia would later be platted, as well as at settler Daniel Griffith's house nearby, roughly fifty-five or sixty years before the county history was written in 1881. A Virginian from the Shenandoah Valley who rarely stayed home, Thomas traveled constantly, published a diary of his travels through the western wilderness, dabbled unsuccessfully in poetry, and always dressed in white, usually under a long flowing robe. A leader of the \"New Light\" sect and an eccentric camp-meeting orator, he often traveled in company with fellow preacher Isaac N. Walters; the county history singles the two of them out as more able to move a frontier crowd than almost any other pulpit orators of their day.", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" }, { "title": "Lorenzo Dow's One Sermon", "text": "More than fifty years before the county history was compiled, the celebrated and eccentric itinerant Lorenzo Dow passed through McKean Township on one of his sweeping tours of the American West, but preached only a single sermon within its limits: a night service, to an audience of about twenty, in the cabin of a Mr. Driggs on the road from Granville to Mount Vernon, near the township's southern boundary in what was known as the \"Blanchard settlement.\" The next morning Dow rode on to Granville and preached again, this time standing in the open street. Born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1777 and dead by 1834 in Georgetown, D.C., Dow had by then crossed the Atlantic several times and was, in the county history's judgment, \"one of the most eccentric preachers that ever appeared in the county.\"", "source": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "source_host": "archive.org" } ], "photos": [ { "page": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highwater_Congregational_UCC.jpg", "file": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Highwater_Congregational_UCC.jpg", "caption": "Highwater Congregational UCC, 1213 Dutch Lane at Highwater, McKean Township; photographed 2016", "credit": "Nyttend, via Wikimedia Commons", "license": "public domain", "year": "2016", "basis": "photographer released the file into the public domain worldwide", "thumb_url": "/history/photos/T46116-LIC_0.jpg", "w": 6016, "h": 4000, "license_url": null, "host": "commons.wikimedia.org" } ], "sources": [ "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "https://archive.org/details/centennialhistor0001embr", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKean_Township,_Licking_County,_Ohio", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Greenville", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Licking_County,_Ohio", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highwater_Congregational_UCC.jpg" ], "gaps": "The batch's National Register hints sharing McKean's ZIP codes (the eight Newark landmarks at 43055, and the Avery-Hunter House, A. A. Bancroft House, Bryn Mawr and Buxton Inn at 43023) were checked against the Wikipedia National Register list and confirmed to stand in Newark, Granville village, and Union Township, not inside McKean Township, so none are used here. The small hamlet of Highwater, home to the Congregational church photographed in 2016, is not mentioned in either 1881 or 1909 county history and could not be dated or otherwise documented beyond that one photograph's caption. The GNIS historical name \"Blanchard\" (ZIP 43023) matches the \"Blanchard settlement\" named in the 1881 county history's own McKean chapter as the site of Lorenzo Dow's sermon, and is used above on that basis, though no source gives it a founding date or further description. Population and building details for Fredonia and Sylvania after 1881 were not found.", "confidence": "medium", "researched": "2026-09-15", "model": "sonnet", "founded_line": "Settled 1806 (John Price), incorporated 1818.", "wikipedia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKean_Township,_Licking_County,_Ohio", "sources_h": [ { "url": "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi", "host": "archive.org" }, { "url": "https://archive.org/details/centennialhistor0001embr", "host": "archive.org" }, { "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKean_Township,_Licking_County,_Ohio", "host": "en.wikipedia.org" }, { "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Greenville", "host": "en.wikipedia.org" }, { "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Licking_County,_Ohio", "host": "en.wikipedia.org" }, { "url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highwater_Congregational_UCC.jpg", "host": "commons.wikimedia.org" } ] }, "links": [ [ "archive.org", "https://archive.org/details/historyoflicking0000nnhi" ], [ "archive.org", "https://archive.org/details/centennialhistor0001embr" ], [ "en.wikipedia.org", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKean_Township,_Licking_County,_Ohio" ], [ "en.wikipedia.org", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Greenville" ], [ "en.wikipedia.org", "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_Licking_County,_Ohio" ], [ "commons.wikimedia.org", "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highwater_Congregational_UCC.jpg" ] ], "generated": "2026-09-16", "license": "CC BY 4.0 for the compilation; each source keeps its own terms", "cite": "Cracked Buckeye (Open Shower Co), \"Mckean Township, Licking County\", https://crackedbuckeye.com/place/mckean-township-licking-county/, built 2026-09-16, accessed [date].", "schema": "https://crackedbuckeye.com/api/schema.json" }