Auburn Township, Tuscarawas County

How Auburn Township, Tuscarawas County began

Auburn Township, on the western edge of Tuscarawas County, was erected by the county commissioners on June 6, 1838 from parts of Bucks, Sugar Creek, Jefferson and Dover townships. Pennsylvania German farmers, led by the hunter John Mizer (before 1809), settled its clay hills, and Conrad Rager platted Ragersville in 1830. By 1884 its exports were Swiss cheese from eight factories and blackband iron ore hauled to the Cleveland and Mahoning railroad at Blackband Station. It has no incorporated town; the township had 1,109 residents in 2020, and Ragersville School (1994) is on the National Register.

Settled about 1806 (John Mizer, before 1809), platted 1830 (Ragersville, platted by Conrad Rager), incorporated June 6, 1838 (township erected by the county commissioners), by John Mizer, first pioneer; Conrad Rager, founder of Ragersville.

Where the name comes from

The 1884 county history says the township was named Auburn 'for the sole reason that its initial letter was the first of the alphabet,' so that it leads the alphabetical list of Tuscarawas County's townships. The village of Ragersville is named for its founder Conrad Rager, who platted it in 1830.

Before the town

The 1884 county history describes a circular earthwork about a mile south of Ragersville, on the northeast quarter of Section 2 on a hillside facing the Sugar Creek valley: it enclosed roughly two acres, had two entrances and an inside ditch, and its embankment stood five or six feet high with two-foot trees growing on it about sixty years before 1884 (that is, about 1820s); the plow had since lowered it. The writer called it the work of Mound Builders, but no archaeological dating is given. Settlers recorded that Native people still visited cabins in the early 1800s: Lewis Lawbaugh's wife shared bread and milk with them at his cabin, and they left venison in return. The land lies within the area ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795); the Tuscarawas valley also held Delaware (Lenape) towns.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Circular earthwork south of Ragersville (earthwork) — northeast quarter of Section 2, about one mile south of Ragersville, on a hillside above the Sugar Creek valley, prehistoric; culture and date not given in the source (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1806 — John Mizer, a Pennsylvania hunter, enters the northwest quarter of Section 12 and becomes the township's first pioneer (the county history says he came before 1809, probably about 1806).
2. 1810 — Lewis Lawbaugh, from Harrison County, enters the south half of Section 12; Native visitors often stop at his cabin for food.
3. 1816 — Lewis Lawbaugh builds the township's first mill on Hog Run; a strong tide of emigration begins about this year and fills the land.
4. 1820 — Probably about this year the first schoolhouse is built in the woods on the Jonas Neff farm south of Ragersville; a German Reformed and Lutheran log church is built before 1820.
5. 1826 — Michael Swagler builds a water mill and a distillery on a branch of Sugar Creek just below the future site of Ragersville.
6. 1830 — Conrad Rager, who came from Pennsylvania in 1828 and opened the township's first store, plats Ragersville with 22 lots facing Main Street.
7. 1837 — Lutheran and German Reformed congregations jointly build the first church in Ragersville, the Lutherans having organized in spring 1836 under Rev. J. B. Reck.
8. 1838 — On June 6 the county commissioners erect Auburn Township from parts of Bucks, Sugar Creek, Jefferson and Dover townships; its boundaries are unchanged since.
9. 1840 — A post office is established at Ragersville about this year, with John Mossholder as first postmaster; a Methodist class forms and builds a brick church in 1844.
10. 1851 — Sargent, Neff, Snyder and Carnes build a steam flouring mill at Ragersville at a cost of more than $14,000; by 1884 it belongs to G. W. Goudy and Son.
11. 1880 — Ragersville has 212 residents, nearly all of German or Swiss birth, and the township sends Swiss cheese from eight factories, about fifty tons a year, to Pittsburgh, New York and Cincinnati.
12. 1884 — A ten-foot vein of blackband iron ore northeast of Ragersville is carried by a two-and-a-half-mile tramway to Blackband Station on the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad, for shipment to Massillon and Dover.
13. 1994 — Ragersville School, 8807 County Road 52 SW, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 22.
14. 2020 — The census counts 1,109 residents (820 in 1990, 1,078 in 2000, 1,070 in 2010).

Stories

Ragersville: a rural crossroads with its own school on the National Register

Conrad Rager platted the small community that carries his name in 1830, in what is now Auburn Township, in the hilly western part of Tuscarawas County. Ragersville never incorporated and today has no municipal government of its own, but it kept enough of a center — a school, a veterans memorial — to remain a recognizable place on the map two centuries later. The Ragersville School, at 8807 County Road 52 SW (Crooked Run Road) in Ragersville, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the relatively small number of rural school buildings in the county to carry that designation, and stands within Auburn Township's boundaries as listed.

John Mizer and the 700-pound bear

John Mizer, who came from Pennsylvania by way of Salem in Harrison County, was the first pioneer in what became Auburn Township and, by the county historian's account, a famous hunter who spent more time in the forest than in his cabin. Once, sleeping in the branches of a fallen tree, he woke to the sniffing of a large animal; he lay still until it stood on a log, fired, and in the morning found a bear of some 700 pounds shot through the heart, and two more killed the same day. On another occasion he seized one of two cubs, and the mother charged before he could reload, so he poured powder and two bare bullets into the barrel and killed her at arm's length. His brother Jacob once crawled under a ledge on White Eyes Creek to shoot a panther by its gleaming eyes. When the game thinned, John Mizer moved to the Coshocton County hills and died in 1860 at seventy-seven; it was at his request that the neighboring township was named Bucks, for the deer.

Hog's Creek and the Swiss cheese

The western part of Auburn is drained by a branch of Sugar Creek the settlers called Hog's Creek, so named, the county history says, for the unenviable reputation some neighbors had for helping themselves to each other's pork. The township's farmers were Pennsylvania Germans, Lutherans, German Reformed, Dunkards and Seventh Day Baptists, and by 1880 Ragersville was, in a resident's phrase, 'three-thirds German,' with no Irishman or Yankee to be found and German the common tongue. Swiss families brought dairy skills, and eight cheese factories, some cooperative, shipped about fifty tons of Swiss cheese a year to Pittsburgh, New York and Cincinnati. The Methodists, who built a brick church in 1844 and numbered seventy-five, dwindled away because the incoming Germans preferred their own churches; their building was later used by Dunkards.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Tuscarawas County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Sugarcreek Village87% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Tcmsd-baltic7% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Walnut Creek Water Co.6% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Public schools (1)

Private schools (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-02

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