Batesville

How Batesville began

Batesville stands on the Beaver Fork of Wills Creek in Beaver Township, in the northeastern corner of Noble County. It was platted in 1827 as Williamsburg for William Finley, who had bought the farm in 1818, and took its later name from the Batesville post office first kept at Timothy Bates's mill a few miles west. The town grew slowly for twenty years, then became a trading point for tobacco, pork and grain, with a Catholic parish dating from 1819, a Lutheran church from 1828, a national bank from 1874, a joint-stock flour mill and a private telegraph line. It came into Noble County with Beaver Township in 1851, counted 369 people in 1880 and nearly 500 in 1887, and had 101 residents in 2020.

Settled 1818 (William Finley bought the farm on which the village was laid out), platted 1827, as Williamsburg; Lebbeus Fordyce, surveyor (county histories); a Guernsey County plat list gives November 21, 1828, by William Finley, proprietor; the 1887 county history says his son-in-law James Reed laid out the village.

Where the name comes from

The village was first named Williamsburg for its founder, William Finley. The name Batesville was first used for a post office kept at Timothy Bates's mill, near the present line of Wayne and Seneca townships; the office moved to Cornelius Bryan's and then into the village, and the name followed it. Henry Howe's Historical Collections repeats a local saying that the town was named for the Rev. Timothy Bates, a Methodist preacher.

Before the town

No Native American village, camp, mound or trail inside Batesville is recorded in the sources read. Frank Martin's 1904 county history says that after the wars of the 1790s Native hunters still paid yearly visits to their old hunting grounds in the county without hostility, sharing game with settlers. A mound called the Bates Mound was opened in 1872; Martin places it in Beaver Township and Howe in Seneca Township, and neither ties it to the village site. At the county level, the record documents a Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware) and Mingo presence in the Wills Creek hill country.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1818 — William W. Finley came from Belmont County and bought the farm on which the village was later laid out.
2. 1819 — The Rev. Edward Fenwick organized the Catholics around Batesville into a parish, first called St. Dominic's and later St. Mary's.
3. 1825 — The Catholic congregation built a log church, 26 by 36 feet.
4. 1827 — The village was laid out under the name Williamsburg, with Lebbeus Fordyce as surveyor, and the plat was recorded in Guernsey County.
5. 1828-11-21 — A Guernsey County list of town plats records the Williamsburg plat in Beaver Township under William Finley's name and this date.
6. 1828 — Richard Elliott and James Reed opened the first store, about this year; Reed's first stock, worth $160, was hauled from Wheeling in a one-horse wagon.
7. 1828 — The Rev. William G. Keil organized Mount Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church with thirteen original members, among them John Cline, Samuel Hastings, Isaac Cooper, William Finley and Daniel Wendall.
8. 1830 — The Guernsey County tax duplicate listed 23 owners of lots in Williamsburg, among them Abraham Brown, Richard Elliott, William Finley, George Peters and Adam Wiemer.
9. 1830 — Adam Wiemer started a tannery about this year, one of the village's earliest industries, later run for many years by George and John Dillon.
10. 1833 — The Lutherans built their first church, a log building 24 by 30 feet.
11. 1837 — Reuben Carpenter, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, built the first brick house in Batesville, about this year.
12. 1847-06-10 — Williamsburg Division No. 234, Sons of Temperance, was instituted; in 1887 it was the oldest temperance society in Noble County and had missed only two or three meetings in forty years.
13. 1851 — Beaver Township, with Buffalo, Seneca and Wayne townships, was detached from Guernsey County and attached to the new Noble County, placing the village in Noble County.
14. 1853 — The Catholic log church was replaced by a brick church, 45 by 85 feet, costing about $8,000.
15. 1856 — A two-story frame schoolhouse was built for about $1,500, replacing a one-room frame school.
16. 1874-12 — The First National Bank of Batesville was organized with $60,000 capital and F. M. Atkinson as its first president.
17. 1874 — A joint-stock company built the village flour mill at a cost of more than $12,000.
18. 1877 — Citizens built a telegraph line from Batesville to Spencer Station as a private venture, afterward operated by the Baltimore and Ohio Telegraph Company.
19. 1880 — The population was 369, its high point in the census record.
20. 2010 — The population had fallen to 71.
21. 2020 — The population had risen to 101.

Stories

A post office that moved to town

The name Batesville belonged to a post office before it belonged to a village. Around 1828 an office was opened at Timothy Bates's mill, near the present line of Wayne and Seneca townships, on the weekly mail route from Barnesville to McConnelsville. The 1887 county history says the office later moved to Cornelius Bryan's and then into Williamsburg once that place had become something of a village, and the town took the office's name. A footnote adds that Bates was a Whig, and that when President Jackson began turning Whigs out of office and appointing Democrats, Bates sent in his resignation as postmaster.

No letters, no papers

Frank Martin's 1904 history of the county describes the first mail service in this corner of Noble County. About 1828 or 1829 a post office was opened at Bates' mill with Timothy Bates as postmaster, supplied once a week on the route from Barnesville to McConnelsville. Martin writes that Bates's report to the department at the end of his first quarter read: "No letters, no papers; hope for better luck next time." Letter postage was twenty-five cents for any distance, money was scarce, and for weeks at a time a weekly mail on these routes might carry no letters at all.

The ugliest man and the salt kettle

Henry Howe, collecting material in Noble County for his Historical Collections, recorded a story told about the Rev. Timothy Bates, the Methodist preacher said to have given Batesville its name. Ebenezer Zane, founder of Zanesville, made salt kettles and set one aside as a joke for the ugliest man who would come to town and claim it. A man named Bartlett drove to Zanesville, loaded the kettle and started home, and on the road he met Bates. Howe writes that Bartlett handed the kettle over, saying he had thought it belonged to him until he saw Bates. Howe also noted that Bates was known across the county for his short sermons.

A turnpike and a railroad that did not come

The 1887 county history calls Beaver the best farming township in Noble County, and its main street, the Summerfield and Batesville turnpike, ran through the village. From 1869 to 1871 farmers within two miles on either side of that road were taxed heavily to build it. Then came a plan to extend the old Eastern Ohio, or "Calico," railroad through Batesville; the largest property holders invested in it, and the project failed. A grange cooperative store also failed. The history says that when it was written many of the township's wealthy farmers were in financial trouble and some were bankrupt, and that the town had felt the blow.

Margaret Keenan Harrais

Batesville's best-known native, Margaret Keenan Harrais (1872-1964), was born in the village and went on to work as an educator, a suffragist, a temperance reformer and a public official. The village she came from has rarely counted more than a few hundred residents at any point in its recorded history and stood at just over one hundred at the 2020 census.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Quaker City100% of residentsBarnesville Reservoirs #1, #2 & Slope Creek Reservoir

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-06-03

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