Brush Creek Township, Muskingum County

How Brush Creek Township, Muskingum County began

Brush Creek Township lies on the southern edge of Muskingum County, bordering Wayne, Harrison, Clay, Newton and Springfield townships as well as York Township in Morgan County. It was cut from Harrison Township and formally organized by the county commissioners on February 10, 1817, and named for the brush-choked creek that runs through it. Its first settler, George Swingle, was a German-born Revolutionary-era immigrant who cleared his farm in 1810; the 1882 county history repeats an 1879 report that a hilltop mound on the Baughman farm held giant skeletons and an inscribed stone, a claim it gives without other confirmation.

Settled 1810 (George Swingle, first settler), incorporated February 10, 1817, cut from Harrison Township, by Petition of Harrison Township inhabitants, ordered by the Muskingum County Commissioners.

Where the name comes from

The township takes its name from Brush Creek, the stream that enters it at the southern boundary and crosses northward through its center to the Muskingum River; the 1882 county history says the creek's own name came from being 'fairly concealed by a brushy undergrowth.'

Before the town

No source found describes a named Native village, trail, mound, or specific encounter within Brush Creek Township tied to a historic nation. The township does hold a large prehistoric mound, excavated in December 1879 on the farm of J. M. Baughman: a nearly flat-topped earthwork roughly 64 by 90 feet, standing atop a hill 152 feet above the creek. The excavators' own account, published in the 1882 county history, describes multiple skeletons -- including some reported at eight to nine and a half feet in length -- an altar of sandrock with ashes and charcoal, a clay burial casket holding a small clay infant figure, and a sandstone slab bearing engraved markings the investigators called hieroglyphics and hoped to have translated. Reports of giant skeletons and inscribed 'hieroglyphic' stones were a recurring feature of 19th-century American mound excavations and are not accepted by modern archaeology as literal fact and the county history's account is best read as local antiquarian lore. It is one of four Ohio townships called Brush Creek (the others in Adams, Jefferson, and Scioto counties); nothing in the sources distinguishes this one from those.

• Baughman farm mound (Brush Creek Township) (mound) — On a hilltop on the farm of J. M. Baughman, Brush Creek Township, Muskingum County, above the stream called Brush Creek, prehistoric, unspecified (Mound Builder era) (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810 — George Swingle, born 1756 (the 1892 history says 1750) in Saxony, Germany, a Revolutionary-era army veteran who had emigrated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, arrives with his son Nicholas and becomes the township's first settler, clearing land on what becomes the Solomon Swingle farm.
2. 1812 — The Rev. William Foster, an Evangelical Lutheran minister, visits from house to house in the township from this year to 1818; Lutheran services follow under the Rev. Andrew Hinkle in 1818-19, and the congregation is organized in 1819 with the Rev. Lewis Shite.
3. 1813 — Thomas Davidson opens the township's first blacksmith shop; the same year Samuel Stover builds the first sawmill, damming Brush Creek for water power.
4. 1813 — A woman known as Doctress Addison, the first practitioner, carries her roots and herbs through the region about now; Thomas Davidson works at his blacksmith shop until 1844 (the 1892 history says a school was kept in a cabin on Deitrick's farm as early as 1813).
5. 1814 — David Woodruff, Sr. teaches what the 1882 history calls the township's first school, in a log house on Adam Baughman's farm; its pupils are remembered locally as 'the Class of 1814.'
6. 1815 — Archibald Buchanan establishes the township's first tannery, on the bank of Turkey run.
7. 1817 — The Muskingum County Commissioners, acting on a petition from inhabitants of Harrison Township, order Brush Creek Township erected on February 10, setting its boundaries from the Muskingum River east to the county line.
8. 1818 — Thomas Moorehead bores the township's first salt well, a success that makes salt-making a leading industry for years.
9. 1819 — Samuel Stover adds a gristmill to his sawmill operation on Brush Creek.
10. 1825 — The Presbyterian Church in Brush Creek Township is organized by Rev. James Culbertson, meeting at the home of the widow Mrs. Turner.
11. 1827 — New mills replace Stover's old ones on the same sites at Stovertown in 1827 and 1829; a tannery later stands on the spot.
12. 1844 — George Swingle, the first settler, dies on his farm on October 28, honored by his neighbors; his wife survives him two years.
13. December 1, 1879 — A local Historical Association excavates a mound on J. M. Baughman's farm, reporting multiple skeletons, a sandrock altar, a clay burial casket, and an inscribed stone; the account is published in the 1882 county history.

Stories

A hunter's extremity

Henry Dozer, Adam Leffler, and Henry Stainbrook were three early Brush Creek Township settlers so devoted to hunting that neighbors simply called them 'the hunters.' Dozer once found a hollow 'bear tree' holding a pair of unattended black bear cubs and made off with them, only for the mother to return, corner him, and seize his rifle barrel in her teeth; he managed to fire into her before she could finish him off, and kept both the bear meat and the cubs, the tooth-marks in his gun barrel a lasting souvenir. Leffler had his own close call: after digging and covering a game pit in the usual way, he fell into his own trap and was stranded thirty miles from the nearest house for nearly three days before Stainbrook happened by and heard his cries. Stainbrook himself killed two bears from a single beech tree half a mile from his cabin and carved his name and the year, 1815, into its bark, a mark still visible when the county history was written decades later.

Giants and a hieroglyphic stone under a hilltop mound

On December 1, 1879, a crowd gathered on J. M. Baughman's farm to open an ancient mound standing on a hilltop 152 feet above Brush Creek. Digging into the flat-topped earthwork, the excavators reported finding a charred human skeleton bound to a burned stake, then two skeletons they measured at nine feet six inches and eight feet nine inches, lying face to face; more oversized remains followed near a sandrock altar filled with clay and topped with ashes and charcoal. Deepest of all was a casket of unfamiliar yellow clay holding a woman's skeleton, an infant's, and a small clay figure of a child, along with a sandstone slab bearing engraved marks the diggers called hieroglyphics and hoped to have deciphered. The report, written up for the county historian and printed in full in the 1882 county history, reads as sincere reportage rather than a joke; giant skeletons and mystery inscriptions turn up in many 19th-century American mound accounts and are understood today as a mix of mismeasurement, showmanship, and the era's fascination with a lost race of Mound Builders distinct from -- and, in the tellers' imagination, superior to -- the Native peoples who actually built such earthworks. Whatever the ground on the Baughman farm actually held, this account is the strangest single page in Brush Creek Township's written record.

Parched corn for coffee, sassafras for tea

George Swingle, born in Saxony, served eight years in the army from the age of sixteen, then sailed to America and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he made shoes without having been apprenticed and married Mary Magdalene Dietrich. In 1810 he and his son Nicholas started for the 'northwest country' and stopped in what is now Brush Creek Township. Swingle left Nicholas to raise a shelter and went back for the rest of the family; the neighbors helped build the cabin, and the family moved in soon after. The first year they made a barrel of maple sugar and a barrel of molasses; for coffee they used parched corn and for tea sassafras bark. In the second year they built the township's first hewed log house, a barn and an orchard, and planted wheat. Swingle died on the farm on October 28, 1844. The 1882 history gives his birth as July 4, 1756; the 1892 history says 1750.

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

Every historic place in Muskingum County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Philo53% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Roseville31% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Muskingum County Water - Se9% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Maysville Regional Water5% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Crooksville2% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-24

Cite this page