Bucks Township, Tuscarawas County

How Bucks Township, Tuscarawas County began

Bucks Township lies in the extreme west of Tuscarawas County, against Coshocton and Holmes counties. It was organized from Sugar Creek and Warwick townships on March 8, 1825, and the county commissioners gave it the name Bucks at the urging of the hunter John Mizer, to mark the deer in its hills. The rough ridges kept settlers away until Pennsylvania Germans arrived in numbers from about 1833; Greensburg (1817) never sold a lot, while Rowville (1848, later Baltic) became the township's mill and railroad town. The township had 1,942 residents in 2020, with Baltic partly in its northwest corner.

Settled about 1815 (Jacob Forney and Jacob Gonter, the earliest settlers named by the county history), platted 1848 (Rowville, by Lewis Row); an earlier paper town, Greensburg, was platted in 1817, incorporated March 8, 1825 (township organized), by Jacob Forney and Jacob Gonter, first settlers; Lewis Row, founder of Rowville.

Where the name comes from

The 1884 county history says the Commissioners bestowed the name Bucks 'at the instance of John Mizer, who was a successful and constant hunter, and wished to signalize the abundance of deer' in the brakes and hilltops. The earlier suggestion that the name came from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has no support in the source and is dropped.

Before the town

No Native village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Bucks Township is recorded in the sources checked. The 1884 county history notes only a natural landmark, Standing Rock, a sandstone mass about 15 by 35 feet at its base and some 45 feet high on a ridge at the southwest corner on the Coshocton County line, covered with visitors' names. The township lay in Delaware (Lenape) country and was ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1815 — Jacob Forney and Jacob Gonter, Pennsylvania Germans, are the earliest settlers named by the county historian, Forney on the northeast quarter of Section 5 and Gonter on the northwest quarter.
2. 1816 — In March George Gonter moves his family to the southwest quarter of Section 8; his son David, born December 28, 1816, is later the township's oldest native resident.
3. 1817 — David Seldenright and Henry Sliffe plat the cross-shaped town of Greensburg with 72 lots in the woods on the northeast quarter of Section 16; no lot is ever sold.
4. 1820 — Only four resident real-estate taxpayers live in the area that is now the township (nine by 1826, fourteen by 1830).
5. 1822 — George Gonter builds a horse-powered grist mill with a forty-foot horizontal wheel, the first mill in the township.
6. 1825 — On March 8 Bucks Township is organized from Sugar Creek and Warwick townships, shortly after Holmes County took Tuscarawas County's northwest corner; the order calls for its first election at John Mizer's house.
7. 1833 — German immigration begins about this year and within a few years peoples the hills with farms.
8. 1840 — An Evangelical and German Reformed congregation builds a frame church in Section 8; Rev. Henry Colorado, its pioneer minister, serves until his death in 1846.
9. 1848 — Lewis Row founds Rowville on the northwest quarter of Section 5 with 72 lots on Cass and Butler streets; William Burkey builds the first house about 1849 and Samuel Long is the first postmaster.
10. 1849 — Rev. Holm G. Holm becomes pastor of St. Paul's Evangelical Church in the southwest of the township; its log church is replaced by a frame one in 1871.
11. 1856 — Zion's Evangelical German Church is organized at Rowville.
12. 1881 — The Rowville Mills are built by Jacob Mast and William Miller.
13. 1883 — The Connotton Valley Railroad reaches Rowville, which is also called Buena Vista (its station) and Baltic (its later post office name); the 1880 population of 189 is estimated at 350.
14. 1990 — The census counts 1,298 residents (1,601 in 2000, 1,776 in 2010).
15. 2020 — The census counts 1,942 residents over 22.6 square miles; part of the village of Baltic lies in the township's northwest corner.

Stories

A corner township of three counties

Bucks Township sits at the western edge of Tuscarawas County, where it borders seven townships, four of them in other counties (three in Coshocton County and one in Holmes County) — an unusually crowded intersection for an Ohio township. It has never held an incorporated village of its own; the closest is Baltic, whose territory crosses into the township's northwestern corner from its main site in Union Township, Tuscarawas County (and Washington Township, Holmes County). The township's small Lutheran and rural congregations — Salem Evans Creek Lutheran Church and St. Peters at the crossroads hamlet of Fiat — mark its old farm settlement pattern, and Belted Galloway cattle grazing near Baltic reflect the same hill-country pasture use that has kept the township lightly populated. Its population grew about 50 percent between 1990 and 2020, from 1,298 to 1,942, modest growth for a rural western Tuscarawas County township.

The town that was never built: Greensburg, 1817

In 1817 David Seldenright of Easton, Pennsylvania, and Henry Sliffe laid out a town in the middle of the woods on a quarter section Seldenright had entered. The plat was a cross with seventy-two lots, with High and Main streets as its principal roads and East, West, North and South streets for the rest. To the surveyors it was a serious plan; the county historian records that a barrel of whisky was rolled through the brush to the site and that the men who helped make the town celebrated when the work was done. No lot was ever sold. In 1884 the quarter section was still called the town quarter. Rowville, platted in 1848, did succeed: its seventy-two lots were cried off at public sale at low prices, and the first house, built by the tanner William Burkey, cost him $12 for the lot.

One town, three names: Rowville, Buena Vista and Baltic

Lewis Row, a farmer who later moved to Owen County, Indiana, laid out Rowville in 1848 around a square formed by Cass and Butler streets. The Connotton Valley Railroad, completed through it in 1883, called its station Buena Vista, and the post office carried that name too until the Post Office Department changed it to Baltic, so one village was Rowville, Buena Vista and Baltic at once. The 1884 county history lists its trades: two hotels, two drug stores, two hardware stores, a tannery, a planing mill and the Rowville Mills (1881), whose new roller process ran day and night.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Tcmsd-baltic65% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Sugarcreek Village33% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Walnut Creek Water Co.2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Private schools (3)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-21
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-07

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