Camp Creek Township, Pike County

How Camp Creek Township, Pike County began

Camp Creek Township, in southern Pike County, takes its name from the stream that rises within it and is its only watercourse. Hezekiah Merritt, who claimed to be Pike County's first settler (he landed on the Scioto near Lucasville on December 24, 1795), moved into what became Camp Creek Township about 1801. The land passed through Scioto County's Seal and then Union townships and through Pike County's Sunfish Township before becoming its own division about 1825. Its one hamlet, Coopersville, is named for a trader who ran a canal-boat trading post there beginning in 1857.

Settled c. 1801 (Hezekiah Merritt), incorporated about 1825 (became its own township).

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Camp Creek, a stream within its borders, per William Daniel Overman's Ohio Town Names (1958). An 1884 county history confirms the same derivation directly, noting the creek is the only stream within the township's borders and rises within its limits.

Before the town

No village, mound or trail is recorded for Camp Creek Township in the sources read. The earliest white settler here, Hezekiah Merritt, came up the Ohio and Scioto in the months after the Treaty of Greenville (August 3, 1795) and landed near Lucasville on December 24, 1795; his son John recalled in 1870 that the family came 'immediately after Wayne's treaty with the Indians,' and that on the way Massie's party was attacked on Paint Creek by 'a party of unfriendly Indians' who killed one man. The township lay in the Greenville cession; that settlement is the only Native-related record found.

Timeline

1. December 24, 1795 — Hezekiah Merritt lands with his family near Lucasville, in Scioto County, and his son later claimed he was the first white settler along the whole length of the Scioto.
2. c. 1801 — Merritt moves from near Lucasville to what becomes Camp Creek Township and is its first settler; his farm was still in the family in 1883, held by Moses Merritt at age seventy-two.
3. 1809 — Daniel Lee settles in Camp Creek Township, according to the county history's list of early arrivals.
4. 1815 — The area, once part of Scioto County (successively Seal and then Union townships there), becomes part of Sunfish Township, Pike County.
5. about 1825 — Camp Creek becomes a separate municipal division of Pike County.
6. 1839 — Township officers include trustees James Starr, Henry Dieterich and John Merritt, clerk A. J. Westfall and treasurer Henry Starr.
7. 1843 — A. J. Dieterich, born in Scioto County in 1825, goes onto the Ohio Canal at eighteen as captain of a boat, a job he kept until he was thirty before turning to farming; by 1883 he owned 1,000 acres. A United Brethren church is organized the same year at what becomes Howard Chapel.
8. 1848 — Howard Chapel, a log building costing about $125, is put up by the neighbors; it serves as a school-house for years and later only as a church for the United Brethren and Methodist Episcopal congregations.
9. 1857 — A man named Cooper sets up a trading boat on the canal near the mouth of Camp Creek and later builds a shanty to sell goods, giving Coopersville its name.
10. 1863 — Henry Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church is organized during the Civil War; it builds a $600 church in 1876.
11. 1874 — Mt. Etna United Brethren Church is organized; its church building follows in 1877.
12. 1880 — The township has 947 residents, up from 299 in 1840, 389 in 1850, 738 in 1860 and 743 in 1870.
13. 1883 — The township's one hamlet, Coopersville, has about twenty residents and a store; a water-powered flouring mill run by Gwinn & Son stands on the canal, which crosses the township for two and a half miles; four school districts serve 340 children.
14. 2020 — The census counts 1,057 residents in the township.

Stories

Hezekiah Merritt's floating mill

Hezekiah Merritt, a Pennsylvania millwright, brought his wife and five children down the Ohio to Manchester in 1795, right after Wayne's treaty, and on December 24 of that year landed where Lucasville now stands. His son John told the story in an 1870 interview. The family camped through the first winter, built a cabin the next spring, and went to Limestone, now Maysville, for seed corn; they ground their meal in a hand-mill. Their only cow died on the way, so Merritt went back to Manchester and sold the horse-mill he had built there for another, which fed them for two years until hunger forced them to kill it, yielding sixty pounds of tallow from an animal that had eaten corn only twice. Then, as settlers arrived 'pretty thickly,' Merritt built a floating mill, a rude structure but one whose toll let him buy another cow. The 1884 county history says he moved about 1801 into what became Camp Creek Township, where he lived several years before he had any near neighbor.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Northwest Regional Water District49% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Scioto Co. Regional Water District #130% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Scioto Water Inc.-rose Hill8% of residentsPurchased: Scioto Co. Regional Water Dist. #1 (Teays Valley Aquifer)
• Piketon Village7% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Pike Water, Inc.-plant4% of residentsTeays Valley Buried Valley Aquifer (wells near Jasper)
• Scioto Water, Inc.-davis Camp2% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Portsmouth City0% of residentsOhio River
• Dawsons Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

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