Canaan Township, Madison County

How Canaan Township, Madison County began

Canaan Township, in the northeastern corner of Madison County along the Big and Little Darby creeks, was organized in 1819 under the name Phelps before quickly being renamed Canaan. It holds a distinct place in the county's history: Jonathan Alder, captured by Shawnee as a boy in 1782 and raised by a Mingo family, settled here on the Big Darby after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and is usually called the first white settler in Madison County; he lived out his life and died here in 1849. Settlement otherwise followed the Darby and Deer creeks from about 1800, with the mill village of Amity growing up around the Beach brothers' saw- and carding-mills. It remains a farming township with no incorporated village of its own.

Settled 1796 (Jonathan Alder) / c. 1800 (organized settlement), incorporated 1819, first as 'Phelps' Township, renamed Canaan soon after, by township organizers unnamed in sources; Amity village founded by Uri Beach and Lorenzo Beach.

Where the name comes from

The township was first organized in 1819 under the name 'Phelps' and renamed Canaan shortly afterward; no source found explains why either name was chosen, though Canaan is a common Biblical place-name reused across many Ohio townships (it is also the name of townships in Athens, Morrow, and Wayne counties).

Before the town

Canaan Township carries an unusually specific piece of Native American history. In 1796, settler Benjamin Springer found Jonathan Alder — a white man captured by a Shawnee raiding party in Virginia in 1782 at age eight, and adopted afterward by a Mingo chief named Succohanos and his wife Whinecheoh near a Mingo village north of the Mad River in present-day Logan County — living with his Native wife Barshaw (from Upper Sandusky) on the west bank of Big Darby Creek, inside what became Canaan Township. Sources describe the Darby and Deer Creek valleys as favorite hunting grounds of Native people before white settlement, with settlers finding encampments there, though no specific village name, mound, or trail within the township is recorded beyond Alder's cabin site. Alder had spent about 13 years among the Mingo, fought under the Shawnee war leader Blue Jacket in the Northwest Indian War (including the 1794 attack on Fort Recovery), and remained on the Darby after the August 1795 Treaty of Greenville ended the war and opened the region to white settlement. He separated from Barshaw, later reunited with his Virginia family, remarried, and lived the rest of his life in the township, dying there in 1849; his cabin is preserved at the Madison County Historical Society Museum in London. Beyond the Alder episode, no county-level survey of Adena, Hopewell, or Fort Ancient sites specific to Canaan Township was found.

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

• Jonathan Alder cabin site / west bank of Big Darby Creek (other) — Canaan Township, on Big Darby Creek, 1796 (found by Springer) through Alder's death in 1849 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1782 — Eight-year-old Jonathan Alder is captured by a Shawnee raiding party near present-day Virginia; his brother David is killed. He is later adopted by Mingo chief Succohanos and his wife Whinecheoh near a village north of the Mad River.
2. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville ends the Northwest Indian War, in which Alder had fought under Shawnee leader Blue Jacket; the treaty opens the region to white settlement.
3. 1796 — Settler Benjamin Springer finds Jonathan Alder living with his Native wife Barshaw on the west bank of Big Darby Creek — the first known white presence in what became Canaan Township and Madison County.
4. 1800 — Luther Cary, a New Jersey native, settles on the Big Darby north of the future village of Amity; he lives in the township until his death in 1834.
5. 1805 — Brothers Jonathan and Joel Harris, also from New Jersey, settle within the township.
6. 1806 — Alder marries Mary Ann Blont in Virginia and returns with her to a second cabin he builds on Big Darby Creek; they have twelve children between 1808 and 1830.
7. 1812 — Thomas Kilgore, a Pennsylvania native, settles in the township and goes on to serve more than 60 years in township offices.
8. 1819 — The township is organized, first under the name 'Phelps,' then quickly renamed Canaan.
9. c. 1820 — Uri Beach establishes a saw-mill and carding-mill on land purchased from Doctor Comstock, giving rise to the village of Amity; his brother Dr. Lorenzo Beach becomes the township's first physician around the same time.
10. 1849 — Jonathan Alder dies in Canaan Township, Madison County, at age 75.
11. 1854 — Township population recorded at 685.

Stories

The captive who came home to the Darby

Jonathan Alder was eight years old in 1782 when a Shawnee raiding party killed his brother David and carried him off from the Virginia frontier. Because his dark hair let him pass for Native, his life was spared, and a Mingo chief named Succohanos and his wife Whinecheoh adopted him in place of a son they had lost. Alder grew up Mingo: he hunted, ran the gauntlet as a rite of passage, and at nineteen or twenty fought under the Shawnee war leader Blue Jacket against American forces, including the 1794 attack on Fort Recovery. When the 1795 Treaty of Greenville ended the fighting, Alder was a grown man with a Native wife, Barshaw, and no memory of most of his birth family. He settled with her on the Big Darby, where settler Benjamin Springer found the couple in 1796 — the first white presence recorded in what became Canaan Township. The marriage did not last; the couple separated, believing, as Alder later told it, that 'the Great Spirit was opposed to their marriage,' and he left Barshaw the cabin, the cows, seven horses, and roughly two hundred dollars in silver. Alder placed advertisements that reached his one surviving brother in Virginia, traveled there in 1805, remarried there, to Mary Ann Blont, a woman from Virginia, in 1806, and returned to Big Darby Creek to build a second cabin and raise twelve children. He served as a militia captain during the War of 1812, helping build the only fort ever constructed in what became Union County, and died in Canaan Township in 1849 at 75, a man who had lived a full life on both sides of the frontier line.

A mill makes a village

Amity did not begin as a town but as a mill. Around 1820, Uri Beach bought land from a Doctor Comstock and put up a saw-mill and a carding-mill for processing wool — the kind of practical machinery every frontier neighborhood needed and few had. Farmers who once hauled logs and fleece long distances could now bring them to Beach's mills on the Darby, and a settlement grew up around the work the way many small Ohio villages did. Uri's brother, Dr. Lorenzo Beach, arrived around the same time and became the township's first physician, rounding out a settlement that could now saw its own lumber, card its own wool, and treat its own sick.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · remarkableohio.org · heritagepursuit.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Mill Creek water pumped into and stored in the Marysville Upground Reservoir on Raymond Road, plus groundwater from city-owned wells, treated at the plant on the reservoir site The water here

• Marysville City50% of residentsMill Creek via Marysville Reservoir (Raymond Rd) + wells
• Mid-ohio WSD - Jackson Street WTP36% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Columbus Public Water System8% of residentsScioto River (Griggs & O'Shaughnessy), Hoover Reservoir on Big Walnut Ck, plus wells
• Canaan Community MHP2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.2% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Suburbans Community MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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Spills reported since 2021 (6)

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