Cass Township, Muskingum County

How Cass Township, Muskingum County began

Cass Township lies along the Muskingum River just north and east of Dresden, and takes its name from Major Jonathan Cass, an early settler (1799) who lived between the unincorporated hamlets of Trinway and Adams Mills. The township's part of the Wakatomika/Dresden area carries the same Shawnee history recorded for the neighboring village. Its landmark is Prospect Place, the 29-room 1856 mansion built at Trinway by abolitionist George Willison Adams -- the same man who financed Dresden's 1852 suspension bridge -- and used as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Settled 1799 (Seth Adams and Major Jonathan Cass), incorporated 1853-09-06, by Erected by the Muskingum County commissioners out of Jefferson Township after the 1852 railroad bond dispute.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Major Jonathan Cass, an early settler who lived between Trinway and Adams Mills.

Before the town

Everhart's 1882 county history says the most noted mound in the township lies half a mile east of the road between Dresden Junction and Dresden, on land of G. W. Adams; it is 'probably an Indian mound, but has not been explored.' The township adjoins Dresden and the Wakatomaka (Wakatomika) Creek, whose mouth is at the northeastern boundary of Dresden and which is documented as the site of the Shawnee settlement of Wakatomika, burned by Virginia militia in August 1774 during Lord Dunmore's War. The township lies within the land opened by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Wakatomika (village) — Muskingum River, Dresden/Cass Township area, c. 1756-1774 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Unexplored mound on the G. W. Adams land (mound) — half a mile east of the road between Dresden Junction and Dresden, on land of G. W. Adams, undated; 'probably an Indian mound' per the 1882 county history, never explored (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1774-08-07 — Virginia militia under Colonel Angus McDonald burned Wakatomika and four other Shawnee villages along the Muskingum River in the Dresden/Cass Township area, during Lord Dunmore's War.
2. 1799 — Major Jonathan Cass, for whom the township is later named, was among the area's first settlers, living between Trinway and Adams Mills.
3. 1801 — Major Jonathan Cass, a Bunker Hill veteran who located forty warrants of 100 acres each (4,000 acres) in 1799, brings his family to the land; he lives there until his death on August 4, 1830 at 77. His son Lewis Cass became governor of Michigan Territory.
4. 1802 — Mordecai Ogle settles about half a mile northeast of the later village of Dresden; George Dowell comes in 1804 and Joseph Bryant in 1818.
5. 1805 — The earliest recorded township election, for the township of Jefferson, is held at Henry Northrup's house on the first Monday in April, electing Seth Carhart, Valentine Johnson and Isaac Cordray trustees.
6. 1806 — Wyllys Silliman, son-in-law of Major Cass, has a sawmill and gristmill running on Wakatomaka Creek near the later railroad bridge before this year, and makes salt at the mill; the dam is washed away in 1832 and never rebuilt.
7. 1808 — The family of George Willison Adams, a Virginia plantation family that had freed its slaves, moved to Madison Township, Muskingum County; George W. Adams later settled and built at Trinway in Cass Township.
8. 1822 — Work begins on the main line of the Ohio Canal through the township; it is completed in 1829, and the Dresden side-cut is ready for use in 1831.
9. 1852-04-01 — Voters of Jefferson Township approve $100,000 in bonds to the Steubenville & Indiana Railway, 340 to 114; Dresden votes almost solidly for them while most farmers vote against.
10. 1853-09-06 — The county commissioners erect Cass Township out of Jefferson, cutting the farmers off from Dresden; the law still holds both townships to the railroad bonds, which in the end cost the taxpayers about $200,000.
11. 1856 — George Willison Adams built Prospect Place, a 29-room mansion at Trinway.
12. 1875 — Dr. Edward Cass moves the remains of Major Jonathan Cass to the Dresden cemetery and the family erects a monument bearing his Bunker Hill and Wayne's army service.
13. 1979-05-10 — Prospect Place was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
14. 2020 — The census counts 1,811 people in the township.

Stories

A mansion on the Underground Railroad

George Willison Adams was born in 1799 in Fauquier County, Virginia, to a slaveholding family; his father freed the family's slaves and moved to Muskingum County, Ohio, in 1808. The son became a strong abolitionist, a member of the Ohio General Assembly, and, with his brother Edward, the owner of a flour mill on the Ohio and Erie Canal along with warehouses, a boatyard and cooper shops at nearby Dresden. In 1856 Adams built Prospect Place, a 29-room mansion at Trinway; it, and the mill operation behind it, are listed among Ohio's documented Underground Railroad sites. Three years earlier, in 1852, the same George Willison Adams had put up his own money to build the suspension bridge across the Muskingum at Dresden, engineered by his nephew George Copeland. Prospect Place was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and is today the home of the nonprofit G. W. Adams Educational Center.

The railroad bonds that split a township

On April 1, 1852, the voters of Jefferson Township, which then took in Dresden and the farmland around it, voted 340 to 114 to issue $100,000 in bonds to the Steubenville & Indiana Railway. Dresden voted almost to a man for the scheme and the farmers mostly against. The first issue was burned by the township trustees because the county auditor refused to register it, and on July 22 they issued a second, of one hundred bonds of $1,000 each, dated the same April 1. The farmers' plan was to have the township divided and so escape the debt. On September 6, 1853 the county commissioners erected a new township, Cass, out of all of Jefferson Township except a small district around Dresden. The farmers got their separate township, but the law held that the division did not release them from the bonds, and before they were finally paid, the 1882 county history says, they cost the taxpayers of the two townships about $200,000, and left no one in a hurry to take on such debt again.

Major Cass and his Merino sheep

Major Jonathan Cass, a New Englander who fought at Bunker Hill and later with Wayne's army, came to the Dresden country in 1799 and located forty warrants of 100 acres, which the county history takes as proof of his sagacity about soil. Seth Adams came the same year, and tradition credits him with bringing the first full-blooded Merino sheep into the United States and into Ohio, and with planting the first tomatoes in the region from seed received from New Orleans. Cass's son Lewis, who gave the township his surname, was governor of Michigan Territory; another son, George, lived quietly on the old farm and died in 1873 at 88; a third, Charles, won a sword from the citizens of Zanesville for gallantry at Fort Erie in the War of 1812. The inscription on Major Cass's monument at Dresden reads that he was a soldier at Bunker Hill and an officer of the army that under General Wayne gave peace to the frontier.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Muskingum County on the full map

Groundwater wells (3 wells) The water here

• Dresden96% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Frazeysburg4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Country Hills MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2017: 2 of 3 passed.

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.
• Financial Audit, 2021 to 2022, released 2026-03-31

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