Clark Township, Coshocton County

• Holmes County Amish CountryHolmes County, Ohio, is home to the world's second-largest Amish settlement, begun in 1808-1809 and estimated at 38,775 people in 332 church districts in 2026.

How Clark Township, Coshocton County began

Clark Township, in the northern part of Coshocton County on the Holmes County line, was part of Mechanic Township until it was organized in 1829 at the house of Peter Buckmaster and named for Samuel Clark, a county commissioner. Settlement began about 1815 along the Killbuck and Doughty's Fork; Eli Fox's mills at what became Helmick (1820) and William Craig's cabin at Bloomfield (1819) anchored the township, which has never had an incorporated village. Its population grew from 246 in 1830 to 1,012 in 1880. Blissfield, on the railroad, was laid out in 1890 and gives the township its ZIP code. The Helmick Covered Bridge was added to the National Register in 1975, and the township had 670 residents in 2020.

Settled c.1815-1818, incorporated 1829 (township organized), by Isaac Hoagland, probably the first permanent settler; the Craig family at Bloomfield; Eli Fox at Helmick.

Where the name comes from

Named for Samuel Clark, a county commissioner, 'among the earliest and most highly esteemed citizens of the Killbuck valley,' a resident of neighboring Bethlehem Township.

Before the town

The 1881 county history says no Indian village is known to have stood in Clark Township, but that hunting parties often camped on the Killbuck and on Doughty's Fork. A three-sided hut of split logs, with the open fourth side closed at night by a log fire to keep off animals, stood in a bend on the north side of the Killbuck in the northeast quarter of section 17. The township's streams carry Native names: the Killbuck is said to keep the name of a famous Indian chief, and Doughty's Fork that of a brave called Captain Doughty, who was also known to settlers on Will's Creek and in Virginia Township. A man the settlers called Tom Lyon camped on the Killbuck with other Native men until about 1825, when he left to go west; the settlers reported that he boasted of having taken ninety-nine scalps. The source does not name the nation of any of these people. The wider county context is Lenape (Delaware) and Wyandot.

• Split-log Indian hunting camp on the Killbuck (camp) — Bend on the north side of the Killbuck, northeast quarter of section 17, Clark Township, before about 1825, as remembered in 1881 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1800-03 — President John Adams grants the township's northeast quarter, 4,000 acres, to Jonathan Burrell of New York; Burrell sells it in 1807 to Philip Itskin of Baltimore, who sells it in parcels.
2. 1803 — Silas Bent Jr. surveys the southern half of the township as congress land; the western military section is surveyed into forty 100-acre lots by William Cutbush in 1808.
3. 1815 — Settlement begins about this year; Isaac Hoagland, who came to Coshocton in 1800 with Charles Williams and lived in the first house built there, is probably the first permanent settler, on the southwest quarter of section 16.
4. 1819 — William Craig builds a cabin where Bloomfield later grows up; his father John Craig, who settled on the first military section in 1818, serves as justice of the peace for Mechanic Township from 1819 to 1822.
5. 1820 — Eli Fox, a ship-carpenter and miller from Zanesville, builds a sawmill and then a grist-mill about a quarter mile above Helmick; his family follows in 1821, and the mill burns in 1829.
6. 1825 — Tom Lyon, a Native man who had long camped on the Killbuck, leaves the area for the west.
7. 1829 — Clark Township is organized as a civil township of Coshocton County, named for county commissioner Samuel Clark.
8. 1829 — At the first election, held at the house of Peter Buckmaster, only fifteen or twenty votes are cast; Benjamin Patterson is chosen clerk and William Craig justice of the peace.
9. 1830 — The township's population is 246.
10. 1833-06-19 — The Clark Township Regular Baptist Church is organized by T. G. Jones and E. Otis with eleven members; the Clark Presbyterian Church follows on March 22, 1834, with twelve members, and builds its first church in 1837 for about $200.
11. 1850 — The township's population is 833, after 703 in 1840.
12. 1866 — A cheese factory is started at Bloomfield by George Craig, William Renfrew, Solomon Snyder and Robert Graham.
13. 1872-01-14 — The Bloomfield Methodist Episcopal Church, built in the summer of 1871 for about $2,500, is dedicated.
14. 1880 — The township's population is 1,012 (867 in 1870); Bloomfield, on the Holmes County line, has 28 dwellings, two or three stores, two steam sawmills and three blacksmith shops, and its post office is still called Clark's.
15. 1890 — Blissfield is laid out when the railroad is extended to that point; its post office, opened in 1889, runs until 2002.
16. 1975 — Helmick Covered Bridge, within the township, is added to the National Register of Historic Places (reference 75001348, June 18).
17. 2020 — The census counts 670 people in Clark Township.

Stories

Eli Fox's mills and the Helmick post office

Eli Fox was a Connecticut-born ship-carpenter who had learned milling at Zanesville and had won the contract for the first bridge over the Scioto at Chillicothe before he went looking for a quieter place to build a mill. In 1820 he came to Clark Township with three helpers, among them the blacksmith Piatt Williamson, and raised a sawmill and a grist-mill about a quarter mile above the spot now called Helmick; he moved his family out from Zanesville the next year. The mill burned in 1829, and Fox rebuilt both mills a little farther downstream at Helmick, where Benjamin Beck ran them in 1881. The community's post office was named for William Helmick of Tuscarawas County, who then represented the district in Congress and got the office for it, and Absalom Petit was its first postmaster. The 1881 historian remarked that the mill, post office and store did a much larger business than their appearance would suggest.

A bear in the hollow oak

Deer, bears and wolves were plentiful when the first settlers reached Clark Township, and the 1881 county history preserves the story of Bill and Tom McNeal, sons of the Irish settler Archibald McNeal, who tracked a bear to a tall hollow oak stub. Bill climbed a hickory beside it, crossed over to sit astride the stub, and fired his musket down into the hollow while Tom waited below with the other gun. The shot hit, but only angered the bear, which came up the tree after him; Bill barely had time to drop the gun and swing himself away onto a hickory branch. The bear came down and ran, and Tom wounded it as it fled. The two followed it for about a mile and found it behind a log, packing its wounds with hair, and this time both fired together and killed it.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Coshocton County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Coshocton72% of residentsSand & gravel aquifer near Walhonding River/Mill Creek valley (wells)
• Killbuck Village15% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Warsaw13% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Bomac Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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