Clarksburg

How Clarksburg began

Clarksburg is a small village in northern Deerfield Township in northwestern Ross County. Settlement began around 1800 when Scottish immigrant John Clark's family took up land in what became Deerfield Township; his son, Col. William Clark, laid out the village on his own farm in 1816 and gave it the family name. It grew as a farm-trade stop and peaked in population in 1910 before a long twentieth-century decline that continues today.

Settled c.1800, platted 1816, by Col. William Clark, on his own farm.

Where the name comes from

The village is named for the Clark family: John Clark, a Scottish immigrant, settled in what became Deerfield Township about 1800, and his son, Col. William Clark, laid out Clarksburg on his own farm in 1816. A widely repeated modern account instead credits a 'George Clark' platting the village in 1817; a 1917 Ross County biographical history, drawing on family and county records, instead names William Clark and the year 1816 and is treated here as the better-supported account, though the discrepancy is not resolved.

Before the town

No mound, village or trail specific to Clarksburg was found in the sources checked. The village lies in Deerfield Township, which contains the Austin Brown Mound.

Timeline

1. c.1800 — John Clark, an immigrant from Scotland who had first settled in Pennsylvania, brings his family to what becomes Deerfield Township and begins clearing a farm.
2. 1812-1815 — William Clark, John Clark's oldest son, serves as colonel of the Second Regiment, Sixteenth Division, Ohio Militia during the War of 1812, equipping his regiment largely at his own expense.
3. 1816 — Col. William Clark lays out the Village of Clarksburg on his own farm, having returned to farming and to running a tannery he had established there.
4. 1817 — Milton Lee Clark, William Clark's son, is born in Clarksburg on April 21.
5. 1824 — Col. William Clark dies on August 10, having served for years as a justice of the peace.
6. 1893 — Clarksburg/Deerfield Township High School opens; it operates until 1965.
7. 1910 — The village's population peaks at 558, its highest recorded figure.
8. 2020 — The census counts 409 residents, down 10.1 percent from 2010.

Stories

The colonel who founded the town

William Clark grew up helping his Scottish immigrant father, John Clark, clear a farm out of the Deerfield Township wilderness after the family arrived around 1800. As a young man he settled on the farm next to his father's, ran a tannery there, and when the War of 1812 came he was commissioned colonel of the Second Regiment, Sixteenth Division of the Ohio Militia, equipping his own regiment at his own expense and never being reimbursed by the government. Back home after the war, he resumed farming and tanning, and in 1816 he laid out the Village of Clarksburg on his own land, giving it his family's name. He served many years as a justice of the peace and died in 1824, at 47, a loss the 1917 county history called one felt by the whole community.

A century of slow decline

Clarksburg's population tells a story common to small Ohio villages: it rose steadily through the nineteenth century, from 308 residents in 1880 to 551 by 1900, and peaked at 558 in 1910. Since then the trend has run the other way, with the 2020 census counting 409 people, a 10.1 percent drop from just a decade before. The village's own high school, Clarksburg/Deerfield Township High, closed in 1965 after seventy-two years, part of the same mid-century wave of school consolidation that thinned out small-town institutions across rural Ohio. Zurmehly Park and the state highway running through town are what remain of the village's public life today.

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

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Clarksburg Village59% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc41% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2020 to 2021, released 2024-12-03

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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