College Township, Knox County

How College Township, Knox County began

College Township was set off by Knox County on December 7, 1838, with its first election on December 21, 1838, as a township of the people who lived on the lands of Kenyon College, and is the only College Township in Ohio. Bishop Philander Chase chose the hill above the Kokosing (Owl Creek) on July 22, 1825 and bought 8,000 acres from William Hogg of Brownsville, Pennsylvania; squatters had farmed the valley bottoms since 1812. Chase kept the settlers as tenants at will, would not allow a town, and objected to public roads, so the village of Gambier was laid out only about 1845. The township covers 6.4 square miles and had 2,553 residents in 2020.

Settled 1812 (squatters on the valley lands); 1825-1827 (Kenyon College), platted about 1845 (Gambier), incorporated December 7, 1838 (township created by the Knox County commissioners), by Bishop Philander Chase and the trustees of Kenyon College.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Kenyon College, which owned the land. The 1881 county history says the college held the territory more than ten years before it was organized as a separate township, because the people living on the college grounds petitioned the legislature to be set off, finding it inconvenient to vote at a point some miles away on the Mount Vernon and Martinsburg road. It is the only township of this name in Ohio.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or encounter is recorded for the township's own ground in the sources checked. The 1881 county history, quoting Kenyon president Bodine, says the Kokosing River was named by 'the old Indians'; the college's founder, Bishop Chase, called the same stream, which the settlers also knew as Owl Creek, the Vernon River in his maps. The 1881 history says the valley bottoms were cleared by squatters from about 1812, with the unhealthy lowlands mostly avoided, and that blazed paths and trails led through the forest to a distillery near a spring northeast of today's Milnor Hall. The township lies south of the Greenville treaty line of 1795. For Delaware (Lenape), Wyandot and Mohican use of Owl Creek, and for Gambier.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Kokosing River (Owl Creek) (other) — flows along the base of Gambier hill in College Township, place name of Native origin; date not given (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1812 — Squatters begin to clear and farm the rich valley bottoms of the future township; they own no land, are without education, and live mostly by hunting.
2. 1825 — On July 22 Bishop Philander Chase, riding from Mount Vernon with Henry B. Curtis and others, stands on a fallen tree on the hill above the river and says, 'Well, this will do,' fixing the site of Kenyon College; the Acland printing press, a gift from English Protestants, arrives the same year.
3. 1826 — Chase contracts to buy William Hogg's 8,000 acres at $3 an acre; Hogg rebates $6,000 in view of the college's objects.
4. 1827 — On June 9 the corner-stone of Kenyon College is laid.
5. 1828 — Kenyon College relocates from Worthington to the Gambier site within what becomes College Township.
6. 1828 — Warner Terry builds a log building meant as a blacksmith shop; after he and the bishop fall out over the lot title, it becomes the college store until 1834.
7. 1829 — In November, at Chase's instruction, N. W. Putnam gets four roads laid out from Gambier's well by the county commissioners; Chase, who wanted a board fence around the hill, is angry when he returns in May.
8. 1830 — The Acland press prints the first Episcopal newspaper west of the Alleghenies, which continues as the Standard of the Cross in Cleveland.
9. 1833 — Messrs. M. and G. B. White of New York take a one-year contract for the store, paying Chase $100 rent and half the profits; the first clerk had been Robert Burnside.
10. 1838 — On December 7 the Knox County commissioners split off the northeast quarter of an existing township, named College for Kenyon, on the petition of settlers; the first election is held on December 21 at Mordecai W. Vore's public house in Gambier.
11. 1845 — The village of Gambier is laid out about this year, but little is built until 1851, when the college grounds are divided into farms and the town into lots and sold.
12. 1849 — The Theological Seminary of the diocese surveys the lands around Gambier for sale in 1849-50; the Methodists then buy a lot and in 1855 dedicate a church free of debt.
13. 1881 — Peter Neff is developing oil-producing lands in the Kokosing valley; the county history calls Gambier a place of grass lawns, native forest trees and 'a more lovely spot' than any in the state, where saloons are not allowed on the college grounds.
14. 2020 — The census counts 2,553 residents over 6.4 square miles.

Stories

'Well, this will do': a ride from Mount Vernon, July 22, 1825

On a bright summer morning, July 22, 1825, Bishop Philander Chase of Ohio set out on horseback from Mount Vernon with Henry B. Curtis, Daniel S. Norton, John Trimble, James Rawden and George Melick to find a site for a theological seminary and college. They rode east to the 8,000 acres William Hogg of Brownsville, Pennsylvania, owned in two military sections, along Schenck's Creek and Owl Creek, looking at hills, until Curtis led the bishop up the last one alone, through oak brush and grape vines on horseback and then on foot. At the top, where wind had flattened the timber, the plain was wider than anyone had supposed. Standing on the trunk of a fallen oak and looking over the valleys, Chase said, 'Well, this will do!' He contracted that winter for the whole tract at $3 an acre; Hogg returned $6,000 of the price, and the corner-stone was laid on June 9, 1827. Chase afterward called Owl Creek the Vernon River on his maps, but it remains the Kokosing.

The bishop who did not want roads

Bishop Chase held the college lands as a kind of private domain. He allowed no town and no farms, and he treated everyone on his lands as a tenant at will who could be sent away at any moment; he even gave the right to sell goods only on terms that took half the profits. In November 1829, leaving to raise money in the East, he told N. W. Putnam to petition the county commissioners for four roads running from the village well. When he returned in May and found them built, he called Putnam in with an angry lowering look and denied giving the order; he had meant, he said, to put a high board fence around the hill and a keeper's lodge at its foot. Chase then had a signboard painted 'West end of Wiggin street' and nailed to a post by the creek, and a waggish neighbor threw it in the river. Such rules, the county historian wrote, retarded the development of the college lands: Gambier was laid out only about 1845, and the college lots and farms were not sold until 1851.

The Wild Men of Borneo from Owl Creek

Around 1851 a poor man named Porter moved from Tiverton Township in Coshocton County to a log hut on the Owl Creek bottoms near Lewis White's house, in or beside College Township. His wife, previously married to a Mr. Davis, was the mother of twin dwarf brothers who did not speak. A showman named Warner, hearing of them, made a deal with the Porters and for several years exhibited them as 'Plutano and Vespasinus, the wild men of the Island of Borneo.' The 1881 county history says that when Porter refused to give the boys back after a visit home, a Mount Vernon court decided for Warner on the strength of his contract, that the boys' share of the earnings went to A. G. Scott of Gambier to pay for 30 acres bought for them, and that after Warner's death in Illinois in 1871 nothing more was heard of them and they were supposed dead. Wikipedia's account of the Wild Men of Borneo says otherwise: they were brothers Hiram and Barney Davis, who lived on a farm in Pleasant Township, were discovered by Doctor Warner in 1852, toured for decades (with P. T. Barnum by 1882), and died in 1905 and 1912 in Waltham, Massachusetts; both are buried together in Mount Vernon under a stone marked 'Little Men.' The 1881 history's demeaning descriptions of them are not repeated here.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · knoxhistory.org · en.wikipedia.org · knoxpages.com · archive.org

Every historic place in Knox County on the full map

Wells drawing groundwater from the buried-valley aquifer along the Kokosing River near Mount Vernon The water here

• Gambier Village100% of residentsBuried Valley Aquifer (Kokosing River valley wells)
• Martinsburg Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 2 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 2 of 2.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

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