Conesville

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How Conesville began

Conesville sits on the Muskingum River in western Franklin Township. A settlement here was first attempted before 1840 by a man named Delaney, who planned a town called Delaneysville that never incorporated; the place instead took shape and its lasting name from Beebe Stewart Cone, who with three partners built a large distillery on the river's west bank in 1847. For over sixty years, from 1957 until 2020, the village's economy and identity were dominated by the coal-fired Conesville Power Plant just outside town; the plant was demolished in 2021 and its population, 328 at the 2020 census, has been declining for decades.

Platted 1847, by Beebe Stewart Cone and three partners.

Where the name comes from

Most likely named for Beebe Stewart Cone, who in 1847 built a distillery here with three other men; an earlier, failed attempt to found a town on the same ground before 1840, by a man named Delaney, would have been called Delaneysville.

Before the town

No Native village or site at Conesville itself is recorded in the sources checked. The 1881 county history reports that about 1835, when the road between the Robinson and Miller sections was cut east of the Muskingum in Franklin Township, a mound about twenty-five feet across and five feet high lay in the road and was leveled; it held the remains of five or six skeletons laid out like the spokes of a circle with the heads at the center, and a small mound still stood west of the river. These are township notes, not placed at the village. The village lies on the Muskingum a few miles below the forks at Coshocton, the historic Lenape (Delaware) center of the region.

Timeline

1. 1840 — Before this year, a man named Delaney buys land on the site intending to found a town called Delaneysville; it never incorporates.
2. 1847 — Beebe Stewart Cone and three partners build a large distillery on the west side of the Muskingum River, with worker housing and small businesses growing up nearby.
3. 1857 — The distillery burns; Cone leaves for Iowa. James Beebe rebuilds it, but the rebuilt distillery also later burns down.
4. 1864 — The Bethel Methodist Episcopal church west of the Muskingum is organized at the Conesville schoolhouse by the ministers of the Dresden and Roscoe circuits.
5. 1880 — The 1881 county history calls Conesville 'merely a railroad station, with a country store attached'; the sixteen or eighteen houses and the cooper shop that had grown up around Cone's distillery have all been removed.
6. 1885 — David Davis, a former miner, buys out his partners and builds the Davis coal mine near Conesville, selling to the Pennsylvania Lines.
7. 1887 — G. W. Cassingham opens a mine on the McCleary and Vance land in Franklin Township, shipping over the Wheeling and Lake Erie to Canton and Cleveland.
8. 1894 — The Oden Valley Coal Company opens mines northwest of Conesville, connecting with the Panhandle railroad over part of the Davis track.
9. 1909 — Where David Davis began mining there were not more than three houses; Conesville is now a village of about four hundred whose wage-earners are mine workers.
10. 1950 — The census counts 466 residents, the highest figure on record.
11. 1957 — The Conesville Power Plant begins operations just east of the village.
12. 2020 — The Conesville Power Plant ceases generation in April.
13. 2020 — Conesville has 328 residents.
14. 2021 — The former power plant is demolished.

Stories

A distillery, two fires, and a name

Before 1840 a man named Delaney tried to found a town on the west bank of the Muskingum here and meant to call it Delaneysville, but the plan never took hold as an incorporated place. It was Beebe Stewart Cone who actually built something lasting: in 1847 he and three partners put up a sizable distillery, and workers' houses and a handful of small businesses grew up around it. The distillery burned in 1857, and Cone left for Iowa. James Beebe rebuilt it, but that building burned too, a few years later, ending the village's distilling era for good -- though Cone's name stayed on the map.

Sixty-three years under the power plant's shadow

The Conesville Power Plant, a coal-fired station with a nameplate capacity of over 2,000 megawatts, started generating in 1957 just outside the village and became the backbone of Conesville's economy for more than six decades. When American Electric Power shut the plant down in April 2020 and it was torn down the following year, Conesville, Franklin Township, and the River View Local Schools all lost a major share of their tax base, forcing staff cuts and a reconfiguration of the school district -- a story repeated in coal communities across the country as plants like it closed.

From three houses to four hundred

When David Davis, who had worked as a miner with a pick, bought out his partners in 1885 and opened a mine of his own near Conesville, he told his wife that the hills were full of coal and that some day he would own them. By 1909 the hamlet around his workings, which had held not more than three houses, had become a village of about four hundred, nearly all mine workers. The Davis mine sold to the Pennsylvania Lines; the Oden Valley company opened mines to the northwest in 1894 and used part of the Davis track to reach the Panhandle railroad; the Arnold and Burt companies opened mines along the Wheeling and Lake Erie to the southeast, later owned by the Barnes Coal Company. A large sum was paid out monthly in wages. The earlier Conesville, the distillery village of the 1850s, had vanished by 1881, so the mining town was in effect a second founding.

Photographs

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

No water-system data is linked to Conesville's ZIP codes yet.

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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-08

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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