Dover Township, Athens County

How Dover Township, Athens County began

Dover Township, in northwestern Athens County, was settled as early as 1799 as part of Ames Township and separately organized in 1811; as first organized it also included the territory that became Trimble and York townships in Athens County and Ward, Green and Starr townships in Hocking County. Daniel Weethee and Josiah True, two unmarried young men who walked in from Marietta by compass in the spring of 1799 and shared a cabin for three years, were among its first settlers. The township's salt springs and coal seams built its economy: Chauncey, laid out in 1839 and named for Philadelphia capitalist Elihu Chauncey, and neighboring Salina grew up around salt furnaces before switching to deep coal mining, while Millfield, in the north end, gave its name to the Millfield Mine disaster of 1930, the worst mining accident in Ohio history. Much of the township now lies within the Wayne National Forest, and it is served in part by the Burr Oak Regional Water District, founded in 1959.

Settled 1799, incorporated 1811-04-04 (separately organized from Ames Township), by Athens County commissioners' order of April 4, 1811; first settlers included Daniel Weethee and Josiah True, who arrived in spring 1799.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted documents why the township took the name Dover.

Before the town

No village, trail or treaty line specific to Dover Township itself was found, but the township shares in the county's clearest documented archaeological site: the 1869 county history describes a group of Indian mounds and an ancient earthwork of more than an acre, with bastions and ramparts still visible to early surveyors, on the level plateau known as 'the Plains' straddling Athens and Dover townships — almost certainly the work of the Adena or Hopewell mound-building cultures (roughly 800 BC to AD 500). The Hocking River and Sunday Creek, both of which water the township, were part of the broader Hocking Valley country the Shawnee are recorded as using for hunting before the 1795 Treaty of Greenville ceded the region.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Adena culture, Hopewell culture.

• Mounds and ancient earthwork on "the Plains" (earthwork) — on the plateau known as "the Plains," straddling Athens and Dover townships, prehistoric, likely Adena or Hopewell (Woodland era); described in the 1869 county history as an enclosure of more than an acre with visible bastions and ramparts, undated by modern survey (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1799 — Dover is settled as part of Ames Township; main settlements cluster on Sunday Creek and near the Hockhocking River, with the deep forest away from the water going unsettled for years.
2. 1800 — The Sweat family settles near the future site of Millfield; in 1802 John Sweat builds a rude corn mill there, used even by settlers from Athens until the Gregory mill is built about four years later.
3. 1811-04-04 — The county commissioners order the western part of Ames Township erected into a separate township named Dover, to meet at the house of Othniel Tuttle to elect officers.
4. 1814 — Abraham Pugsley, an early settler, drowns crossing a creek on the ice during the winter of the 'cold plague,' while going to visit a sick family.
5. 1816-01 — Shareholders of the Coonskin Library, the pioneer subscription library centered in Ames, resolve to give Dover Township its own director to manage the books its residents are entitled to draw.
6. 1820 — The Nye family and others bore a salt well on the site later owned by Jeremiah Morris but abandon it; ten or twelve years later John Pugsley resumes the work and strikes good salt water, the first successful salt well in the Hocking Valley.
7. 1830-12-21 — The Ohio legislature incorporates the Dover Library Association, successor to the Coonskin Library shares held in the township, with Daniel Weethee, Alanson Hibbard, Azariah Pratt, Josiah True, John B. Johnson, William Hyde and John Pugsley as its original incorporators.
8. 1831 (about) — Resolved Fuller bores a salt well on his farm — the future site of Chauncey — and manufactures salt on a small scale; he sells the works and about 400 acres in 1833 to Calvary Morris and Norman Root of Athens.
9. 1838 — A post office called Chauncey begins operating.
10. 1839 — Chauncey is laid out and named for Elihu Chauncey, a Philadelphia capitalist who, with Nicholas Biddle, Ewing and Vinton, bought Resolved Fuller's farm for $12,500 the year before; the partners invest in surrounding land, bore more salt wells and build a hotel, but the town never grows as large as they hoped.
11. 1861 — 'Weethee college' opens at Mt. Auburn in the northern part of the township, founded and financed by the Rev. J. P. Weethee, son of pioneer settler Daniel Weethee.
12. 1827 — A post office is established at Millfield, in the township's north end, which grows around a gristmill and later coal mining.
13. 1930 — The Millfield Mine disaster occurs at Millfield — the worst mine disaster in Ohio history.
14. 1932 — Striking coal miners at Chauncey oppose wage cuts imposed by the New York Coal Company and sabotage track near Mine No. 25; the Ohio National Guard is deployed and one miner is killed in what becomes known locally as the 'Chauncey War.'
15. 1959 — The Burr Oak Regional Water District is founded; it comes to supply water directly and, wholesale, to 17 satellite systems including villages, rural systems and Burr Oak State Park.

Stories

Two young men and a compass

Daniel Weethee, a cooper's apprentice from New Hampshire, walked alone to the northwestern territory at age nineteen, reaching Marietta in the middle of December 1798. The next spring he and another young unmarried man, Josiah True, struck out for Dover through the trackless woods, navigating by compass. They built a joint cabin and lived there together for about three years with, as one account put it, no companions but the forest trees and no neighbors but the wild game. True eventually earned enough selling furs and skins to buy his own land; Weethee married in 1802, True the year after. True went on to serve as Dover's justice of the peace from 1815 to 1851, helped found the Coonskin Library, bought Dover's first spinning wheel by carrying bear and deer skins forty miles on his back to Zanesville and walking the eighty-mile round trip in two days, and planted the county's first fruit-tree nursery from apple seed bought at Marietta — stock from which most of the old orchards along Sunday and Monday creeks were grown.

The bear that came from behind

Josiah True and his brother-in-law Cyrus Tuttle once drove a bear into a cave on the farm later owned by Austin True. They shot the animal in a narrow passage, tied a hickory withe to its nose, and were dragging it toward the open air — True having gone in behind the dead bear to help push — when a second bear, until then unnoticed, came rushing out of the cave's rear, ran directly over True's back, knocked him face-down with great force, and escaped into the woods.

Salt, coal and the town that never quite grew

Chauncey's story is one of outside capital chasing local salt. About 1831 Resolved Fuller bored a well on his farm near where Sunday Creek meets the Hocking and began making salt in a small way. In 1833 he sold the works and 400 acres to two Athens businessmen, who built a bigger furnace; in 1837 they sold out for $6,500 to Ewing and Vinton, who in turn partnered the next year with Philadelphia capitalists Elihu Chauncey and Nicholas Biddle to buy the whole farm for $12,500 and lay out a town in 1839. The investors bored more wells, built a hotel and houses, and expected a boomtown; by 1869 the county historian could only report that Chauncey had never prospered greatly, with a population of about 150. The salt trade eventually gave way to deep coal mining along Sunday Creek, which did bring the growth the founders had hoped for — and, in 1932, a violent strike against wage cuts, remembered locally as the Chauncey War, in which the National Guard was called in and a miner was killed.

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

Every historic place in Athens County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Athens Co., the Plains S.d. 147% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)
• Burr Oak Regional Water District25% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Athens16% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water6% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Nelsonville4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Glouster Public Water System1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Chauncey1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Le-ax Regional Water District0% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (horizontal collector wells)
• Carbon Hill Water Association0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Trimble Village0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-irish Ridge0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 4 of 4 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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-11-18

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