Fairfield Township, Tuscarawas County

How Fairfield Township, Tuscarawas County began

Fairfield Township, in south-central Tuscarawas County, was formed on June 2, 1817 from Township 9, Range 1 and first settled before 1807 by Gideon Jennings, Aaron Reeves and Abel Williams in the Tuscarawas valley. Coal, iron ore and black-band ore underlie its hills, and a charcoal furnace in the northwest later worked by the Zoar Separatists supplied the early market. Its villages were small: Fairfield (platted 1854, later Zoar Station), the failed Savana (1834), the lost Mount Tabor, and Valley City, laid out by the Zoar society in 1882 and later called Zoarville. The 2020 census counted 1,509 residents.

Settled before 1807 (Gideon Jennings, Aaron Reeves, Abel Williams), platted 1882 (Zoarville, platted as Valley City), incorporated June 2, 1817 (formed by the county commissioners), by county commissioners; first pioneers Gideon Jennings, Aaron Reeves and Abel Williams.

Where the name comes from

The county history gives no account of why the township was called Fairfield; it says only that it was formed by the commissioners on June 2, 1817. Within it, the post office called Zoar Station from 1861 was renamed Zoarville in 1914, and the hamlet platted in 1882 as Valley City is now called Zoarville.

Before the town

The 1884 county history says that when Gideon Jennings built his cabin near the mouth of One Leg Creek, Indians still roved in large bands through the country and his house stood on a trail from the lakes to the Ohio used by hunting parties; it describes friendly but troublesome visits, and a false alarm during the War of 1812 when a hunter was mistaken for an Indian. No mound, village or earthwork in the township is recorded. The land lies in the Treaty of Greenville (1795) cession.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Trail from the lakes to the Ohio at One Leg Creek (trail) — mouth of One Leg Creek, northwest part of the township, c. 1800-1810 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1807 — Gideon Jennings, Aaron Reeves and Abel Williams, the township's three earliest pioneers, have all settled in the Tuscarawas valley by this date; Jennings builds a cabin near the mouth of One Leg Creek on a trail from the lakes to the Ohio.
2. 1809 — The Methodist circuit rider J. B. Finley holds the first religious service in the township at the cabin of the trapper Aaron Reeves, beginning a class that grew into a society still meeting in 1884.
3. 1817 — The county commissioners form Fairfield Township on June 2 from Township 9, Range 1; citizens are told to meet at George Kollar's house on June 17 to elect officers.
4. 1834 — Savana, a 39-lot town west of the river near the Ohio Canal, is platted on June 12 for Edward Ogden, David McConnell and Israel S. Lappin; it comes to nothing.
5. 1837 — St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church is built in the northwest corner of Section 19, on a lot given by Silas Williams; it is enlarged in 1872 or 1873 at a cost of $1,300.
6. 1854 — Samuel and Worthington Slutts lay out the village of Fairfield, 30 lots on Broadway, Fair and Conotton streets, on the Tuscarawas branch of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad; it never grows beyond a few houses and a store.
7. 1861 — A post office named Zoar Station opens serving the Conotton Creek hamlet within the township.
8. 1868 — The Zoarville Bridge, a Fink through-truss span, is built across Conotton Creek near the hamlet.
9. 1870 — The Mount Zion and Tuscarawas Valley German Baptist (Dunkard) church is built, at a cost of about $4,000.
10. 1882 — In October the Separatists of Zoar lay off the town of Valley City, 28 lots, on the Fairfield-Sandy township line near the junction of the railroads.
11. 1997 — The Zoarville Bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 13.

Stories

Zoarville is not Zoar

Fairfield Township's Conotton Creek hamlet of Zoarville is a separate place from the better-known communal village of Zoar; the two are administratively distinct: Zoar itself, founded in 1817 by German Separatist Pietists and a National Historic Landmark District since 2016, lies to the northwest in Lawrence Township, while Zoarville is a small, separately platted rail hamlet inside Fairfield Township. Zoarville began as a post office called Zoar Station in 1861, was platted under the unrelated name Valley City in 1882, and only took the name Zoarville when its post office was renamed in 1914. Its most notable structure is the Zoarville Bridge, an 1868 iron span across Conotton Creek east of the State Routes 212/800 junction — photographed by the National Park Service's Historic American Engineering Record and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

The trapper and the circuit rider

Aaron Reeves was a hunter and trapper who settled at the mouth of One Leg Creek and whom his neighbors regarded with some dread. Methodist preacher J. B. Finley, riding a long circuit in 1809, stopped at his cabin for a meal and, in his own account, challenged him to a shooting match; Finley won two of three rounds and was given leave to return in four weeks to preach. The neighbors gathered, and on later visits Reeves and his family were converted and he became the leader of a class that met in his cabin. A log church was later built in the One Leg bottoms, on ground so low that freshets sometimes entered the windows, and a frame church on the hill later replaced it. Reeves himself had once chased angry Indian visitors out of his cabin with a chair post when they suspected him of shooting a favorite dog.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Tuscarawas County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• New Philadelphia City47% of residentsTuscarawas River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Dover City46% of residentsSugar Creek Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (Dover wellfield)
• Bolivar Village5% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Midvale1% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Tcmsd-wainwright0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tuscarawas Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-05-28

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