Flushing Township, Belmont County

How Flushing Township, Belmont County began

Flushing Township was erected from parts of Kirkwood and Union townships and organized March 14, 1817, taking its name from Flushing village, the principal settlement within its new borders. It was originally settled chiefly by Quakers; Elisha Ellis and Levi Hollingsworth, among the earliest arrivals, reached the township in 1804, when the future town site was still a thicket of underbrush and wild grapevines. By 1879 the township held seven churches, twelve schools, two steam flouring mills, and one woolen factory. Two villages, Flushing in the township's east and Holloway in its north, sit within its borders; both are documented under their own entries in this atlas, including Flushing's Quaker-raised, nationally notable natives Rachel Lloyd and Reverdy C. Ransom.

Settled 1804 (Elisha Ellis, Levi Hollingsworth), incorporated March 14, 1817, by Belmont County commissioners, from parts of Kirkwood and Union townships.

Where the name comes from

The township took its name from Flushing, the principal village in the new township (so both county histories say); no source states why the village itself was named Flushing.

Before the town

No Native village, camp, or trail specific to Flushing Township was found in the sources consulted.

Timeline

1. 1804 — Elisha Ellis ('Big Elisha') crosses the Ohio at Wheeling and settles on section 33; Levi Hollingsworth also arrives this year and occupies a 12x14-foot shanty with a puncheon floor and greased-paper windows. The future town site of Flushing is still an unbroken thicket of underbrush and wild grapevine.
2. 1809 — Reese Branson, a silversmith from St. Clairsville, builds the first house on the future site of Flushing village, then sells it to a man named Douglass and returns to St. Clairsville; the house was still standing in 1879.
3. 1813-11-09 — Jesse Foulke lays out the village of Flushing on the northwest quarter of section 20 and names it; he also teaches its first school and keeps its first store.
4. 1817 — Flushing Township is organized on March 14 from parts of Kirkwood and Union townships; the first township election is held in the village of Flushing the following month, electing Henry Long, James Crazier, and James Judkins as the first justices of the peace.
5. 1818 — Michael Ellis preaches the first Methodist sermon in Flushing at the house of Jesse Brandenburg, and the first Methodist church is built there in 1821.
6. 1818-10-23 — The Friends (Quaker) monthly meeting at Flushing is established after years of meetings for worship; its minister Jacob Branson, who came from Virginia in 1805, serves until his death in 1845.
7. 1830 — The township's population, including Flushing village, is recorded as 1,871 (825 males and 848 females) in the state census.
8. 1832-08-04 — The Rev. Salmon Cowles preaches the first sermon of the Stillwater Presbyterian congregation and organizes it with nineteen members; it later split over slavery and reunited after the Civil War.
9. 1832 — Township trustees move the polling place from Flushing village to Rock Hill.
10. 1835 — A Methodist church is built at Belmont Ridge, where preaching had been held at George Winrod's house since he settled on section 14 in 1811; the 1880 county history dates the church 1835 and the 1903 history 1841.
11. 1835-11-22 — The Stillwater Baptist church at Rock Hill is dedicated, with the Rev. R. H. Sedgwick as first pastor; it builds a larger frame church about 1850 and by 1902 has received more than 500 people by baptism.
12. 1836 — The Flushing Methodist congregation's original log church is replaced with a 45x50-foot brick edifice, built by Theodore Bailey and James Young.
13. about 1842 — A three-week Methodist revival at Flushing under Israel Archibald brings in more than one hundred members and makes the Methodists the leading society, displacing the Friends (Quakers) who had been most numerous.
14. 1849-02-23 — Flushing village is incorporated, with a population then of 312.
15. 1857-08-19 — Flushing Lodge No. 298, Free and Accepted Masons, is organized.
16. 1870 — The federal census records the township's population, outside the village, at 1,484 (1,352 white, 132 colored), and the village of Flushing at 206 (195 white, 11 colored).
17. 1876 — David Conrow of Flushing Township begins urging the Belmont County commissioners to provide a public home for destitute children, the effort that led to the county Children's Home.
18. 1877 — In April, the township is divided into two voting precincts, with polling places established at Flushing and at Belmont Ridge.
19. 1884 — The First National Bank of Flushing is organized with Jacob Holloway as president; it fails in 1898 and pays its debts in full with interest, and the Dollar Savings Bank opens July 3, 1899.
20. 1891-10 — The Flushing Hospital opens for the care of chronic surgical diseases of women and soon takes all kinds of surgery, with fifteen beds by 1902.
21. 1900 — The township census is 2,141, a gain of 451 over 1890, much of it miners arriving to work the coal opened up by the Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railway; Flushing village counts 653 (528 in 1890).

Stories

A panther in the swing

Among the reminiscences of Flushing Township's early settlers preserved in the 1880 county history is an account of a family whose parents had stepped away from their cabin, leaving the children at play. The youngsters went out to swing on a rope hung from a bent oak, looked up, and saw a large animal resembling a dog staring down at them from the tree. They fled inside and barred the door; the panther, for that is what it was, sprang to the ground, drove some dogs under the house, and killed a deer within sight of the cabin. When the parents returned at dusk and called their cow, the panther itself answered the call; it was shot the following day. Early settlers also recalled a boy, David Conrow, who once rose at midnight, shelled a grist of corn, loaded it onto the back of an ox, led the ox to the mill himself, ground the grain, and returned home before his family woke, one small illustration of the self-reliance pioneer life demanded of even its youngest members.

Eight plows and a red "wummus"

George Brokaw, born in Pennsylvania in 1784, came to Shortcreek in what is now Harrison County in 1800 and moved to a wooded farm in Flushing Township in the summer of 1813, after serving under Generals Wadsworth and Harrison at Sandusky in the War of 1812. In 1879, at ninety-five, he was still telling how he had once been put on guard over a wagon of the general's corn and told the hungry soldiers to take all they wanted. He raised seven sons and four daughters, and the family became a sight in the township: Brokaw would blow his horn, his seven sons would hitch their teams, and eight plows, the father leading, would work one field, each driver wearing a red "wummus" jacket. They split rails the same way, seven mauls rising together, and the sons laid up the fence. He bought adjoining land so that his children's farms lay side by side. A Democrat, by the 1880 history's account Brokaw cast the only Democratic ballot in Flushing Township for six consecutive years.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Flushing Village94% of residentsOhio River valley aquifer (wells)
• Holloway Public Water System5% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• HCWSD-piedmont1% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Shale and injection wells (9)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2018: 1 of 2 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-04-22

Cite this page