Frankfort

How Frankfort began

Frankfort is a village in Concord Township in northwestern Ross County, on the North Fork of Paint Creek. It was laid out in 1816 under the name Oldtown - a name that itself points to an earlier settlement on the site - and took the name Frankfort when its post office was renamed in 1834; the village incorporated in 1827. A local historical marker records that the site had been a Shawnee village as late as 1774, which is consistent with the 'Oldtown' name European settlers gave the place they found already cleared.

Platted 1816, incorporated 1827.

Where the name comes from

The village was first laid out and known as Oldtown in 1816; its post office, opened in 1817 under the Oldtown name, was renamed Frankfort in 1834, and the village took that name with it. The reason 'Frankfort' was chosen is not recorded.

Before the town

A historical marker at Frankfort records the site as a Shawnee village as of 1774. The 1871 Pioneer Record of Ross County says that Concord Township was 'classic ground,' where for ages the different Northwestern tribes met each year in council at Old Chillicothe, and that 'Old Town, their ancient metropolis' is now called Frankfort; that in 1774 the allied tribes collected there, marched out to the battle of Point Pleasant and, after their defeat, returned to Old Chillicothe to make a second stand until Lord Dunmore halted the pursuing Colonel Lewis. The same book says the Indians had a camp at Old Chillicothe (now Frankfort) when Buckskin Creek was settled, and names Paint Creek as derived from a Delaware chief. The identification of Old Chillicothe with Frankfort rests on the marker and on the 1871 Pioneer Record of Ross County. The same book reports a large Indian graveyard near Old Town, small mounds from which workmen digging gravel for the pikes took many skeletons, and mounds on the Goldsberg and Briggs farms from which skeletons, war implements, beads and arrows came.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Oldtown (Frankfort) (village) — site of present-day Frankfort, on the North Fork of Paint Creek, Concord Township, recorded as of 1774 (hmdb.org)
• Indian graveyard near Old Town (burial) — near Old Town (Frankfort), Concord Township; skeletons dug from small mounds by workmen taking gravel for the pikes, prehistoric or historic; date not recorded (archive.org)
• Mounds on the Goldsberg and Briggs farms (mound) — two large mounds on Captain Goldsberg farm and several on the Jacob Briggs farm, one near Old Town; skeletons, war implements, beads and arrows were exhumed, date not recorded (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1774 — A Shawnee village occupies the site later platted as Oldtown/Frankfort, per a local historical marker.
2. 1774 — The 1871 Pioneer Record of Ross County says the allied Northwestern tribes gathered at Old Town (Old Chillicothe, now Frankfort) before marching to fight at Point Pleasant, and retired there to prepare a second stand until Lord Dunmore met their chiefs near Camp Charlotte; it calls the township 'classic ground' where the tribes had long held their yearly councils.
3. 1796 — Thomas Somerset, a Revolutionary War veteran, emigrates from Kentucky to the Scioto Valley; he dies at Frankfort in 1834.
4. 1800 — Felix Wells, who came from Kentucky to the Scioto Valley with his father's family, settles in the neighborhood and is later justice of the peace for fifteen years.
5. 1802 — A Baptist society of twelve persons is organized in Nathan Cory's house; its log meeting-house, a quarter mile east of Frankfort in what became the Baptist Graveyard, serves for seventeen years.
6. 1803 — Concord Township, the largest in the county, is organized on May 10; Old Town was the Indian meeting place where, per tradition, Daniel Boone escaped from his captors in 1773, and the first settlers included M. Wiley, J. Southerland, R. Stewart, F. Wells, J. McNeill, P. Putnam and Frederick Berley.
7. 1816 — John McNeill lays out the town under the name Oldtown, on the North Fork of Paint Creek.
8. 1817 — A post office opens under the name Old Town.
9. 1819 — The Baptists build a church at the southeast corner of High and Second streets in Frankfort, which is their home until they move to Roxabell in 1864.
10. 1827 — The village incorporates.
11. 1834 — The post office, and with it the village, is renamed Frankfort.
12. 1850 — The census counts 553 residents, up to 717 by 1900.
13. 1960 — The census counts 871 residents; the village reaches 1,008 in 1980.
14. 2020 — The census counts 1,084 residents.

Stories

A town before the town

John McNeill laid out the town in 1816 under the name Oldtown; the historical marker in the village reads 'Shawnee Indian Village 1774' and 'Old town founded by John McNeill 1816.' The Ross County township history calls Old Town the former meeting place of the northwestern tribes and says they collected there in 1774 to prepare for the battle of Point Pleasant, and that Daniel Boone escaped from the Indians near Old Town in 1773. A post office called Old Town opened in 1817, and in 1834 the name was changed to Frankfort. Frankfort was incorporated as a village in 1827.

A Baptist society in a farmhouse

Elder Nathan Cory, who had helped raise the first two-story log house in Chillicothe, organized a Baptist society in his own house in 1802 with eleven others, one of the earliest of that denomination in this part of Ohio. He later helped raise a log church about a quarter of a mile east of the site of Frankfort, in what is now called the Baptist Graveyard, where the society worshiped for seventeen years. It then built a church at High and Second streets in the village, where the congregation stayed until 1864 when it moved to Roxabell. Cory became an itinerant preacher who rode on horseback over many counties of Ohio and Indiana, organized many Baptist churches, and sat in the convention at Zanesville that formed the Ohio State Baptist Association. His son Noah, born in Concord Township in September 1802, became an influential Baptist worker in turn. The village that grew near the log church was laid out as Oldtown in 1816 and incorporated in 1827, with William Staggs, who had come from Kentucky, as its first mayor.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · hmdb.org · archive.org · archive.org · ross.ohgenweb.org

Eight wells in the buried Teays River Aquifer, in the Scioto valley north of Chillicothe The water here

• Ross County Water Co. Inc81% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Frankfort Village19% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-14
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-10-10

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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