Goshen Township, Tuscarawas County

• David ZeisbergerPerson · 1721-1808

How Goshen Township, Tuscarawas County began

Goshen Township, one of the four townships the Tuscarawas County commissioners laid out in 1808, holds the county seat of New Philadelphia (platted by John Knisely in 1804) and the sites of two Moravian mission towns: Schoenbrunn, founded by David Zeisberger in 1772, and Goshen, re-established in 1798 and broken up in 1823. Outside the city it was a farm and mining township: Lockport and Blakesfield grew up at the Ohio Canal, brine found while drilling for oil about 1860 started a salt works, and the Pike Run coal mines of the 1870s made a mining town of 500 to 600 people. The township had 5,081 residents in 2020.

Settled 1772 (Schoenbrunn mission); 1798 (Goshen mission); 1804-05 (John Knisely and New Philadelphia), platted 1804 (New Philadelphia, by John Knisely), incorporated 1808 (township erected by the county commissioners at their first meeting), by David Zeisberger (missions); John Knisely (New Philadelphia).

Where the name comes from

The 1884 county history says the township 'in its name preserves a link' with the Moravian mission events of the valley and then describes the Goshen Mission of 1798, which stood west of the river on what is now Lot 39. Wikipedia's township article instead says the name is the biblical 'Land of Goshen,' chosen to suggest fertile soil; the two explanations are not mutually exclusive.

Before the town

Goshen Township holds a sequence of Moravian Indian settlements. The beautiful spring where David Zeisberger first led his band of Christian Lenape (Delaware) in 1772 to found Schoenbrunn ('beautiful spring') lies about two miles south of New Philadelphia, on the east side of the Tuscarawas; the town was abandoned in 1777 for the war, and New Schoenbrunn was built in 1779 on the west bank, a quarter mile below Lockport, and destroyed by Williamson's party in 1782 (the year of the Gnadenhutten massacre). In 1798 Zeisberger established the Goshen Mission west of the river about four miles below New Philadelphia, on what is now Lot 39. Its people farmed, made baskets of pounded black ash splints for sale to settlers, and were forbidden to leave the village during the War of 1812. Goshen's burial ground, one of the oldest in the county, received the missionary Rev. Edwards in 1801 and Zeisberger in 1808. In the fall of 1823 the mission was broken up under Rev. Abraham Luckenbach and the Christians walked to Cleveland, by way of New Philadelphia and Sandyville, to take ship for Canada; the county history also gives 1824 as the year of removal from the valley. The township includes the whole 4,000-acre Schonbrunn tract.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Christian Munsee (Moravian converts).

• Schoenbrunn (original, 1772-1777) and Schoenbrunn Spring (village) — about two miles south of New Philadelphia, east side of the Tuscarawas River, 1772-1777 (archive.org)
• New Schoenbrunn (village) — west bank of the Tuscarawas, nearly opposite the spring and about a quarter mile below Lockport, 1779-1782 (archive.org)
• Goshen Mission and burial ground (village) — west of the river about four miles below New Philadelphia, on Lot 39, 1798-1823; Zeisberger buried 1808 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1772 — David Zeisberger leads Christian Lenape to a spring about two miles south of New Philadelphia and founds the mission town of Schoenbrunn.
2. 1779 — New Schoenbrunn is built on the west bank of the Tuscarawas two years after the first town was abandoned for the war; Williamson's party destroys it in 1782.
3. 1798 — Goshen Mission is established by Zeisberger west of the river about four miles below the future New Philadelphia, on what is now Lot 39.
4. 1804 — John Knisely, welcomed by the Christian Indians of Goshen while scouting land, returns with his family and 33 other pioneers and has surveyor John Wells plat New Philadelphia nearby.
5. 1808 — The county commissioners lay out Goshen as one of the original four townships of Tuscarawas County at their first meeting; New Philadelphia is chosen county seat, Dover having contested the choice.
6. 1808 — The missionary David Zeisberger dies and is buried in the Goshen cemetery, where Rev. Edwards had been buried in 1801.
7. 1823 — The Goshen Mission is broken up under Rev. Abraham Luckenbach and the Indians travel via New Philadelphia and Sandyville to Cleveland to sail to Canada.
8. 1829 — Frederick Shull and Gottlieb Fackler lay out Lockport above Lock 13 of the Ohio Canal; Blakesfield is added by Walter M. Blake in 1845.
9. 1860 — The Goshen Oil and Coal Company, drilling for oil, strikes brine instead; salt works are built, yielding about 70 barrels a day by 1884 (the year in the printed history reads '1800').
10. 1872 — John Jacobs deeds Schoenbrunn Spring to the Union Bible Society, which fences it and sets a memorial stone.
11. 1873 — The Tuscarawas Valley Coal Company is incorporated to work the Pike Run mines, which have run about a year; the Brock Hill Coal Company follows in 1881.
12. 1881 — Kent's lots are platted at Pike Run, a mining town of 500 to 600 people whose post office is named Barnhill.
13. 1883 — Lockport (Blake's Mill) is incorporated in the spring with a mayor, council and marshal; it has a grist mill, a brewery and a paper mill, and about 300 residents.
14. 1970 — The Schoenbrunn Site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 10.
15. 2020 — The census counts 5,081 residents over 27.1 square miles.

Stories

The township named twice

By the time Ohio's surveyors got around to organizing Goshen Township in 1808, the name Goshen already belonged to a place on that ground: a Christian Munsee mission village, resettled in 1798 by Delaware and Mohican converts who had followed the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger into exile in Canada after the Revolutionary War and the 1782 Gnadenhutten massacre, then come back. It stood near the ruins of Schoenbrunn, Ohio's first planned town, itself abandoned in the same wars that had scattered its people. In 1804 a Pennsylvania settler named John Knisely, out looking for better hunting and better land, was welcomed there by the Christian Indians of Goshen before going on to found New Philadelphia a few miles away. The township organized four years later took the name Goshen for itself; Wikipedia explains it as the fertile 'Land of Goshen' of the Bible, while the 1884 county history says the name preserves a link to the mission.

Salt where they wanted oil

In 1860, when the oil excitement in Pennsylvania was at fever heat, a group of New Philadelphia men organized the Goshen Oil and Coal Company with $20,000 in capital to search the Tuscarawas valley for the illuminating oil. Three miles above New Philadelphia in Goshen Township they drilled a well 500 feet without success, and some of the investors wanted out. The rest sank it 400 feet deeper, and a stream gushed forth that proved, on examination, to be strongly salt rather than oily. Jesse D. Elliott, Judge James Moffit, Daniel Korns, W. C. Williamson and O. P. Taylor at once built works and began evaporating brine, and the concern became the Goshen Coal Oil and Salt Company; in 1871 it was sold to Custer, Scott and Kennedy. Two more wells followed in Dover Township, and by 1884 the three sold about 60,000 barrels of salt a year through the Tuscarawas Valley Salt Company.

The last walk down the valley, 1823

The Goshen Indians had lived beside the settlers for a quarter century. They farmed a little, hunted widely, and made baskets by soaking black ash saplings and pounding them with mallets until the splints separated; the women often camped by the creeks weaving while the men hunted, and sold the baskets to the whites. During the War of 1812 they were forbidden under penalty to leave the village. In the fall of 1823 their missionary, Rev. Abraham Luckenbach, broke up the mission and led them away. They were, the county historian says, extremely loath to leave the wooded valley, and left slowly and sadly, walking up the west bank of the Tuscarawas, crossing at New Philadelphia, and going by way of Sandyville to Cleveland, where they boarded a vessel for Canada. Only one man, Tom Lyons, refused to go.

Photographs

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

Wells in the sand-and-gravel aquifer within the Tuscarawas River valley near New Philadelphia The water here

• New Philadelphia City93% of residentsTuscarawas River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Twin City Water and Sewer District4% of residentsTuscarawas River valley aquifer (local wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Midvale2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Tcmsd-wainwright0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tuscarawas Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Dover City0% of residentsSugar Creek Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (Dover wellfield)

Nursing homes (2)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (7)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-09-01

Cite this page