Green Township, Adams County

How Green Township, Adams County began

Green Township (spelled Greene by its county historians), on the Ohio River in the southeast of Adams County, was known in territorial days as Iron Ridge Township and took its present name in December 1806 from General Greene of Revolutionary fame. Its first white settler was Obadiah Stout, who came from New Jersey by way of Kentucky in 1796 and settled on a fork of Stouts Run; Rome was laid out in 1835, and quarries of Waverly sandstone, tobacco, apples and peaches filled its river landings. The township also holds the Adams County Paleo-Indian District, a 175-acre National Register site north of U.S. Route 52 where Paleo-Indian groups repeatedly camped roughly 10,000 years ago, and a small burial mound below Rome that held twenty-two skeletons. Stout's grandson, Obadiah Stout Jr., was the first white child born in the township.

Settled 1796 (Obadiah Stout, on the east fork of Stouts Run), platted Rome laid out 1835 by William Stout; Rockville 1830; Commercialtown 1832, incorporated Township named Greene December 1806 by the Adams County commissioners; earlier called Iron Ridge Township, by Obadiah Stout (first settler).

Where the name comes from

Before December 1806 the township was called Iron Ridge Township. The Adams County commissioners then gave it its present name 'in honor of General Greene, of Revolutionary fame,' and county historians Evans and Stivers spell it Greene Township. They do not give his first name; the usual reading is Nathanael Greene, but that is an inference, not stated in the source.

Before the town

Green Township holds the oldest well-documented Native presence in Adams County. The Adams County Paleo-Indian District, a 175-acre site north of U.S. Route 52 near Sandy Springs listed on the National Register on October 17, 1974, was repeatedly occupied roughly 10,000 years before present by Paleo-Indian groups drawn to nearby salt springs; a 1982 report recorded more than seventy fluted (Clovis-type) points there, along with gravers and scrapers from multiple small campsite middens. Evans and Stivers's 1900 county history also records that there were several mounds in the township, only a few of any size, and quotes Ohio Archaeological Reports for a small mound two feet high and fifty feet across on the river bank just below Rome, 200 yards from the water, that held at least twenty-two skeletons, many broken or partial, with pottery fragments, perforated mussel shells, a bone awl, a slate celt and arrowheads; the report suspected a village site beside it. The same history repeats a pioneer tradition that a cave near the head of Black's Run was a rendezvous of James Girty's band before white settlement of the region. No historic-era village or treaty site specific to the township is documented in the sources consulted.

Nations recorded here: Paleo-Indian groups.

• Adams County Paleo-Indian District (camp) — 175 acres north of U.S. Route 52 near Sandy Springs, Paleo-Indian, roughly 10,000 years before present (en.wikipedia.org)
• Burial mound below Rome (mound) — high bank of the Ohio River, 200 yards from the water, just below Rome, not dated in the source; contained 22 skeletons with pottery and shell ornaments (archive.org)

Timeline

1. c. 8000 BC — Paleo-Indian groups began repeatedly camping at the site north of Sandy Springs later designated the Adams County Paleo-Indian District, drawn by nearby salt springs.
2. 1796 — Obadiah Stout, a New Jersey native and Revolutionary War veteran who had lived at Graham's Station, Kentucky, settles on the east, or Puntenney's, fork of Stouts Run; his grandson Obadiah Stout Jr., born that year, is the first white child born in the township.
3. 1800 — George Hollingsworth Puntenney moves to the east fork of Stouts Run in March; his son James, born September 1, 1800, is the second white child born in the township.
4. 1804 — The township has four distilleries, one school house and no church; by 1900 it has six church buildings and fourteen school houses and no distillery.
5. 1806 — In December the Adams County commissioners rename Iron Ridge Township Greene Township, for General Greene of Revolutionary fame.
6. 1809 — A jury of twelve Greene Township women hears the preliminary charge against Elizabeth Catt, accused of strangling her day-old infant; she is bound over to the Court of Common Pleas and acquitted at trial.
7. 1818 — A post office called Sandy Spring opens; it will run until 1836.
8. 1830 — The Stouts Run Christian church is organized by Mathew Gardner; Rockville, a stone-shipping landing on the Ohio, is laid out the same year.
9. 1832 — Commercialtown is laid out on the Ohio about six miles above Rome by S. B. McCall.
10. 1835 — William Stout lays out Rome on the Ohio River near the site of the old town of Adamsville.
11. 1836 — A post office called Stouts, later Stout, opens; it has operated, under the shorter name from 1893, ever since.
12. 1842 — Waggoners Ripple post office is established at the crossing of Ohio Brush Creek on the western border of the township (the postal-history list dates the office from 1845).
13. 1844-11-25 — The Rome Presbyterian church is organized.
14. 1862 — The Stouts Run United Presbyterian church is organized.
15. 1869-02-23 — Frank Hardy kills his stepfather James H. Rice with an ax near Rome; he is sentenced to hang, Governor Hayes commutes the sentence on April 27, 1870, and Governor Bishop pardons him in 1874.
16. c. 1880 — Greene Township is the greatest peach-producing locality in Ohio, a distinction that has faded by 1900 as the old orchards died out.
17. 1974 — The Adams County Paleo-Indian District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 17.
18. 1982 — A report on the site's artifacts recorded more than seventy fluted, Clovis-type projectile points recovered from its middens, along with gravers and scrapers, describing the find as of "unusual size and complexity."

Stories

Seventy points at the salt springs

Long before any historic-era nation is documented in Adams County, small bands of Paleo-Indian hunters returned again and again, over centuries, to a stretch of ground north of present-day Sandy Springs, drawn by salt springs that concentrated the deer, elk, and other game they hunted. Archaeologists later found their traces scattered across 175 acres, in a series of small middens each representing an individual campsite rather than one continuous village. When researchers catalogued the site's artifacts in 1982, they recovered more than seventy fluted projectile points of the Clovis type, along with stone gravers and scrapers used to work hide and bone, a concentration large enough that the report's authors called it a site of "unusual size and complexity" for the period. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, protecting one of the deepest windows into human presence anywhere in the Ohio Tap Water Atlas's coverage area.

Twelve Women and a Verdict, 1809

In 1809 a young woman named Elizabeth Catt was charged with strangling her day-old infant. Before the case could go to the Court of Common Pleas, she was given a preliminary hearing before a jury of twelve women, all residents of Greene Township. Evans and Stivers preserve their names: Elizabeth Eakins, Elizabeth Stout, Margaret Puntenney, Margaret Montgomery, Hannah Eakins, Charity Hubbard, Frances Russell, Nancy Wood, Margaret Stout Sr. and Jr., Sarah Cole and Mary Colvin. They bound Catt over for trial, and a jury at the Common Pleas Court acquitted her of the charge. Women did not vote or sit on regular juries in Ohio for another century, and the account is one of the few records of the township's earliest households, who are the same Stouts, Puntenneys and Colvins who settled Stouts Run.

Frank Hardy and the Governors' Pens

On February 23, 1869, eighteen-year-old Frank Hardy, helping his stepfather James H. Rice with work about the stable two miles above Rome, killed Rice with an ax, hauled the body on a sled to a pit he had already dug by the river, filled it over with cornstalks and manure, changed his clothes and fled. He was arrested at Cairo, Illinois, convicted of first-degree murder at the September term, and sentenced to hang on the second Friday in February 1870. The Supreme Court stayed the execution to review the case and then upheld it, setting May 6, 1870. On April 27 Governor Rutherford B. Hayes commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and in 1874 Governor Bishop pardoned him. Hardy was the second and last person sentenced to death by the Adams County courts.

The Haunted Cave on Black's Run

Among the crags near the headwaters of Black's Run, on the northwest edge of Greene Township, is a cavern of several large rooms, one with a running stream, entered by a ladder down to the outer chamber. A pioneer tradition recorded by Evans and Stivers says that before settlement a band of desperadoes preyed on emigrant boats floating down the Ohio from the cave, led by James Girty, brother of Simon Girty, and that the murder of a man named Greathouse, captured near the mouth of Ohio Brush Creek in 1790 and whipped to death while tied to a tree, was laid to them. Old Jonathan Waite found the cavern by accident in the early nineteenth century while looking for a legendary lead mine. The authors present the story as tradition, and no contemporary record of the band is cited.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Scioto Water Inc. - Pond Run56% of residentsOhio River
• Adams County Regional Wd31% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells near Manchester)
• Scioto Water Inc.-sr12512% of residentsOhio River
• Portsmouth City1% of residentsOhio River

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

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