Green Township, Fayette County

How Green Township, Fayette County began

Green Township fills the southwest corner of Fayette County, bounded by Highland County on the south and Clinton County on the west, and drained by Rattlesnake and Lee's creeks. One of the six original townships of 1810, it once took in all of Concord and parts of Jasper and Perry, and reached its present shape in 1849. Jesse Rowe, a Revolutionary veteran called the father of Methodism in the county, settled on the Little Wabash in 1807; the Quaker miller Thomas Moon built the first flour mill, saw-mill and distillery on Rattlesnake Creek, and Friends from Virginia and North Carolina settled its southwest corner. Its one village, first nicknamed Goatsville, then Buena Vista and later Moons, grew from 1832; without a railroad the township stayed small, with 694 people in 1910 and 521 in 2020.

Settled 1807, incorporated 1810 (original township), by Jesse Rowe (first permanent settler).

Where the name comes from

No township-specific naming account is recorded; Green Township, Fayette County is one of sixteen Ohio townships sharing the name, part of a common naming pattern across the state.

Before the town

No named village or mound is recorded in Green Township. Thomas Johnson, who came as a boy of five in 1816, told the 1872 pioneer record that the country was nearly unbroken wilderness and that Indians would pass through his father's field, crossing the fences to keep to their old trails. Both the 1872 and 1881 histories name the township's first doctor, about 1810, as a man called Zimmerman, described as part Indian; the 1872 record's Wayne Township list names a Dr. George Zimmerman as 'a half Shawnee Indian,' though it is not certain the two notes describe the same man. Human bones - skulls, thigh and arm bones - were found in gravel in the township, according to the 1872 record, which gives no location or date. A frontier tale in the 1881 and 1914 histories has the captive Alexander Cupper hiding on the Little Wabash after escaping the gauntlet at Old Town. The land was ceded under the 1795 Treaty of Greenville; the Beam Farm Woodland site near Sabina lies across the line in Clinton County.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami.

Timeline

1. 1807 — Jesse Rowe, a Revolutionary War private who had come from Virginia to Ross County in 1803, settles on the Little Wabash with his nine children; he later serves four terms as justice of the peace.
2. 1810 — Green is laid out as one of the six original townships of Fayette County, taking in the later Concord, most of Perry and part of Jasper.
3. 1810 — Thomas Moon Sr., a Quaker from Virginia, settles on Rattlesnake Creek on land called the dividing ridge and builds the township's first flour mill, saw-mill and distillery.
4. 1811 — The township's first recorded marriage, of David Moon and Mary Ellis, is performed January 7 by Ralph Stout, justice of the peace.
5. 1816 — William Johnson buys 100 acres from Jesse Rowe; his son later recalls that children walked five miles to play with neighbors.
6. 1817 — David Bradshaw becomes the township's first shoemaker; before him settlers went barefoot or wore moccasins.
7. 1818 — Concord Township is formed from part of Green.
8. 1819 — The first schoolhouse, of round logs with a mud chimney and greased-paper windows, is built on the Little Wabash; Ebenezer Christy teaches that winter.
9. 1823 — Z. Morris and his brother Isaac, Friends from Grayson County, Virginia, settle in the southwest corner, which fills with Quaker families.
10. 1832 — John W. Simpson and Stephen Tudor buy lots at the site of the village later called Buena Vista and Moons; its main street becomes a state road the next year.
11. 1835 — Robert Dobbins' Methodist Protestant society builds a small frame church; its successor is built in 1857.
12. 1845 — Perry Township is formed from parts of Green and Wayne; after a further adjustment on March 8, 1849, Green takes its present shape.
13. 1880 — Buena Vista has about 125 residents and several stores.
14. 1910 — Green Township, including the village, has 694 residents; the village, now called Moons, has about 200.

Stories

Goatsville, Buena Vista, Moons

In 1832 John W. Simpson and Stephen Tudor came to a spot near Rattlesnake Creek to buy land; Simpson bought a lot from James Larkins, went back to Highland County to marry, and returned to build a cabin, the first married couple in the new settlement. Simpson belonged to the German Baptists, or Dunkards, and their preachers often stopped at his house. Because the brethren wore their hair and beards long, the settlement was nicknamed Goatsville. It later took the name Buena Vista, and by 1914 was known as Moons. Simpson kept the first store and, the 1881 history says, often refused to sell a customer all the calico she wanted, so as not to be out of it entirely. By 1914 the village had about 200 people and was called 'a mere hamlet, with but little business.'

The Moon mill on the dividing ridge

Thomas Moon Sr. came from Virginia in 1810 with nine children and settled on Rattlesnake Creek. As a Quaker he had refused to fight in the Revolution or the Indian wars. He bought land on the dividing ridge, eventually 1,100 acres, and there built the first flour and saw-mill and distillery in the township, and so far as the 1881 historian knew, the first in the county. His cabin had a puncheon floor and a stick chimney; he cleared four acres in his first week, and squirrels were so thick that he fed them outside his fences to save his crops. Before his mill, settlers ground corn at horse mills in Wayne Township, sometimes a two-day trip, or went as far as Springfield. His son Captain Thomas Moon was still running the mill decades after the father's death in 1828.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Washington Court House57% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells
• Leesburg Village42% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc1% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Fayette County - culpepper Subdivision0% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells

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