Huntington Township, Ross County

How Huntington Township, Ross County began

Huntington Township, in the hilly south of Ross County along Paint Creek, was organized by the county commissioners on March 5, 1811 from parts of Scioto and Twin townships; its first election, on April 1, 1811, was held at Charles Mitchell's house and chose David Murphy, Frederick Bishop and Daniel Chestnut as justices. William Richie had built a cabin on Ralston's Run before 1800, and Benjamin Ralston, Michael Thomas, the Chestnuts and the Bishops followed. The township holds stone enclosures and mounds on Black Run and Paint Creek, the cave where William Hewitt lived as a hermit for fourteen years (d. 1834), and two unincorporated places, Denver and Knockemstiff. It had 6,069 residents in 2020.

Settled before 1800 (William Richie, on Ralston's Run); most settlers came 1796-1810 from the Scioto bottoms and the East, incorporated March 5, 1811 (organized by the Ross County commissioners from parts of Scioto and Twin townships), by William Richie first; the township was organized by the county commissioners.

Where the name comes from

No source checked says why the commissioners called the township Huntington; there are other Huntington Townships in Brown, Gallia and Lorain counties. The 1902 history prints the commissioners' order of March 5, 1811: 'Said township to be known as Huntington township,' with elections at Charles Mitchell's house, without giving a reason.

Before the town

Huntington has a good record of prehistoric stone and earth works and pioneer-era Native encounters, mostly from the 1871 and 1902 county histories. On the east side of Black Run, on the Minney farm, is a stone wall enclosing about an acre with inner partition walls, once four to six feet high; about 200 yards south is a stone circle 100 feet across and five or six feet high, with a ten-foot stone mound in its center (Finley and Bennett give somewhat different measurements). On the John Dunn farm on Paint Creek is a circular earthwork three or four feet high and about a hundred feet across; on the next farm are two mounds, one eight feet high and 25 feet across, the other 60 by 40 by eight to ten feet; and a large mound on the James Steele farm was honeycombed by foxes. Finley (1871) also describes a stone mound near an old Indian trail on Vanscoy's farm on Indian Creek and ancient stone-covered graves near the Alum Cliffs. The authors attribute the works to a vanished 'Lost Race' (the usual nineteenth-century view); no archaeological dating is given. For the historic period, settlers remembered an old Indian trail from Chillicothe to Portsmouth, 'Captain Johnny's' shooting of the war chief Toa-willa-wa in July 1798, a killing in 1798 that sent the Indians of the neighborhood hunting the settler Thompson for two years, and Daniel Chestnut and William Richie serving as frontier guardsmen to watch the Ross County Indians. Finley's statement that two of General Harmar's battles in 1790 were fought on Paint Creek in Huntington Township is not correct: Harmar's campaign was against the Miami capital Kekionga, near modern Fort Wayne, Indiana.

• Stone enclosure and stone circle on Black Run (earthwork) — east side of Black Run, Minney farm, about four miles southeast of Bourneville: an acre-sized stone wall and, 200 yards south, a stone circle 100 feet across with a central stone mound, prehistoric; undated (archive.org)
• Circular earthwork and mounds on the John Dunn and adjoining farms (mound) — Paint Creek, Huntington Township, prehistoric; undated (archive.org)
• Stone mound near an old Indian trail on Indian Creek (mound) — farm of Aaron Vanscoy, head of a branch of Indian Creek, undated (archive.org)
• Indian trail from Chillicothe to Portsmouth (trail) — through the south of the township, near the Hester home, before and during early settlement (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1796 — Michael Thomas, later a scout under General Wayne, comes on horseback from Pennsylvania; he soon trades his 100 acres near Chillicothe for 500 in Huntington Township.
2. 1798 — Daniel Chestnut brings his wife and five children to the Scioto valley; about 1805 they move to Indian Creek in Huntington Township.
3. 1798 — In July the boy William Chestnut sees 'Captain Johnny' shoot the war chief Toa-willa-wa in the forehead, and later that year a drunken Indian's boast of having killed Thompson's relatives ends with the settler Thompson killing him and fleeing for seventeen years.
4. 1800 — William Richie has built his cabin on Ralston's Run before this year, the first settler there; Benjamin Ralston, a Vermonter, is the second.
5. 1800s — William Selby, born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, comes among the early settlers and hews a farm out of the woods; he serves in the War of 1812.
6. 1805 — Robert Bishop comes from Berkeley County, Virginia, by wagon and lives in the township sixty-four years; Henry Bishop of the same county buys land there the next year.
7. 1808 — William Hewitt, a Virginian, comes to Ohio, hunts for some years, and then lives fourteen years in a cave on the Portsmouth pike until his death in 1834.
8. 1811 — On March 5 the Ross County commissioners organize Huntington Township from parts of Scioto and Twin townships, with elections at Charles Mitchell's; on April 1 David Murphy, Frederick Bishop and Daniel Chestnut are elected justices.
9. 1813 — William Chestnut volunteers in May in Captain Rutley's company in Tupper's brigade and serves ninety days at Fort Meigs.
10. 1834 — William Hewitt, the hermit, dies at Waverly at age seventy after catching cold in a rainstorm; a monument is later raised above his cave.
11. 1856 — A post office named Hooppole (Hoopole) opens at Farmersville; it keeps that name to 1882.
12. 1871 — Finley's Pioneer Record gives a full Huntington chapter; the township has justices I. J. Finley, Samuel Rinehart and A. J. Pummell, and has never sent a county officer to office except Finley, in 1868-69.
13. 1882 — A post office named Denver opens in the south of the township; it closes in 1935.
14. 1902 — Bennett's county history describes Huntington as very rough and broken land, good for grazing and fruit, with Alum cliffs, glacial terraces and the works on Black Run.
15. 2020 — The census records 6,069 people in the township; Denver and Knockemstiff are its unincorporated places.

Stories

William Hewitt, the hermit of the cave

William Hewitt came from Virginia about 1808, a large, muscular, intelligent man who told his neighbor Mr. Neborgall that he had walked out one morning intending to be gone for days, came home the same night and found another man in his bed with his wife. He thought of killing them both, then decided he could live alone in the woods and left for Ohio. He lived first in a bark shanty on Crooked Creek near Farmersville, then in a cabin with no doors or windows near the Toops farm, and finally for fourteen years in a cave under a shelving rock on the Portsmouth pike, dressed in buckskin he made himself, living on bear and deer, drying venison on sticks around a bed of coals and using it as bread, and trading venison for salt and ammunition. He read his Bible on Sundays and never hunted that day, and was an extraordinary singer and whistler. When a well-dressed stranger rode up one morning to 'get the history of your life,' Hewitt told him to leave quickly or he would give him 'a history of hell.' Caught in a night of rain on the Scioto bottoms, he took a cold that ended his life in 1834 at Waverly; a small mound above the cave bears an inscription that he occupied it fourteen years 'while all was a wilderness around him.'

A cabin on Ralston's Run

William Richie is the earliest settler recorded for Huntington Township. Bennett's 1902 county history says he located and built his cabin on Ralston's Run before 1800 and spent his remaining years there; Benjamin Ralston, a Vermonter with a wife and one son, was the second in that neighborhood and planted one of the first orchards in the county. Richie and Daniel Chestnut were later frontier guardsmen whose job was to watch the Ross County Indians and report any suspicious move. Finley's 1871 account adds a comic episode of their spy duty: with Col. Barnes stationed at Waverly, Richie threw off his blanket to chase a wild turkey, and the colonel, finding the blanket in the path, wheeled his horse and galloped back, supposing there were Indians about, until Chestnut hailed him from under a tree and explained. It was more than eleven years from Richie's first cabin to the township's organization on March 5, 1811, with Murphy, Bishop and Chestnut as its first justices.

Squire Chestnut's thirty lashes

Daniel Chestnut was one of the three justices elected at the township's first election in 1811 and held the office for seventeen years. In one case a man named Shears, brought before him for stealing a small sum from a Mr. Ogden, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to jail. On the way to the county jail Shears told the constable he would rather take thirty lashes. The constable asked the Squire, who went to the woods and cut five stout hickory switches, and the constable applied them while Chestnut stood by as 'moderator or umpire.' After each five cuts hostilities ceased, the wounds were bathed in whisky by the magistrate, and Shears was admonished to lead a better life. Twenty-nine lashes later, 'well laid on,' Shears was released, perhaps wiser.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · ross.ohgenweb.org · postalhistory.com · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Seven active wells in the Scioto Buried River Valley Aquifer (the CCR's own name) serving the city well field near Yoctangee Park. The City of Chillicothe also has emergency connections with Ross County Water Company and the Chillicothe Correctional Institution; neither was used in 2025. The water here

• Ross County Water Co. Inc46% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Chillicothe City45% of residentsScioto Buried Valley Aquifer (Teays Valley system) wells
• Waverly City6% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Lake White1% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Pike Water, Inc.-plant1% of residentsTeays Valley Buried Valley Aquifer (wells near Jasper)
• Bainbridge Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Kingston Village1% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (3)

Bridges rated poor (7)

Spills reported since 2021 (6)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 2 of 2 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 2 of 2.

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-01-08

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