Jackson Township, Champaign County

How Jackson Township, Champaign County began

Jackson Township is the square, six-mile-by-six-mile township in the southwestern corner of Champaign County, bordering Clark and Miami counties, and was named for Andrew Jackson after his victory at New Orleans. Charles Dorsey, a Revolutionary War veteran from Virginia, entered the first land here in 1802, and Virginians and Kentuckians followed along Honey Creek and Chapman's Creek; the Honey Creek Baptist Church, organized in 1811, is the township's oldest congregation. It holds the village of Christiansburg (renamed Addison in 1842, while its post office kept the old name), the northern part of St. Paris and the railroad hamlet of Thackery, whose creamery was the township's largest business in 1917. It is still farm country on deep second-bottom land drained by tributaries of the Mad and Great Miami rivers.

Settled 1802, incorporated 1815 (1881 history) or 1817 (1917 history), set off from Mad River Township, by first settler Charles Dorsey of Virginia.

Where the name comes from

Named for Gen. Andrew Jackson, whose January 1815 victory at New Orleans was fresh in the settlers' minds when the township was set off.

Before the town

The 1881 county history describes a large sand-and-gravel mound on the Lot Noe farm, covering five or six acres and forty to fifty feet high at its deepest, which it took to be a burial place of the mound builders; when gravel was dug from it for a pike in 1874-75, thirty human skulls were found in one day. The same history records a local tradition that before white settlement a Native medicine woman kept a wigwam on top of the mound, that her people held it to be hallowed ground where medicine and herbs had special power, and that they would not fight on it. It also says there was a Native village on Chapman's Creek whose deserted wigwams were still standing in 1821, and that during the War of 1812 period a settler named Bowyer was killed and scalped while his partner Morgan was away hunting (it dates this 1815). No source names the nation of the Chapman's Creek village; the land was ceded under the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

• Medicine mound on the Lot Noe farm (mound) — Lot Noe farm, Jackson Township (exact section not given), prehistoric; used as a medicine site in historic times according to tradition (archive.org)
• Chapman's Creek village (village) — on Chapman's Creek, Jackson Township, occupied before and during early settlement; wigwams standing until 1821 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1802 — Charles Dorsey of Virginia, who had served under Gen. Wayne, entered 160 acres, took the first government patent in the township, built a cabin and returned east for his family.
2. 1805 — George Wilson of Virginia entered a half-section in section 36, part of which later became Christiansburg; he was the township's first shoemaker.
3. 1806 — Thomas Grafton of Rockingham County, Virginia, entered the southeast quarter of section 3; the 'old Grafton farm' kept his name into the 20th century.
4. 1808 — Joshua Howell came from Virginia with his wife and eight children and settled in section 31; the 1917 history calls him the founder of Christiansburg and credits the family with the county's first apple orchard.
5. 1811 — Honey Creek Baptist Church was organized with six members at the house of Elder Stapleton, half a mile east of the later Addison; it built a log church in 1816 and a brick one in 1831.
6. 1811 — Charles Dorsey, the first settler, died on July 14 and was buried on the Grafton farm.
7. 1816 — John Merritt put up the township's first sawmill, a water mill with an overshot wheel on the west fork of Honey Creek in section 32.
8. 1817 — Christiansburg was platted, named for Christiansburg, Virginia, the home of a first settler.
9. 1821 — The wife and daughter of Andrew Wilson were the first burials in the Honey Creek graveyard, on land he gave to the church.
10. 1829 — William McCrea opened the first store in Christiansburg, in a log building, and soon built the first frame and plastered house in the township.
11. 1832 — William Kelley started a tannery in Addison (Christiansburg), which ran until 1850.
12. 1835 — Christiansburg was incorporated.
13. 1835 — According to the 1881 history, the newly incorporated town elected a mayor and council but gave up its charter within a year because it could not support a municipal government.
14. 1838 — The Grafton Methodist Episcopal Church was organized with fifteen members, most of them Graftons, in Fitzpatrick's schoolhouse.
15. 1842 — The town of Christiansburg was renamed Addison, though its post office kept the name Christiansburg; the 1881 history says Joshua Howell laid the town out in 1817 and it had six log houses in 1820.
16. 1880 — The township counted 1,901 people, up from 1,431 in 1840.
17. 1888 — A post office opened at Nettleton, an unincorporated hamlet in the township between St. Paris and Urbana.
18. 1892 — The Nettleton post office closed after four years.
19. 1893 — The Detroit, Toledo and Ironton railroad was completed through the township; Thackery grew up along it.
20. 1894 — A post office named Thackery opened; it closed in 1965.
21. 1903 — The Springfield, Troy and Piqua electric line was built through the southwest corner of the township, linking Christiansburg with Springfield, Troy and Piqua.
22. 1917 — The Thackery creamery had about three hundred patrons and was paying out ten thousand dollars a month for milk.

Stories

The mill that fed the ground squirrels

John Johnson, born in Kentucky in 1794, came to the township soon after the War of 1812 and bought wet, level land from Jimmy Reynolds and Elijah Dawson at five dollars an acre. He built a round-log hut with greased-paper windows and cleared three acres the first year. Johnson also built the township's first grist mill, little more than a corn-cracker. According to the 1881 county history, the first grist went into the hopper and no meal came out. When Johnson took the mill apart he found that ground squirrels had nested inside and were eating the meal as fast as the slow stones ground it. The 1917 history tells the same story with a chipmunk.

William McCrea's store

William McCrea came to the township at fourteen with his parents (Irish in the 1881 history, Scottish in the 1917 one). In 1829 or 1830 he opened the first store in the village then called Christiansburg, in a log building, selling tea, coffee, salt, hardware, cloth, dried meat, medicines and millinery. That year he also built the first frame house in the town and had it plastered, and people came from all over the township to see it. The 1881 history tells of a customer who boiled her tea with the meat and could not see why people praised it. McCrea held most of the township offices and served three terms in the state legislature, the first from 1842.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Saint Paris Village85% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Christiansburg Village10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Grandview Heights Civic Association5% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 2 of 2 passed.

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 2026-07-23
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-10-08

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