Jackson Township, Coshocton County

How Jackson Township, Coshocton County began

Jackson Township sits in the south-central part of Coshocton County, organized in 1828 and named for President Andrew Jackson. Its eastern part along the Muskingum and Walhonding rivers grew up around Roscoe, the canal port now absorbed into the city of Coshocton, but its rural western half was settled independently beginning about 1814 by families such as the Millers, Browns and Phillipses, and it briefly split from the eastern part in a dispute over supporting the township's poor. It has no incorporated village today; its standing landmark, the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church on Route 541, began in 1845 as a rural offshoot of the Mill Creek church, five miles west of Roscoe.

Settled c. 1806-1814 (eastern river bottoms near Roscoe first, western part beginning about 1816), incorporated 1828.

Where the name comes from

The township was named for President Andrew Jackson, then passing through his first presidential campaign at the time of the township's organization, according to the 1881 county history.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, trail or treaty event specific to Jackson Township is recorded. The 1881 county history's township chapter mentions Native people only once, naming Benedict Dunfee, an Indian ranger who had served the United States at Wheeling, Virginia, and settled in the township's western part in the 1820s. The Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum in Coshocton holds Native American artifacts from the region, but the museum is in the city, not the township. What is documented for the nearby Muskingum-Tuscarawas confluence, the Lenape (Delaware) capital of Goschachgunk and the Moravian mission of Lichtenau just south of it, belongs to Coshocton city and Tuscarawas Township (T77896-COS).

Timeline

1. 1803 — Silas Bent, Jr. surveys the western part of the township, wholly congress land, into half sections of 320 acres, many years before settlers need it.
2. 1806 — William Hoglin is recorded living for a while on the site that becomes Roscoe, one of the township's earliest documented occupants.
3. c. 1806 — Thomas Cantwell, an Irish shoemaker from Virginia, clears a patch just south of the later Roscoe on the stream still called Cantwell's Run.
4. 1816 — Samuel Brown, of Salem, Massachusetts, settles about a mile and a half west of Roscoe and later builds a sawmill on Cantwell's Run in the township's rural west.
5. 1816-01 — James Calder lays out Caldersburg, sixty-seven lots on the west bank of the Muskingum, later Roscoe; William Barcus keeps its first tavern.
6. 1821 — Theophilus Phillips builds a brick tavern at Caldersburg, the first brick building in the township.
7. 1825 — James Le Retilley and William Wood open the first regular store at Caldersburg after Retilley's salt-making on the Muskingum is undercut by Kanawha salt.
8. 1828 — Jackson Township is organized, its eastern part taken from Tuscarawas Township and its western part from Washington Township.
9. c. 1829 — A dispute over supporting the township's poor leads the western part to petition for and win a temporary separation from the eastern (Roscoe) part, lasting two or three years before reunification.
10. 1831 — Leander Ransom and Noah H. Swayne lay out a large addition north of Caldersburg and rename the town Roscoe for the English author William Roscoe, as the Ohio canal comes through.
11. 1845 — Crooked Run church, later renamed Rock Hill and finally Pleasant Hill, is organized as a branch of the Mill Creek Regular Baptist church about five miles west of Roscoe.
12. 1868 — The congregation, by then renamed Rock Hill, builds the frame meeting house still in use and takes the name Pleasant Hill.
13. 1880 — Jackson Township has 1,968 inhabitants, second in the county to the township holding the county seat.
14. 2020 — Jackson Township has 1,852 residents.

Stories

A church renamed twice before it found Pleasant Hill

The congregation that still meets at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church on Route 541 began in 1845 as a branch of the Mill Creek church, meeting first in private houses and a vacated cabin about five miles west of Roscoe, under the name Crooked Run church. Early members included David Tracy, Samuel C. Heney, Abraham Randles, John Tracy and Aaron Loder, and a meeting house went up soon after on Loder's farm. The society advanced for a few years, then declined until it was virtually extinct after about fifteen years; in 1862 the remaining members reorganized under the name Rock Hill, and in 1868 they built the comfortable frame house of worship still standing, giving it the name it carries today, Pleasant Hill. By 1881 its membership had grown to ninety-four under deacons Allen Marshall, Joseph Askren and Aaron Loder, descended from one of the church's own founding families.

How the canal chose Caldersburg

In 1816 a failed Coshocton merchant named James Calder, a Yankee who had come about 1811, moved across the Muskingum to a tract saved from his creditors and laid out a village of sixty-seven lots, which people called Caldersburg. It had a log tavern, a brick tavern by 1821, and in 1825 its first regular store, where farmers traded venison for goods hauled by team from Pittsburgh. Prosperity began with the Ohio canal. Coshocton expected the canal, but building it west of the Muskingum cost less, so it passed through Caldersburg instead. Leander Ransom, an engineer on the canal, saw the site, bought land north of the village with the Coshocton lawyer Noah H. Swayne, later a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and in 1831 laid out a large addition and renamed the town Roscoe. The Walhonding canal, projected a few years later, brightened its outlook further. Roscoe is now part of Coshocton.

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

Wells in a buried sand-and-gravel valley aquifer just off State Route 83 N, near where Mill Creek meets the Walhonding River north of downtown Coshocton The water here

• Coshocton99% of residentsSand & gravel aquifer near Walhonding River/Mill Creek valley (wells)
• Bomac Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

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, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-29

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