Jackson Township, Muskingum County

How Jackson Township, Muskingum County began

Jackson Township occupies the northwest corner of Muskingum County. It was cut from Licking Township by county commissioners' order on June 6, 1815, with its first election held the following month at the house of Thomas Blizzard; the 1882 county history says it was probably named for Andrew Jackson, then a popular military hero of the War of 1812 rather than the future president. Colonel William Blizzard and William McClintock were among the settlers who arrived that same year, and Samuel Mendenhall, who had entered 1,300 acres in 1811, built the township's first saw and grist mill in 1819 on Wakatomika Creek. Its only village, Frazeysburg, grew up at the township's center after 1827, and the Ohio and Erie Canal reached the township in 1831-32. It remains a farming township of about 2,400 people with no city of its own inside its 24 square miles.

Settled 1815 (Colonel William Blizzard, William McClintock), incorporated June 6, 1815, cut from Licking Township, by Petition of Licking Township inhabitants to the Muskingum County Commissioners; first election held at the house of Thomas Blizzard, last Saturday in July 1815.

Where the name comes from

The 1882 county history says the township's name was 'probably given on account of the dark horse of that period -- Andrew Jackson -- having many friends in the locality at the time,' noting that in 1815 Jackson was known chiefly as a War of 1812 military hero (he did not become president until 1828). This matches the usgenweb page's similar account.

Before the town

No named Native American village, mound, trail or treaty line is recorded within Jackson Township. The township lies in the northwest corner of Muskingum County, which was Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware) and Mingo hunting and travel country before the Treaty of Greenville (1795), and the county as a whole has documented Adena and Hopewell earthworks. Wakatomika Creek, the township's principal stream, shares its name with the Shawnee settlements of Wakatomika near present-day Dresden, but no source ties a specific Native site to Jackson Township's own ground.

Timeline

1. 1811 — Samuel Mendenhall, from Virginia, enters 1,300 acres and builds his cabin about a mile and a quarter west of the later site of Frazeysburg; his son-in-law Joshua Bennett takes over the tract in 1816.
2. 1815 — Colonel William Blizzard settles in the southwest portion of section twelve; William McClintock, from Washington County, Pennsylvania, settles on what becomes the Zanesville road within the future corporate limits of Frazeysburg.
3. 1815 — The Frazeysburg Methodist Episcopal class is organized at the house of Zachariah Bonham, with Richard Wood, Reuben Oliver, Daniel Wilkins, R. C. Mendenhall and Jane Bennett among its members; its pioneers meet from house to house until a plain $1,000 church is built in 1840 and a $1,800 frame church replaces it in 1878.
4. 1819 — Samuel Mendenhall, who entered 1,300 acres from Virginia in 1811, builds the township's first saw and grist mill on Wakatomika Creek; it does the district's grinding for many years on just two run of buhrs.
5. 1827 — Clark Hollenback lays out the village of Frazeysburg (first named Knoxville) at the township's center, and builds a sawmill there in 1820-22 predating the plat's later additions.
6. 1830s — The township has two gristmills and three sawmills in operation, per Wikipedia's summary of its early industrial development.
7. 1830 — The dam of Mendenhall's mill on Wakatomika Creek, the only grinding place for this and surrounding townships for many years, is washed away; John Norris was miller then.
8. 1831-32 — The Ohio and Erie Canal is completed through the township; the first boat through is the pleasure craft Reindeer, running between Newark and Coshocton.
9. 1832 — The Mount Zion Christian Church is organized with eight members at George McDonald's house about two miles north of Frazeysburg on the West Carlisle road, and builds a frame house in 1845; Samuel Mills builds a small distillery on the Zanesville road south of Frazeysburg the same year.
10. 1840 — A great revival takes place in 1839-40 in the Methodist church under Revs. Lowrey, West and Milligan; the congregation builds its first church the same year.
11. 1843 — Josiah Campbell, Alfred Chapman and Hazel Clarey operate a distillery on a large scale at Frazeysburg; local report credited its whisky with swelling the Democratic majority for Polk and Dallas in 1844.
12. 1876 — The Frazeysburg Presbyterian Church is organized with thirty-four members and dedicates its $2,370 brick church on September 8, 1877.
13. 1880 — The township still has a sawmill (Eli Gorley's) and the Goff flour mill on Wakatomika Creek on the sites of Hollenback's and McClintock's early mills; iron ore mined locally is hauled to Frazeysburg and shipped by rail to Zanesville.
14. 2020 — The census counts 2,425 people in the township.
15. June 6, 1815 — The Muskingum County Commissioners order a new township, cut from Licking Township, to be called Jackson Township, and set its first election for the last Saturday in July 1815 at the house of Thomas Blizzard.

Stories

A township named for a dark horse

When Jackson Township organized in the summer of 1815, the man its settlers chose to honor was not yet president, nor even a declared candidate. Andrew Jackson had risen from an orphaned Scotch-Irish childhood in the Carolinas to Congress, the Senate, and then, in January of that year, a decisive victory over the British at New Orleans -- the 'dark horse' of the period, as the 1882 county history put it, whose name carried enough local goodwill that petitioners cut a new township from Licking Township and called it Jackson. The first township election was held at the house of Thomas Blizzard, and pioneers like Colonel William Blizzard and William McClintock, arriving that same year, built their cabins in a district that would not get its one village, Frazeysburg, for another dozen years.

The barn raised without whisky

In the years between the founding of the Methodist class at Zachariah Bonham's house in 1815 and 1830, R. C. Mendenhall built a large barn in Jackson Township and became the first man there to raise a building without whisky, so that, Everhart's county history says, the barn marked an epoch. Religious services were often held in it on Sundays, and a series of meetings led by Rev. Fernandes there is remembered for much good. The county history sets that sobriety against the district's habits: it records the saying that a distillery could be found on nearly every run in the county, and that the whisky from Josiah Campbell's still at Frazeysburg in 1843 was reputed to have swelled the Democratic majority for Polk and Dallas in 1844, and, it adds, many a head. Mrs. R. C. Mendenhall was the last survivor of the pioneer Methodists in 1880.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Frazeysburg98% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Country Hills MHP2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2017: 1 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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