Jackson Township, Pickaway County

How Jackson Township, Pickaway County began

Jackson Township's recorded history begins in October 1774, when a private soldier named John Joliff, waiting out the peace talks that ended Lord Dunmore's War at nearby Camp Charlotte, surveyed a 4,000-to-5,000-acre tract here without compass or chain in what may have been the first land survey made anywhere in Ohio. Jonathan Renick, from Hardy County, Virginia, became the first white settler in 1798, taking up part of that same Virginia Military District tract on Darby Creek, and the township itself was organized sometime after Pickaway County's creation in 1810, split off from Scioto Township at a date no surviving record preserves. It never grew a village of its own, remaining a Darby Creek farming community of grist-mills and Virginia-descended families. An Adena burial mound on Florence Chapel Road, the W.C. Clemmons Mound, is the township's only individually listed historic site and the clearest surviving trace of the Native people who used this ground many centuries before Joliff ever set foot on it.

Settled 1798, by organized after 1810 from part of Scioto township's territory; exact date not recorded.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted gives a specific reason the township was named for Andrew Jackson; Ohio has thirty-seven townships of that name, and most simply honor the general and later president without a local story attached. Neither the 1880 nor the 1906 Pickaway County history discusses the choice.

Before the town

Jackson Township holds two distinct threads of Native history. The older is physical: the W.C. Clemmons Mound, on the south side of Florence Chapel Road northwest of Fox, is an Adena-culture burial mound (roughly 800 BC to AD 100) documented in William C. Mills's 1914 Archeological Atlas of Ohio and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The other is remembered rather than excavated: the 1880 county history records that small, peaceable bands of Indians lingered in the township for some years after the first white settlement, among them a man called Captain Johnny, who kept a camp with other Indians on Darby Creek. Johnny and another Indian known as Cherokee Tom quarreled and eventually fought a knife duel that killed Tom; Johnny buried him on ground later occupied by the Florence family's house, where, decades afterward, diggers excavating a cellar found the remains of several Indians, evidently an existing burial ground rather than a single grave. Separately, John Joliff's 1774 survey of the township was made while Lord Dunmore's army lay at nearby Camp Charlotte concluding the treaty that ended Lord Dunmore's War with the Shawnee under Cornstalk and the Mingo under Logan, placing the township at the edge of one of the best-documented events in the region's contact-era history even though the treaty ground itself lay outside the township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Adena culture.

• W.C. Clemmons Mound (mound) — south side of Florence Chapel Road, northwest of Fox, Jackson Township, Adena culture, roughly 800 BC-AD 100 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Captain Johnny's camp and burial ground (camp) — on Darby Creek, on ground later occupied by the Florence family house, Jackson Township, early settlement period, late 1790s-early 1800s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1774 — While Lord Dunmore's army waits at Camp Charlotte to conclude the treaty ending Lord Dunmore's War, soldier John Joliff surveys a 4,000-to-5,000-acre tract in the township without compass or chain, in what is believed to be the first land survey made in the state.
2. 1796 — Revolutionary War veteran Captain Henry Bedinger locates a bounty-land survey in the township in consideration of his wartime service; the tract, later called the Bedinger survey, passes down through his family for generations.
3. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville, signed at Fort Greenville in western Ohio, cedes most of what becomes Ohio to the United States.
4. 1798 — Jonathan Renick, from Hardy County, Virginia, becomes the township's first settler, building a cabin on Darby Creek on part of the Joliff survey.
5. c. 1800 — Anthony Hall arrives from Virginia and buys William Marquis's log grist-mill and saw-mill on Darby Creek, operating them until his death in 1825.
6. 1810 — Pickaway County is organized; Jackson Township is formed at some later date from part of Scioto Township's original territory.
7. 1829 — William Marquis, an early mill-builder and distiller on Darby Creek, dies on April 1.
8. 1914 — William C. Mills documents the W.C. Clemmons Mound in his Archeological Atlas of Ohio, published by the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society.
9. 1974 — The W.C. Clemmons Mound is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, May 2.

Stories

The First Survey in Ohio

In October 1774, Lord Dunmore's Virginia militia sat camped at Camp Charlotte on Scippo Creek, a few miles from what is now Jackson Township, waiting for the Shawnee under Cornstalk to accept peace terms that would end Lord Dunmore's War. Among the soldiers passing the time was a private named John Joliff, who noticed a fine, unclaimed stretch of land nearby and set about surveying it, working without either a compass or a measuring chain. William Renick told the county historian decades later that the survey held up anyway: land speculators, dismissively called 'land sharks,' tried repeatedly to invalidate Joliff's crude survey and claim the ground for themselves, but the courts confirmed its boundaries after considerable litigation. Local tradition holds it was the first land survey ever made in Ohio, run by a soldier with time on his hands while history was being negotiated a few miles away.

A Duel on Darby Creek

For years after the first settlers arrived, small bands of Indians continued to camp along Darby Creek, on generally friendly terms with their new neighbors. One of the last to stay was a man remembered only as Captain Johnny, described as a powerful man who shared a camp with other Indians, including one called Cherokee Tom. The two quarreled, and Tom left the area for a long stretch, apparently hoping the dispute had blown over; when he came back and returned to sleep in his old wigwam, Johnny woke him the next morning and told him he must fight. Tom, reluctant but unable to refuse, lost the knife duel that followed. Johnny borrowed a shovel from a Renick family member and buried him on ground that later belonged to the Florence family. Years afterward, when workers dug a cellar for the Florence house on that spot, they found the remains of several more Indians, not just Tom, evidence of an established burial ground rather than a single grave.

A Captain's Bounty Land, Never Sold

Henry Bedinger fought in the Revolution as a Virginia captain, was captured at Fort Washington, and spent four years a prisoner on Long Island. In 1796, in consideration of that service, he located a tract of bounty land in what became Jackson Township, part of the Virginia Military District set aside for veterans like him. He never lived on it himself; he gave it instead to his son-in-law, James S. Swearingen, whose own son Henry B. Swearingen was still farming the same ground when the county history was compiled in 1880, and whose family's ownership of the tract, by that account, had 'never been bought nor sold' in the more than eighty years since Bedinger first claimed it.

Photographs

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

Sand-and-gravel wells in the Scioto River valley aquifer at the city's Island Road well field/treatment plant site, just east of the river. The water here

• Circleville City83% of residentsScioto River valley aquifer (sand & gravel wells)
• Earnhart Hill Water District13% of residentsScioto River valley (Teays) aquifer wells
• Williamsport Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Darbyville Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• South Bloomfield Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc0% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

Shale and injection wells (4)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-04-14

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