Jackson Township, Seneca County

How Jackson Township, Seneca County began

Jackson Township was organized in 1832 and covers 34.9 square miles in the northwestern corner of Seneca County, bordering Sandusky, Wood and Hancock counties. Part of the city of Fostoria extends into its southwestern corner, tying the township's more recent history to Fostoria's natural-gas-era glass boom of the 1880s and 1890s; otherwise the township holds no incorporated village of its own and remains agricultural. It is one of thirty-seven Jackson Townships across Ohio, the state's single most common township name.

Incorporated 1832 (organized), by organized by Seneca County.

Where the name comes from

Jackson Township is one of thirty-seven Jackson Townships in Ohio; the county histories and Wikipedia do not say whom it was named for.

Before the town

Lang's 1880 county history reprints, with the author's permission, an account from E. W. Thomas's history of Fostoria: in 1832 a large body of Wyandot camped in Jackson Township to hunt, killing eleven bears and 107 deer along with smaller game. Thomas calls them quiet and well disposed toward the settlers; they bought potatoes and corn and paid their debts. The same account says the first whisky sold in the township was by John P. Gordon, at his store in Risdon, and tells of an incident at the Nestlerode cabin on the farm called 'the Island' (see the story below). The 1911 county history names the hunting party's chief as Thomas Koon and says the Wyandot spent the whole season in the township. No mound, treaty-cession boundary or named village site specific to Jackson Township is recorded. The county's historic-era Native history includes the Seneca reservation, which lay well to the southeast, and the 1831 removal.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1820 — J. Glasgow surveys the township into quarter sections; the lands are offered for sale in 1821, but few if any buyers come.
2. 1827 — Henry Hoffman moves from Perry County, Ohio, and settles on the southeast quarter of section thirty-six, the first settler recorded in the township; his brother-in-law Abraham Rinebolt follows from the same county in 1828.
3. 1832 — A large body of Wyandot camps in the township to hunt, killing eleven bears and 107 deer; Lang's history, quoting a Fostoria-area account, describes them as honest traders who mostly avoided going into debt with settlers.
4. 1832-fall — A party of drunken Indians en route to their camp stops at the cabin of settler Nestlerode (the year is hard to read in the printed history and may be 1833) on the 'island'; the sober chief orders Nestlerode to take their weapons, and each man later returns for his own.
5. 1832-12-04 — Jackson Township is organized; Lang's county history gives the exact date as December 4, 1832, with the first township election held the following April 3 at the house of Abraham Rinebolt.
6. 1840 — The township's population is 586.
7. 1844-12-07 — Isaiah Hollopeter lays out the town of Rehoboth in the township; it never develops.
8. 1848 — Andrew Rank buys the last parcel of United States land in the county, in Jackson Township; Lang's 1880 history puts it at the close of the Mexican War.
9. 1880 — The township's population reaches 1,394, up from 586 in 1840 and 1,131 in 1870.
10. 1885 — Four railroads cross Jackson Township, the Lake Erie & Western, the Columbus, Hocking Valley & Toledo, the Nickel Plate and the Ohio Central; the population is estimated at 1,600, and Her is a station on the Nickel Plate.
11. 2020 — The 2020 census counts 1,401 residents in Jackson Township.

Stories

The last public land sold in the county

Much of Jackson Township was low ground overflowed by Wolf Creek, and for decades settlers avoided the wet portions in favor of the drier land, leaving buyers scarce for the swales even as the rest of the county filled in. Lang's 1880 history notes that as late as the years just after the Mexican-American War, a veteran of that war named A. Rank located his federal land warrant on one of these unwanted wet parcels in Jackson, and that this was the last piece of public land sold anywhere in Seneca County. Only later, once the township undertook systematic ditching to drain the swales, did Jackson's low ground turn productive, and Lang predicted it would come to rank among the county's best farmland.

Nestlerode and the drunk Indians

In the fall of 1832 (the year is hard to read in the printed history and may be 1833), a large party of Indians camped in the township four miles from the cabin of Mr. Nestlerode and hunted there, killing eleven bears and 107 deer. One evening some six or seven of them had been drinking at Gordon's place and, bottles filled, stopped as usual at the Nestlerode cabin on what was called the island. Too drunk to get off their ponies, they were helped down by Mr. and Mrs. Nestlerode, and once inside they began upsetting chairs and tables and a fight broke out with scalping knives and tomahawks while the children hid under the beds. Only the chief, Thomas Koon, was sober; he ordered Nestlerode to take their weapons and then asked him to hand each man his bottle back and help them onto their ponies. One man fell off on the way to camp and was left by a fire, and the next morning returned to the cabin badly burned, explaining in the broken English the county history records that white men get Indians drunk and then cheat them. The next day each man came alone for his own knife, tomahawk and gun, and none would take anything that was not his.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Fostoria City99% of residentsEast Branch Portage River (via 6 storage reservoirs)
• Evergreen Poplar Village MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Fostoria Mobile Estates0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-24

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