Jackson Township, Union County

How Jackson Township, Union County began

Jackson Township occupies the northeastern corner of Union County and was settled starting Christmas Day 1826, when Benjamin Carter's family arrived following a Wyandot trail that ran from Fulton Creek to Rush Creek. Ebenezer Cheney's arrival soon after led him to petition the county commissioners in 1829 to split the township off from the northern part of Leesburg Township. Its one platted community, Essex, was surveyed in 1836 with hopes of becoming a new county seat, a plan that never materialized, leaving it a small crossroads of stores, a school and a sawmill. The township remains rural and unincorporated to this day.

Settled 1826-12-25, incorporated 1829-03-03, by petitioned by Ebenezer Cheney to the Union County Commissioners.

Where the name comes from

Probably named, like dozens of other Ohio townships organized in this period, for President Andrew Jackson, though no source says so or gives a local reason for the choice.

Before the town

The county history names the Wyandots as the Indian people found here, who 'lingered hereabouts until 1833' along with other friendly tribes that visited them. Their former occupancy is shown by several burying grounds: six skeletons were dug up in 1834 from a gravel bed between the road and the creek on Jason Chapman's farm, where there were also signs of a regular camping ground, and a two-acre sand-and-gravel mound on the Joseph Cameron farm, later W. F. Cheney's, had served as a graveyard; skeletons, arrowheads and trinkets came out when the gravel was hauled away for roads and building. The first settlers, Benjamin Carter in 1826 and Ebenezer Cheney in 1827, followed an Indian trail from Fulton Creek north to Rush Creek that nearly followed the line of the later pike. The county history adds that many of the Indians had become Christians and that an Indian minister named Manonku camped in the woods after the others had gone and joined in a Methodist meeting.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot.

• Fulton Creek to Rush Creek trail (trail) — from Leesburg Township into Jackson Township, Union County, pre-1826 (in use when settlers arrived) (genealogytrails.com)
• Chapman farm burying ground and camping ground (burial) — gravel bed between the road and Rush Creek on Jason Chapman's farm, Jackson Township, before 1834 (archive.org)
• Cameron farm mound (mound) — farm settled by Joseph Cameron, later W. F. Cheney's, Jackson Township; about two acres of sand and gravel, undated; used as a burial ground (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1826-12-25 — Benjamin Carter and his family became the township's first settlers, arriving from south of Fulton Creek along a Wyandot trail leading to Rush Creek.
2. 1827 — Ebenezer Cheney, a Virginia-born hunter attracted by the wild game, and David S. Allen follow Carter to the township, coming by ox team up the Indian trail from Fulton Creek and cutting logs out of the way; Cheney killed hundreds of deer.
3. 1829-03-03 — Ebenezer Cheney successfully petitioned the Union County Commissioners to create Jackson Township from the northern part of Leesburg Township.
4. 1829-06-16 — After the commissioners reconsider the order on June 3, Jackson Township is laid off with an election set for June 16; as first drawn it took in most of what became Claibourne Township and the Miller settlement in York.
5. 1832 — The township election is held at the house of David Carr; in 1838 the trustees are ordered to hold it at Michael Blue's, and from 1843 the Essex schoolhouse is the regular polling place.
6. 1833 — The Wyandots, by the county historian's account, linger in the township until about this year; in 1834 six skeletons are dug from a gravel bed on Jason Chapman's farm.
7. 1834 — The creation of Claibourne Township reduces Jackson to its present size.
8. 1836-09-02 — William C. Lawrence surveyed the village of Essex for proprietor John Cheney, on the east side of Rush Creek, in hopes it would become the seat of a proposed new county.
9. 1838 — The first cabin was built at Essex, two years after the town was platted.
10. 1840 — William Britt builds a small grist mill with a sawmill attachment on Rush Creek a mile below Essex; before that, families banded together to send four-horse wagons of grain thirty miles to a mill near Mechanicsburg.
11. 1848-07-13 — A post office named Rush Creek opened at Essex with Tabor Randall as the first postmaster.
12. 1869 — The post office at Woodland, a station on the New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio railroad in the eastern part of the township, opens April 27 with Henry Hazen as postmaster; it closes October 22, 1907.
13. 1877 — Essex held two stores, a schoolhouse and a sawmill.
14. 1882 — Woodland has a large planing mill run by Henry Hazen and about 125 residents; Essex is a trading point of about 100, with a flour and saw mill run in 1881 by W. A. Hall & Son.
15. 2020 — The census counts 954 people in the township.

Stories

A county seat that never was

William C. Lawrence surveyed Essex on September 2, 1836 for town proprietor John Cheney, on the east bank of Rush Creek in the middle of Jackson Township. The plat was drawn up in the hope that Ohio's legislature would carve a new county out of this corner of Union, Marion, Delaware and Logan counties, with Essex serving as its seat of justice. The new-county scheme fell through, and with it the reason for anyone to hurry to Essex: the first cabin in the platted town was not built until 1838, two years after the survey. Essex settled into life as an ordinary rural crossroads instead, getting its own post office (named Rush Creek) in 1848 and, by 1877, two stores, a schoolhouse and a sawmill to serve the farms around it.

The Wyandot who climbed the bee tree

The Wyandots were expert bee-hunters, according to the county history. Ebenezer Cheney found a large bee tree with the hive in an upper limb of a giant oak, out of reach without chopping the tree down, which was the white hunter's usual course. While he stood deciding whether the honey was worth it, an Indian hunter came up and offered to get it for him. He drew his tomahawk, felled a sapling so its top lay against the lower branches of the oak, climbed it, trimmed a limb with a hook at one end, hooked it into a branch overhead and went up hand over hand. Then he cut off the branch with the honey, balanced, leaped down to the lower limb and came down the same way. Another story in the same account tells how an Indian traded his cotton shawl at the Cheney cabin for a gun-lock to replace a lost one, then came back from hunting and, finding only Miss Cheney at home, simply threw the lock down, took the shawl off the wall and walked out, with the family dogs sent after him until the boys in the field called them off.

Mills thirty miles away

Jackson Township was settled later than any other in Union County, and for years it had no mill. Families banded together to send a four-horse wagon of grain to a mill near Mechanicsburg, thirty miles off, and later the closest water mill was sixteen miles away on the Scioto. Wheat brought sixty to seventy cents a bushel and was hauled to Portland on Lake Erie, forty bushels to a load, a week for the round trip. Between times the settlers made meal at home with 'corn-crackers.' William Britt built the first grist mill in 1840 on Rush Creek, and John B. Stout's steam sawmill at Essex was later sold to Sprague & Haynes, who added a distillery.

Local history sources: genealogytrails.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · uccogs.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Richwood Village96% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Marion4% of residentsScioto River and Little Scioto River intakes, blended with local groundwater wells

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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-18

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