Jackson Township, Wood County

How Jackson Township, Wood County began

Jackson Township was settled in April 1835 by John Dubbs, who moved into shanties an Ottawa family had just vacated on Section 1, and organized on June 1, 1840, in the southwestern corner of Wood County, where the county line meets Hancock, Putnam and Henry counties. Its pioneer voters gave it Andrew Jackson's name by unanimous acclaim at their first town meeting. It holds the village of Hoytville in its southeast and remains, at 19.2 people per square mile, one of the county's most sparsely populated townships.

Settled April 1835, by John Dubbs, incorporated township established June 1, 1840, by Wood County commissioners.

Where the name comes from

Jackson Township was named for Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1837); Ohio has thirty-seven Jackson Townships statewide. The 1897 county history preserves the specific story behind the choice: at the township's first celebration after its officers were elected, the pioneers raised a hickory pole, had the Declaration of Independence read aloud, and after a speech and dinner voted to recommend the name Jackson 'for the reason that every voter had voted for Jackson' -- a unanimous political preference turned directly into a place name.

Before the town

One site-specific record: when John Dubbs entered his land on Section 1 in 1834, it was occupied by several families of Ottawa who lived in shanties there. When Dubbs arrived in April 1835 he moved his family into one of those shanties and used another for a stable until he built a log house that autumn. No mound or earthwork is recorded in the township. The land was Ottawa hunting ground until the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa.

• Ottawa shanties on John Dubbs's land (camp) — Section 1, southwest quarter, Jackson Township, 1834-1835 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1819 — The exterior lines of the township are surveyed; the section lines follow in 1821.
2. 1834-12-04 — John Dubbs enters the southwest quarter of Section 1, where several Ottawa families were living in shanties.
3. 1835 (fall) — Three more families -- Samuel Bowman, Nicholas Crist and the widow Crist -- settle near what becomes Hoytville.
4. 1835-04 — John Dubbs becomes the township's first settler, moving onto Section 1 land that, when he had entered it the year before, was still occupied by several families of Ottawa people living in shanties; Dubbs moved into one of the vacated shanties himself before building a log house that fall.
5. 1836 — Peter Hockenberry, the great hunter, settles in the spring; he is said to have taken $400 worth of skins on one ox-cart load.
6. 1836-1839 — Edward Rowan, from Maumee, digs about three miles of the Duncan and Gibson ditch, the first in southwest Wood County, 16 feet wide and 3 deep, at 16 cents a yard; it has no outlet and overflows.
7. 1837-04 — A settler named Simmons, leasing land from John Dubbs, is killed by his own wife in a fit of derangement; a coroner's jury finds her insane and she is committed to the state asylum, where she dies about a year later.
8. 1840 — The census counts 26 residents; it counts 74 in 1850 and 144 in 1860.
9. 1840-06-01 — Jackson Township is established by the county commissioners, and named for Andrew Jackson after a unanimous vote of its pioneer electors.
10. 1840-07-04 — At the first town meeting, held at John Dubbs's house on Independence Day, the voters raise a hickory pole, hear the Declaration of Independence and agree to call the township Jackson because every voter had voted for him.
11. 1842-10-20 — The first school census, signed by clerk John Bowman, finds no schoolhouse yet built in the township.
12. 1844-05 — Samuel Bowman Sr. is elected justice of the peace by the ten voters present, one of them his own.
13. 1868 (about) — A post office named Farnham opens in the township's northwestern corner; Joseph Durliat runs it until his death on September 20, 1889, when it is discontinued.
14. 1870 — The census counts 347 residents; the count reaches 1,028 by 1880 and 1,587 by 1890.
15. 1873 — Hoytville is surveyed by W. H. Wood for G. B. Mills and William Hoyt in anticipation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
16. 1886-12-06 — The county commissioners grant the second petition to incorporate Hoytville, after a first petition on September 6 drew a remonstrance of 47 residents.
17. 2020 — The census finds 702 people living in the township.

Stories

The lost Frankfather girl, found in Dubbs' potato field

One morning in late 1835, the family of pioneer John Dubbs found a young girl wandering into their potato field around eight o'clock -- exhausted, half-starved, and unable to say clearly where she had come from. She was Mary Frankfather, four and a half years old, who had wandered away from her family's cabin in neighboring Bloom Township eleven days earlier and survived alone in the forest on nuts and berries; a search of hundreds of volunteers had combed the woods for her without success. The Dubbs children, out digging potatoes, spotted her first and brought her to the house, where the family had to carefully restrain her from eating too much too quickly after so long without food. A messenger rode to Bloom Township that same day to tell her father, Frederick Frankfather, who arrived at the Dubbs place that evening, broke down in tears at the sight of his daughter, and then ran the roughly ten miles home through pathless wilderness carrying her in his arms.

Peter Hockenberry's buried gold

Peter Hockenberry, who came in the spring of 1836, was Jackson Township's great hunter: on a single ox-cart he is said to have hauled as much as $400 worth of bear, deer, wolf, fox, wildcat, coon and mink skins, all of his own killing. He was a very eccentric man; he had a wife but no children, and died in the 1870s at McComb, Hancock County, aged 85. Shortly before his death he told his attendants that he had buried over $1,000 in gold and silver in the roots of a large oak on his Jackson Township farm, but he could not describe the place well enough for them to find it. Considerable search was made, the 1897 county history says, without result.

A township named by a Fourth of July toast to Jackson

The first town meeting of Jackson Township was held on Independence Day, 1840, at the house of John Dubbs, the few voters being the pioneers of T. 3 North, Range 9 East. After the officers were elected they raised a hickory pole, had the Declaration of Independence read, and heard a speech by Morrison McMillen of Milton. Dubbs furnished the dinner and Edward Rowan the old Monongahela whiskey. After dinner the votes were counted and Squire McMillen swore in the officers, and the voters agreed to recommend that the township be called Jackson, because every voter had voted for Jackson. The last of them, the Rev. J. B. Dunn, verified all the details for the county historian.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Deshler Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Cite this page