Jefferson Township, Greene County

How Jefferson Township, Greene County began

Jefferson Township, in the southeastern corner of Greene County, is the last of the county's townships to be organized (June 7, 1858) and lies wholly within the Virginia Military District. Christopher Hussey of Tennessee came in 1806 and Robert Stewart in 1810, in what was then Caesarscreek and, after 1811, Silvercreek Township. Peter Bowermaster's store and post office (1848) gave the village of Bowersville, surveyed in April 1848 by the county surveyor Samuel T. Owens, its name, and he is said to have suggested the name Jefferson for a township that Bowersville's citizens petitioned for in 1858. The narrow-gauge 'Grasshopper' railroad reached Bowersville in the late 1870s and was dismantled early in the 1880s. The township had 1,643 residents in 1880 and 1,119 in 2020.

Settled 1806 (Christopher Hussey, first permanent settler), platted Bowersville surveyed April 6-7, 1848, by Samuel T. Owens (26 lots on Hussey's land), incorporated June 7, 1858 (set off from Silvercreek Township on petition), by Greene County commissioners, on the petition of Elijah Husey, George Hutcheson and 136 others of Bowersville precinct.

Where the name comes from

The commissioners' order of June 7, 1858 gave the new township 'the name and style of Jefferson Township.' Broadstone's 1918 county history says the name 'is said to have been the suggestion of Peter Bowermaster, a disciple of Thomas Jefferson,' and the township's own history page repeats it; Wikipedia says only that it is named for Thomas Jefferson. The village of Bowersville was named for Bowermaster, its first business man and postmaster.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or trail within Jefferson Township is recorded in the county histories read. Dills's 1881 chapter opens with a surveyor's letter of April 26, 1786, from John Martin to Nathaniel Massie, which directs surveys of entries near 'Logan's old camp, on Bird's trace,' where, Martin writes, one camp was made 'on the first campaign, in the year '80, and the other the next campaign,' presumably the Kentucky militia expeditions into the Shawnee country; the letter also mentions a buffalo trace. Pioneer Aquilla Dorsey (born 1789) told Dills he saw his captain, Arthur Thomas, killed by Indians in a skirmish with a scouting party in the War of 1812. The township lies wholly in the Virginia Military District, in land the Treaty of Greenville (1795) had cleared; elsewhere in Greene County lie the Shawnee town of Old Chillicothe and the Adena and Hopewell works.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. April 26, 1786 — John Martin writes from Hanging Fork to Nathaniel Massie instructing him to survey entries including one at 'Logan's old camp, on Bird's trace,' a letter Dills prints to introduce the township's history.
2. May 10, 1803 — When Greene County is divided into townships, the land is part of Caesarscreek Township.
3. 1806 — Christopher Hussey, a native of Tennessee, becomes the first permanent settler, near the future Bowersville, in a round log hut; his son-in-law John Mickle follows and is the pioneer schoolmaster.
4. March 11, 1810 — Robert Stewart and his wife and five children arrive from Washington County, Virginia, crossing the Ohio at Limestone, and settle a mile southwest of Bowersville; in 1812 he builds a hewed-log house.
5. March 4, 1811 — Silvercreek Township is organized and takes in the territory; by the end of the War of 1812 nearly a hundred families live in what becomes Jefferson Township.
6. 1813-1814 — The first school is held in a log cabin with a puncheon floor and greased-paper windows at Bowersville, John Mickle teaching from Webster's Reader and Spelling Book.
7. 1829 — A Protestant Methodist camp-meeting at Port William in Clinton County, the first in the region, leads converts to build a church near John Ross's on the Jamestown road, later moved to Bowersville.
8. about 1845 — Joseph Smith and Christopher Hussey erect the first steam saw-mill at Bowersville, a whip-saw upright mill; the Methodist Episcopal society organizes about now at Haughey's school house.
9. December 23, 1847 — Peter Bowermaster applies for a post office; he receives his commission as postmaster on February 12, 1848, when the Bowersville office opens.
10. April 6, 1848 — Samuel T. Owens, county surveyor, surveys Bowersville on ten acres of Christopher Hussey's land with 26 lots; Hussey sells the lots for $40 to $60 each.
11. 1851 — The Protestant Methodist (June) and Christian or Campbellite (November 23) congregations of Bowersville are organized, each building a frame church.
12. June 7, 1858 — The county commissioners set off Jefferson Township, the last in the county, on a petition of Elijah Husey, George Hutcheson and 136 other residents of Bowersville precinct, Silvercreek Township.
13. November 3, 1859 — Peter Bowermaster dies after serving as postmaster; his son Reason A. receives the commission December 12.
14. 1866 — Bowersville gets a school building; a separate district for the township's Black youth is arranged in 1864 and 1866-67.
15. 1873 — Pleasant Grange No. 28 (March 21) and Otto Lodge No. 559, Odd Fellows (September 23), are organized at Bowersville; the lodge builds a $1,000 hall.
16. late 1870s — The narrow-gauge Columbus, Washington & Cincinnati ('Grasshopper') railroad is completed through the township from Allentown to New Burlington, twenty miles; it is dismantled in the early 1880s.
17. 1880 — The township has 1,643 residents and Bowersville about 300; the village has three general stores, two physicians and two lawyers.
18. 1894 — A standard-gauge railroad reopens the line and Harrison & Snyder build Bowersville's first grain elevator; the Bowersville Bank is founded the next year, and an elevator burns in 1894 and again on August 2, 1906.
19. 1916 — A new school building, 'one of the finest in the state,' is completed; the township had 966 residents in 1910.
20. 2020 — The census counts 1,119 residents in the township.

Stories

Peter Bowermaster's two namesakes

Peter Bowermaster, born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania in 1787, left his name on the township twice. He came to the site of Bowersville, in 1843 by Dills's account, kept a store, and applied for a post office on December 23, 1847; the commission, dated February 12, 1848, made him postmaster, a post he held until he died in 1859. That April Samuel T. Owens, the county surveyor, laid out a village of twenty-six lots on ten acres of Christopher Hussey's land, with Bowermaster's son Reason as one of the chain carriers, and the village was named for the storekeeper. When its citizens petitioned in 1858 to leave Silvercreek Township, the new township was named Jefferson, the name said to have been Bowermaster's suggestion, since he was a disciple of Thomas Jefferson. Dills and Broadstone differ on his arrival: Dills says the family left Pennsylvania for Ohio in 1839 and came to the site in 1843, Broadstone that he had lived in Greene County since 1810 and served in the War of 1812.

The Grasshopper railroad

In the 1870s Bowersville boomed in expectation of a railroad, a direct line from Columbus to Cincinnati. The narrow-gauge Columbus, Washington & Cincinnati, called the 'Grasshopper,' was in fact finished only from Allentown in Fayette County to New Burlington in Clinton County, twenty miles, which gave Bowersville an outlet for its grain and a daily mail but never reached either city. The road was dismantled in the early 1880s, and from then until 1894 the village had no railroad at all. When standard-gauge track was laid in 1894 grain elevators appeared and a bank followed, though the first elevator burned within months and the second was destroyed by fire on August 2, 1906. By 1918 the line ran about three freight trains a week.

David Ervin at Andersonville

David Ervin, a Jefferson Township man who later served as Esq., told Dills's writer, reluctantly, that his story 'seems so exaggerated that no one will believe it.' Captured at Chickamauga on September 20, 1863, he weighed 150 pounds and was healthy; in fourteen months of prison life he never had enough food, in Richmond receiving a pint of black-pea soup a day and two ounces of bread. At Danville, in the winter, prisoners were without coats and fire, with one thin blanket among three men. At Andersonville, where one hundred and eighty to one hundred and ninety died each day, he saw prisoners shot for crossing the dead line, one of them a man smoking his pipe fifty yards inside it, and said the sand of the stockade was alive with lice.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Jamestown Village84% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Sabina Village14% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Bowersville Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Western Water Company1% of residentsLittle Miami River valley wells (51%) plus Cincinnati Ohio River water (49%)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-11

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