Jefferson Township, Guernsey County

• Salt Fork LakeBuilt 1967 · 2,952 acres

How Jefferson Township, Guernsey County began

Jefferson Township was cut off from Madison Township and organized on June 3, 1816, a five-mile-square, twenty-five-section township in central Guernsey County that has never held an incorporated town or village. William Lautz and Martin Stull, who emigrated from Greene County, Pennsylvania in 1805, were its first settlers, taking up land on the military district lots more than a decade before formal organization. A Methodist Episcopal congregation organized by Rev. John Graham in 1824 met for sixteen years in settler William Allen's house before building its own church on his land in 1839, and Andrew Clark's combined grist and saw mill stood near the Sugar Tree Fork post office. With a 2020 population of 97, it is among the least populous townships in Ohio.

Settled 1805 (William Lautz and Martin Stull), incorporated organized as a township, June 3, 1816, cut off from Madison Township.

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Thomas Jefferson, one of twenty-four Jefferson Townships in Ohio; no source consulted gives a specific naming story beyond that common practice.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail or site specific to Jefferson Township was found in the sources checked. Sugar Tree Fork, the stream that crosses the township, is a headwater of Wills Creek, part of the watershed where Delaware, Shawnee, Seneca and Mingo people are recorded fishing and camping across Guernsey County generally; none of the five named Native towns recorded in county histories (Old Town, the Fish Basket, Salt Fork Creek, Indian Camp Run, Bird's Run) is placed within this township.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1805 — William Lautz and Martin Stull emigrated from Greene County, Pennsylvania and became the township's first actual settlers, on military land district lots.
2. 1806 — William Allen, who would later own 700 acres and host the township's first church meetings, and John Stiles both arrived in the township.
3. 1809 — John Bird and his family, and Adam Linn's family, settled in the township.
4. 1813 — George Linn settled in Jefferson Township after teaching school in Virginia.
5. 1816 — Jefferson Township was organized June 3, cut off from territory previously included in Madison Township.
6. 1824 — Rev. John Graham organized a Methodist Episcopal church with eight members, meeting at William Allen's house.
7. 1839 — The Methodist Episcopal congregation, after sixteen years meeting in Allen's house, built its own church on his land.
8. 1843 — Samuel Thomas, who had settled on Sugar Tree Fork after arriving from Pennsylvania in 1823, began operating a mill in the township.

Stories

Sixteen years in a settler's parlor

When Rev. John Graham organized Jefferson Township's first Methodist Episcopal congregation in 1824, it had only eight members and no building of its own. For sixteen years the small group met in the house of William Allen, one of the township's earliest and largest landholders with 700 acres, before finally raising a church of their own on his land in 1839. The long gap between organizing and building says something about how thin resources were in a five-mile-square farm township that, even by the 1880s, had never grown a village big enough to need one.

Cut from Madison, named for Jefferson

Jefferson Township did not exist as its own civil unit until June 3, 1816, when county commissioners cut it away from the larger Madison Township, which lies to its east. By then, William Lautz and Martin Stull, who had walked in from Greene County, Pennsylvania back in 1805, had already been farming military-district land there for over a decade, and families like the Birds, the Linns and the Stiles had followed them in. The organization simply caught up to a settlement that was already eleven years old.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · ohiogenealogy.org

Every historic place in Guernsey County on the full map

No water-system data is linked to Jefferson Township, Guernsey County's ZIP codes yet.

Bridges rated poor (1)

Public EV charging (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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-02-26

Cite this page