Jefferson Township, Ross County

How Jefferson Township, Ross County began

Jefferson Township occupies the southeast corner of Ross County, with the Scioto River forming its western boundary; it includes the unincorporated community of Richmond Dale. It was one of the county's original townships, organized about the start of the nineteenth century, before losing territory in 1812 to the newly formed Harrison Township. Jacob Groninger, arriving in 1798, and Anthony Rittenour, who arrived the same year and whose descendants stayed in the township for generations, are its earliest recorded settlers.

Settled 1798, by Jacob Groninger and Anthony Rittenour (earliest recorded settlers).

Where the name comes from

The township is named for Thomas Jefferson; the sources checked do not give the year or the vote that fixed the name.

Before the town

No mound, village or trail specific to Jefferson Township was found in the sources checked. The Scioto River, which forms the township's western boundary, was a major native travel corridor for the historic Shawnee and for the Adena and Hopewell mound-building cultures before them; the county's dense earthwork record lies mostly along the river closer to Chillicothe, north of the township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1798 — Jacob Groninger settles in what becomes Jefferson Township, the earliest settler on record there.
2. 1798 — Anthony Rittenour, after a decades-long journey from Rockingham County, Virginia by way of Pennsylvania, makes an overland trip with his wife and children to Jefferson Township and secures a tract of government land there.
3. 1799 — Anthony Rittenour, having cleared land with his sons' help, replaces the family's log cabin with a substantial stone house, which he occupies until his death.
4. 1811 — Richmond Dale, in Jefferson Township, is laid out as a planned community along what became U.S. Route 35 southeast of Chillicothe.
5. 1812 — Jefferson Township is subdivided, with Harrison Township erected from territory it previously held.
6. 1814 — A post office named 'Richmond' opens to serve the settlement that becomes Richmond Dale.
7. 1825 — John Griffis establishes a tannery in the township and goes on to live more than fifty years at Richmond Dale.
8. 1829 — The Richmond post office and community are renamed Richmond Dale to remove a duplication with another Richmond, Ohio.
9. 1835 — Anthony Rittenour dies in Jefferson Township, having given an acre of his land for the Jefferson Township Cemetery and contributed liberally toward building the township's stone Methodist church.
10. 1840 — A blacksmith identified only as 'Grandfather Counts' sets up a shop at Richmond Dale; his son L. F. Counts later works that same shop as a blacksmith continuously for sixty-eight years, until his own death in 1916.

Stories

The township's first settlers

The 1880 Ross County history names Jacob Groninger as the first to settle in what became Jefferson Township, arriving in 1798, two years after Nathaniel Massie laid out Chillicothe downriver. He was followed over the next years by Henry Spangler, William Marsh, James O. Johnson, Isaac N. Johnson, A.F. Millart, Mark Snyder and Caleb B. Crull - a roster typical of the county's early settlement, families moving in along the Scioto in the decade after Ohio's first capital was founded. One of them, John Griffis, set up a tannery in 1825 and stayed on at Richmond Dale for more than fifty years, a long enough tenure that the tannery and the man became fixtures of the local landscape well into the township's second generation.

A stone house in the wilderness

Anthony Rittenour spent his whole life in Rockingham County, Virginia, apart from one year across the state line in Pennsylvania, before he loaded his wife and children into a wagon in 1798 and made the overland trip into what was then still the Northwest Territory. He staked a claim of government land in Jefferson Township, in country he later described as still in its virgin wildness, with deer, panthers and wolves in the forest and fish in every stream. He and his sons cleared enough ground to farm within a year, and by 1799 they had replaced their log cabin with a substantial stone house that Anthony occupied until his death in 1835. A devout Methodist, he gave an acre of his own land for the township's cemetery and helped pay for the stone church the congregation built; three generations of his descendants, including his great-grandson George C. Rittenour, who died in the township in 1915 at ninety, farmed and traded in and around Jefferson Township for more than a century after his arrival.

Sixty-eight years at one forge

A blacksmith remembered in family history only as 'Grandfather Counts' set up shop at Richmond Dale in 1840. His son, L. F. Counts, learned the trade there starting at age twelve and never left it: he worked that same forge as a blacksmith and general mechanic for sixty-eight straight years. He marked his eightieth birthday on January 7, 1916, and was back at work shoeing a horse the very next day; he died five months later, on June 12, 1916, still active almost to the end.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · mail.heritagepursuit.com · archive.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Eight wells in the buried Teays River Aquifer, in the Scioto valley north of Chillicothe The water here

• Ross County Water Co. Inc65% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Chillicothe City35% of residentsScioto Buried Valley Aquifer (Teays Valley system) wells
• Kingston Village0% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Public libraries (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-17

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