Knox Township, Guernsey County

How Knox Township, Guernsey County began

Knox Township was organized in March 1819 out of parts of Westland and Wheeling townships, in the northwestern corner of Guernsey County. It has never held an incorporated town; residents historically traded in Cambridge and farmed the hill land drained by Indian Camp Run, a stream named for a Native encampment recorded there before white settlement. Early arrivals in the 1810s and 1820s came mostly from Ireland, Scotland and Pennsylvania, and Abraham Armstrong's grist mill, built in 1815 and twice rebuilt, was among the township's first pieces of industry. Today the township is still open farm and woodland, its best-known landmark the 1855 Indian Camp Covered Bridge over the run that gave it its name.

Settled 1813 (Abraham Armstrong family), incorporated organized as a township, March 1819, from Westland and Wheeling townships.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains the township's name; the 1911 county history gives the organization date and boundaries but not a naming rationale.

Before the town

Indian Camp Run, the stream that crosses the township and gives its name to the township's covered bridge, is recorded in county-history sources as the site of one of at least five Native towns identified within Guernsey County before white settlement, alongside Old Town (above Byesville), a town at the Fish Basket north of Cambridge, one on Salt Fork Creek, and one on Bird's Run. The Delaware, Shawnee, Seneca and Mingo people who fished the county's streams are named as the residents of these camps; no source gives a specific date, population or named leader for the Indian Camp Run site itself.

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

• Indian Camp Run town site (camp) — along Indian Camp Run, Knox Township, pre-1800s (undated) (ohiogenealogy.org)

Timeline

1. 1813 — The Abraham Armstrong family moved to Knox Township in the autumn.
2. 1815 — Abraham Armstrong built the township's grist mill; it was rebuilt twice in the years after.
3. 1818 — James Black emigrated from Ireland and settled in the township.
4. 1819 — Knox Township was organized in March, formed from parts of Westland and Wheeling townships as a five-mile-square civil precinct.
5. 1819 — John Clark arrived with his six children and settled in the township.
6. 1826 — William Addy settled in Knox Township.
7. 1855 — The Indian Camp Covered Bridge, a multiple-kingpost structure about 36 feet long, was built over Indian Camp Run.
8. 1853 — George Swan immigrated from Scotland and later settled in the township.

Stories

The bridge over the Indian camp

The stream that crosses the northwest corner of Guernsey County was already known as Indian Camp Run when the surveyors platted Knox Township in 1819, a name that county historians trace to one of the Native towns recorded along Guernsey County's streams before white settlement, alongside camps at Old Town, the Fish Basket, Salt Fork Creek and Bird's Run. In 1855 the township built a modest multiple-kingpost covered bridge across the run, about 36 feet long, to carry the local road. It survives today as Knox Township's best-known landmark, carrying the name of the people who camped there long before the bridge, the mill or the township itself existed.

A mill rebuilt twice

Abraham Armstrong moved his family to Knox Township in the fall of 1813, six years before the township was formally organized, and by 1815 had a grist mill running on his land. The mill was rebuilt twice over the following decades, evidence of both wear and continued demand in a township that never had a platted town of its own; farmers here ground their grain locally and carried what else they needed the several miles into Cambridge.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · ohiogenealogy.org · structurae.net · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Cambridge, City Of74% of residentsWills Creek via Cambridge Reservoir + Wills Creek direct intake
• New Concord15% of residentsFox Creek via New Concord reservoirs (Upper & main reservoir)
• Western Guernsey Regional Water District5% of residentsWills Creek via Cambridge Reservoir + Wills Creek direct intake
• Byesville3% of residentslocal wells (mine-pool/groundwater under influence of surface water)
• Guernsey Co. Water Dept.3% of residentsWills Creek via Cambridge Reservoir + Wills Creek direct intake
• Muskingum County Water - Se0% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-26

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