Lawrence Township, Tuscarawas County

• Zoar VillageGerman Separatists from Wurttemberg founded Zoar in 1817 and held all property in common from 1819 until members voted to divide it in 1898.

How Lawrence Township, Tuscarawas County began

Lawrence Township is the northernmost township in Tuscarawas County, a 26.6-square-mile block of the Tuscarawas River valley that holds two of the county's most distinctive places: Fort Laurens, the only Revolutionary War-era fortification built within Ohio's present borders, and the village of Zoar, the communal settlement of German Separatist Pietists founded in 1817. The township's first American settlement, Lawrenceville, was laid out by Abraham Mosser in 1805 across the river from what became Bolivar, itself platted in 1830 and named for the South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar. The Ohio and Erie Canal, cut through the township in the late 1820s, tied both Bolivar and Zoar to wider commerce and, in Zoar's case, paid off the Separatists' land debt. Today the township holds the villages of Bolivar and Zoar, the unincorporated place of Wilkshire Hills between them, and two state historic sites — Fort Laurens and the Zoar Historic District — that are among the most visited and documented in the county.

Settled 1752 (Shingas Town, Delaware settlement, precise site uncertain); 1805 (Lawrenceville, by Abraham Mosser, opposite Bolivar), platted 1830 (Bolivar); 1817 (Zoar, as a communal village, not platted as a conventional town), by Abraham Mosser (Lawrenceville, 1805); unnamed proprietors (Bolivar, 1830); Joseph Bimeler and the Society of Separatists of Zoar (Zoar, 1817).

Where the name comes from

No source we consulted gives a documented origin for the township's own name 'Lawrence'; Ohio has several townships of that name (also in Lawrence, Stark, and Washington counties), and none of the sources we used tie this one to a specific person. Bolivar, the township's northern village, was named for Simon Bolivar, the South American independence leader, reflecting the wave of American sympathy for Latin American independence movements in the 1820s. Zoar took its name from the Book of Genesis: the small town Lot fled to when Sodom was destroyed, chosen by the Separatists as a name for the refuge they had built after fleeing religious persecution in Wurttemberg.

Before the town

The land that became Lawrence Township was Delaware (Lenape) country in the mid-18th century. In 1752 the Delaware leader Shingas — a war chief allied at times with the French and later a signatory of peace efforts with the British — established a settlement remembered as Shingas Town at or near the site later occupied by Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas River; the precise location and duration of Shingas Town are not detailed in the general sources consulted here, and it predates and is distinct from the Moravian Delaware mission towns (Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten) in the townships to the south. The township's one specific, well-documented Native military engagement is the siege of Fort Laurens: on February 22, 1779, a force of roughly 180 Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) and Wyandot warriors, together with British regulars under Captain Henry Bird, attacked the fort's garrison, killing and scalping 17 soldiers and taking two prisoner in the fort's bloodiest single action of the war; the siege that followed lasted into the spring, starving the garrison down to eating boiled rawhide before it was lifted. Aside from Shingas Town and the Fort Laurens siege, no other site-specific Native villages, trails, mounds, or burial sites within Lawrence Township are documented in the sources consulted.

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

• Shingas Town (village) — at or near the later site of Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas River, present Bolivar, 1752 (en.wikipedia.org)
• Fort Laurens siege (battle) — Fort Laurens, west bank of the Tuscarawas River near present Bolivar, February 22 - late March/early April 1779 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1752 — The Delaware leader Shingas establishes Shingas Town on the Tuscarawas River at or near the future site of Fort Laurens.
2. 1778 — Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh leads a force of about 1,200 Continental and militia troops to build Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas River, completing it that fall; it is named for Henry Laurens, president of the Continental Congress, and garrisoned by Colonel John Gibson with 19 officers and 152 men of the 13th Virginia Regiment when McIntosh withdraws to Pittsburgh for lack of supplies.
3. 1779 — On February 22, roughly 180 Mingo and Wyandot warriors and British regulars under Captain Henry Bird attack near Fort Laurens, killing and scalping 17 soldiers and taking two prisoner, then besiege the fort for about a month before it is relieved; the garrison, reduced to eating boiled rawhide, is ordered abandoned that August by Colonel Daniel Brodhead.
4. 1805 — Abraham Mosser founds Lawrenceville opposite the future site of Bolivar on the Tuscarawas River, the township's first American settlement.
5. 1817 — German Separatist Pietists led by Joseph Bimeler, having fled religious persecution in Wurttemberg, buy roughly 5,500 acres on the Tuscarawas River and found the communal village of Zoar.
6. 1825-1830 — The Zoar Separatists dig their section of the Ohio and Erie Canal by hand under contract with the state, earning about $21,000 that lets them pay off their land debt ahead of schedule.
7. 1830 — Bolivar is platted along the Ohio and Erie Canal on the Tuscarawas River and named for the South American independence leader Simon Bolivar.
8. 1853 — Zoar's founding leader Joseph Bimeler dies, beginning the Society's slow decline.
9. 1898 — The Society of Separatists of Zoar votes to dissolve and divides its communal property, worth roughly $1 million at its peak of more than 10,000 acres, among the remaining members.
10. 1969 — The Zoar Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
11. 1970 — Fort Laurens is added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 10.
12. 1972-1973 — Archaeological excavation at the Fort Laurens site uncovers the fort's outline and an associated cemetery.
13. 1986-1987 — The remains of soldiers killed in the February 1779 attack near Fort Laurens are recovered and reinterred beneath the site's Tomb of the Unknown Patriot of the American Revolution.
14. 2016 — The Zoar Historic District is redesignated a National Historic Landmark District.

Stories

The siege of Fort Laurens

Fort Laurens went up in the fall of 1778 on the west bank of the Tuscarawas River, the farthest-forward American post on the Ohio frontier and, as it turned out, the only fort the Continental Army ever built within what are now Ohio's borders. General Lachlan McIntosh had marched roughly 1,200 men out to build it as a stepping stone toward an attack on British-held Detroit, then pulled most of them back to Pittsburgh when supplies ran short, leaving Colonel John Gibson and about 170 men of the 13th Virginia Regiment to hold it through the winter. On February 22, 1779, a force of about 180 Mingo and Wyandot warriors together with British regulars under Captain Henry Bird struck near the fort, killing and scalping 17 soldiers and capturing two more — the worst single loss the garrison suffered. What followed was not a quick assault but a monthlong siege that starved the men inside; by the accounts that survive, they were reduced to boiling strips of old dried hides for food before the siege broke. The Continental Army judged the outpost not worth the cost of supplying it and ordered it abandoned that August. Part of the fort was later demolished when the Ohio and Erie Canal was built, but the outline of the fort was traced again by archaeologists in 1972-73, and in the 1980s the remains of soldiers killed in that February attack were found and reburied under a monument the site now calls the Tomb of the Unknown Patriot of the American Revolution.

Zoar digs its own canal

When the Society of Separatists of Zoar settled their 5,500 acres on the Tuscarawas River in 1817, they were a small, poor, and unpopular group of German dissenters. Ten years later the state of Ohio needed their stretch of riverbank for the Ohio and Erie Canal and gave them a choice: let outside contractors dig it, or take the contract themselves. The Separatists dug it, working their own land under Joseph Bimeler's direction through the second half of the 1820s, and came out the other side with about $21,000 in wages — enough to pay off the debt on their land years ahead of schedule. The canal that might have simply cut through their village instead became the thing that saved it, and by the 1850s, with Bimeler still at the helm, the Society owned more than 10,000 acres worth close to a million dollars. It did not survive him: he died in 1853, and by 1898 the remaining members voted to dissolve the common ownership and split the property among themselves. The village they built, preserved rather than plowed under by that late-19th-century breakup, is a National Historic Landmark District today.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · ohiohistory.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Tuscarawas County on the full map

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Tcmsd-wilkshire Hills64% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Bolivar Village22% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Dover City12% of residentsSugar Creek Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (Dover wellfield)
• Strasburg Village3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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