Lodi Township, Athens County

How Lodi Township, Athens County began

Lodi Township, in southern Athens County along the Shade River, was originally part of Alexander Township; its eastern half briefly belonged to Carthage Township before Lodi was separately organized in April 1826, with only fourteen votes cast at its first township election. Joseph Thompson, its earliest settler, built the township's first flouring mill about 1815; before that, residents traveled more than fifteen miles to Coolville to have grain ground. It has stayed rural and thinly settled, its small crossroads communities of Anthony, Garden and Shade never growing into incorporated villages. The township's best-known landmark is the Blackwood Covered Bridge, built in 1881 over the Shade River and named for the Blackwood family, who owned much of the township's land. The area remains agricultural and wooded, with a 2020 population of 1,419.

Settled 1815 (Joseph Thompson, the township's first known settler, arrives and builds its first flouring mill), incorporated 1826-04, by separately organized from Alexander and Carthage townships in April 1826; only fourteen votes cast at the first township election, spring 1827.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted records why the township took the name Lodi (a name also used by townships elsewhere in Ohio and the Midwest, sometimes after Lodi, Italy, site of an 1796 Napoleonic battle, but that connection is not documented for this township specifically).

Before the town

No source consulted records a Native village, trail, mound or treaty boundary specific to Lodi Township. The township lies in the Ohio Company Purchase (1787) in the Hocking River watershed; the Hocking River's name itself derives from a Native word ('Hokhokken'/'Hokhochen', roughly 'bottle-shaped'), and the Shawnee are recorded elsewhere as having known and named the river, which places the wider valley within Shawnee-traveled country, but nothing township-specific has been found.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Joseph Thompson, one of the earliest settlers in what becomes Lodi Township, builds the township's first flouring mill; before this, residents traveled to Coolville, more than fifteen miles off, to have their grain ground.
2. 1820 — The first religious society in Lodi, a Methodist congregation, is organized under the Rev. Goddard Curtis; for years it worships in a small schoolhouse on the Shade River.
3. 1825 — Ezra Miller builds Lodi's second flouring mill, a small operation that later disappears.
4. 1826-04 — Lodi Township was organized in Athens County, separately from Alexander and Carthage.
5. 1867 — Citizens build the two-story Pleasant Valley Seminary at Shade post office by voluntary subscription, at a cost of $2,000; Joseph Cremer's $500 gift is the largest single donation. It opens that December under teacher Daniel D. Clark, an Ohio University graduate.
6. 1881 — The Blackwood Covered Bridge was built over the Shade River in southern Lodi Township, on what is now Blackwood Road (County Road 46), about 10 miles southeast of Athens.
7. 1978 — The Blackwood Covered Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places (June 23, 1978, reference 78002004).

Stories

The Blackwood Covered Bridge

In southern Lodi Township, Blackwood Road crosses the Shade River on a single-span king-post-truss covered bridge built in 1881. It is named for the Blackwood family, who owned much of the land in Lodi Township in the nineteenth century. The bridge has vertical, high-boarded siding, a metal roof, projected portals, and cut-stone abutments, and it still carries traffic on its original site. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, one of Athens County's handful of surviving nineteenth-century covered bridges that once linked its scattered rural townships across the county's many creeks.

A bear in the rocks: Joseph Bobo's Lodi

Joseph Bobo, born in 1802 near Athens to Virginia-born parents, moved with his family to Lodi Township in 1810, when he was eight years old and, by his own account, Joseph Thompson was the only other person living in the township. As a teenager he walked fifteen miles to a mill at Coolville to have grain ground, and once made a seventy-mile round trip by water — down the Hocking to the Ohio, up the Ohio to Marietta, then up the Muskingum to a horse mill — carrying his sack home on his shoulder from Athens, which locals then still called 'the point.' Deer, bears, turkeys, elk and even a few buffalo remained in the woods; Bobo's father, Henry, was a noted hunter who once cornered a bear in a rock cave with George Shidler. The bear knocked the torch from his hand in the dark, and when Henry Bobo went back in and fired, only wounding it, the animal charged straight over him as he lay flat on the cave floor, tearing his clothes and clawing his back badly enough to leave scars he carried the rest of his life; Shidler, waiting at the mouth of the hole, finished the 390-pound bear as it emerged. Joseph himself once killed three deer from a single spot behind a tree, reloading as fast as he could fire, and remembered his younger brother Thomas killing twelve deer the year he turned twelve. He recalled the last buffalo seen in the region being wounded in neighboring Bedford Township, Meigs County, in 1815.

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

Every historic place in Athens County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Athens98% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Le-ax Regional Water District1% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (horizontal collector wells)
• Athens Co., the Plains S.d. 10% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 6 of 6 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 2025-07-15

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