Macksburg

How Macksburg began

Macksburg grew up around the mills of Dr. John B. Regnier in northern Aurelius Township, and took its name from William W. Mackintosh, Regnier's son-in-law, who kept the village's first store there about 1827; it was never formally surveyed into lots. An 1859 well drilled by James Dutton and partners on Duck Creek below the village struck the first large paying oil well in Ohio, and a further strike on William Rayley's farm in 1860 helped found the Macksburg Oil Field, one of the state's earliest petroleum booms. Drilling peaked in 1886 and production had ceased entirely by 1900, but the boom briefly pushed the village's population to 533 in 1890. The 2020 census recorded just 120 residents in a village that now covers only 0.22 square miles.

Settled 1818-1820 (Regnier's mills and store); 1859-1860 (oil discoveries), by Dr. John B. Regnier (mills) and William W. Mackintosh (first store, namesake).

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history states plainly that the name Macksburg comes from William W. Mackintosh, Dr. John B. Regnier's son-in-law, who lived at the site and kept the village's first dry goods store there about 1827; the village grew up around him without ever being formally named or platted. Regnier, who owned the land, had intended to plat the town himself and open a drug store there, but died in 1821 before he could.

Before the town

No village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Macksburg is recorded; see the Washington County and Aurelius Township files for the broader picture in this part of the county. The 1881 county history explains the name of Indian Run, a stream in Aurelius Township: a tradition that three Indians on a trading trip went to Marietta, that one of them was last seen asking a white boy to ferry him across the Muskingum after boasting of killing the boy's father, and that his two companions left his utensils at their camp on the stream and blazed the trees on their way home; Squire Davis and Levi Dean later found the cooking utensils and a blanket, and the stream has been called Indian Run since.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Dr. John B. Regnier, a county commissioner from 1815 until his death, builds a road from the upper end of Lowell to Middleburg through the site of Macksburg.
2. 1818 — On December 15 the Washington County commissioners, on a petition headed by John S. Corp and Judah M. Chamberlain, establish Aurelius Township from territory Regnier had had transferred from Monroe County.
3. 1819 — Dr. Regnier obtains a post office for the neighbourhood and is its first postmaster, keeping it in his own house; his son Felix succeeds him.
4. 1827 — Regnier's son-in-law William W. Mackintosh keeps the first dry goods store, the first store of any kind in the township, at the future village.
5. 1859 — James Dutton, William Dutton, John Smithson, and Alden Warren drill the Dutton well on the bank of Duck Creek about a mile below Macksburg, striking the 'big vein' at fifty-six feet in October -- the first paying oil well in Washington County and the first large well in Ohio; the well itself later sold for one hundred thousand dollars.
6. 1859 — Aurelius Lodge of Free Masons, with headquarters at Macksburgh, is chartered in October after running for a couple of years under dispensation.
7. 1860 — Oil is discovered on William Rayley's farm, helping found the Macksburg Oil Field, one of Ohio's earliest.
8. 1873 — A post office named Macksburgh opens.
9. 1880 — On December 28 Z. O. Patton strikes oil at 500 feet near Macksburgh and is taking a hundred barrels a day; George Rice's 1,576-foot deep well yields seven or eight barrels a day of light oil.
10. 1880 — The census gives Macksburg 249 people; by 1900 the count is 448, and by 2020 it is 120.
11. 1881 — Macksburgh has about 300 inhabitants, a school-house, a Methodist church, a post office, three general stores, a shoe store, a blacksmith, the Ohio House hotel and two saloons, and is a station on the Marietta & Cleveland railroad.
12. 1886 — Drilling in the Macksburg Oil Field reaches its peak.
13. 1890 — The village's population peaks at 533 residents.
14. 1900 — Oil production in the Macksburg field ceases entirely.

Stories

Forty years from strike to silence

In 1860, only a year after Edwin Drake's famous Pennsylvania oil well launched the American petroleum industry, oil turned up on William Rayley's farm in what became Macksburg, opening one of Ohio's earliest oil fields. The strike drew drillers and workers fast enough to build a real village where none had been, and the field's fortunes tracked the boom-and-bust arc common to nineteenth-century oil country: drilling peaked in 1886, the population followed close behind at 533 residents in 1890, and by 1900 -- barely four decades after the first strike -- production had stopped entirely. Macksburg never grew back to its boomtown size; the 2020 census counted only 120 residents in a village now just a fifth of a square mile, a compact reminder of how quickly an oil boom could arrive in rural Washington County, and how completely it could leave.

The well that swam before it gushed

As a boy swimming in the holes of Duck Creek, James Dutton had noticed that jumping up and down in the water made oil rise and float on the surface -- a childhood observation that, decades later, set him thinking. In 1858-9 a salt driller named John McKee had struck a bubbling vein of oil near Caldwell and celebrated with a bonfire; word of it reached Dutton, who formed a partnership with William Dutton, John Smithson, and Alden Warren and began drilling on the right bank of Duck Creek about a mile below Macksburg. At twenty-eight feet they hit rock with oil in the crevices; working by hand through eight feet of rock they struck a second vein, and at fifty-six feet below the surface, in October 1859, they hit the 'big vein.' Hand pumping produced a stream 'as thick as my arm,' Dutton said, filling an eighty-barrel tank in half a day; for a year the oil sold at twenty-eight dollars a barrel, and the well itself eventually sold for one hundred thousand dollars. It was the first paying oil well in Washington County and the first large well in the state, and it touched off the furor of drilling and speculation that built Macksburg. James Dutton's boyhood nickname, 'Wolf' -- earned by killing a full-grown bear with a small tomahawk at age fourteen -- changed afterward to 'Oil' Dutton.

The doctor whose town was never platted

Macksburg owes its place to Dr. John B. Regnier, who came to the Duck Creek valley, built the first grist- and saw-mills, and was elected county commissioner in 1815. He got the territory of what became Aurelius Township taken from Monroe County and added to Washington, obtained the post office in 1819 (and kept it in his own house), built the road through the future village about 1815, and named the new township Aurelius, after a son; whether he took the name from the Roman emperor or from a friend or relation the county historian could not learn. He meant to plat Macksburgh and open a drug store there, but death intervened, and old citizens in 1881 still regarded his untimely death as a great misfortune for the village. His son-in-law, William W. Mackintosh, kept the first dry goods store about 1827, and the village that grew around it was never formally named or surveyed into lots until largely built; the name gradually came to it from Mackintosh. In 1881 it was, in the historian's words, essentially an oil place.

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

No water-system data is linked to Macksburg's ZIP codes yet.

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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