Madison Township, Fayette County

How Madison Township, Fayette County began

Madison Township, in the northeast corner of Fayette County against Madison and Pickaway counties, was one of the county's six original townships in 1810 and was halved in 1840, when its southern part became Marion Township. Samuel Myers settled on Deer Creek in 1807 and taught the first school in 1809; Virginians such as the Baldwins and Leavells and New Yorkers such as Colonel Joel Gregory followed, raising cattle for eastern markets. Its villages were Yankeetown, Waterloo - laid out by Isaiah Pancoast in 1816 and later called Pancoastburg - Madison Mills and White Oak. Jackson Mound, north of Pancoastburg, is Fayette County's only archaeological site on the National Register; the township had 1,233 people in 1910.

Settled 1807, incorporated 1810 (original township), by Samuel Myers (first settler).

Where the name comes from

The township is one of twenty Madison Townships in Ohio, part of a naming pattern (after James Madison) repeated across the state; no source gives a township-specific naming story.

Before the town

Nothing site-specific to a named village, trail, or treaty council is recorded for Madison Township beyond its one confirmed prehistoric feature. Jackson Mound, about 4 miles north of Pancoastburg on a terrace above a small stream, was surveyed in 1914 along with 41 other mounds then still visible in Fayette County; it is the only one that survived intact enough for National Register listing (1975), and it has never been excavated, so its builders are inferred rather than proven. Its shape and setting are consistent with Adena burial-mound practice (roughly 800 BC to AD 100). The land itself lay within the vast Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware (Lenape), Miami, Ottawa, and Seneca hunting and travel range of south-central Ohio before it was ceded to the United States; see the county-level file for the treaties that covered this ground. No named Native town, trail, or battle site within Madison Township specifically is documented in the sources we checked. The county histories add historic-era detail. Jerusha Pancoast, whose family settled on the west bank of Deer Creek in the spring of 1810, recalled that Indians camped on the opposite bank; the women traded venison for meal, and hunters floated deer they had killed down the creek to the camp. The 1872 pioneer record notes Indian paths up Deer Creek along the township's northeast side, arrowheads, axes, kettles and beads found on the creek's headwaters, and Indian graves on William Harrison's farm on the west side of the North Fork of Paint Creek, exposed by gravel diggers.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa, Adena culture.

• Jackson Mound (mound) — east of State Route 207, about 4 miles north of Pancoastburg, Madison Township, presumed Adena, c. 800 BC-AD 100 (unexcavated) (en.wikipedia.org)
• Indian camp opposite the Pancoast farm (camp) — east bank of Deer Creek, across from Isaiah Pancoast's 1810 homestead near Waterloo (Pancoastburg), historic, 1810 (archive.org)
• Indian graves on the William Harrison farm (burial) — west side of the North Fork of Paint Creek, William Harrison's farm, unknown (archive.org)
• Deer Creek trail (trail) — up Deer Creek along the northeast side of the township, historic (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1807 — In August Samuel Myers, from Botetourt County, Virginia, settles on Deer Creek near the mouth of Duff's Fork, next to the county's first survey, No. 463 (Thomas Overton).
2. 1809 — Samuel Myers teaches the township's first school, in a hut near the later site of Waterloo, walking two and a half miles each way.
3. 1810 — Fayette County organized from parts of Ross and Highland counties; Madison was one of the six original townships.
4. 1810 — In the spring Isaiah Pancoast's family, from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, settles on the west bank of Deer Creek, across from an Indian camp.
5. 1811 — John Baldwin, a Revolutionary militia captain who had spent his fortune paying his company, reaches his Virginia military grant, the Wallace-Baldwin survey No. 9721, on December 31.
6. 1813 — On July 17 John W. Loofbourrow organizes a Baptist society at Isaac Pancoast's house near the site of Waterloo, the first religious organization in the township.
7. 1815 — Colonel Joel (Johiel) Gregory moves his family from Athens County; his son Adley opens the township's first store at Yankeetown that year or earlier.
8. 1816 — Isaiah Pancoast and Jesse Woodson lay out Waterloo on June 20 on the Chillicothe-Urbana road; no lots sell until Pancoast resurveys it and holds a sale in September 1829.
9. 1817 — John Gilmore has built a water mill on Deer Creek a mile north of Waterloo; it later passes to Samuel Pancoast and then John Messmore.
10. 1822 — Samuel Pancoast starts a carding machine at Pancoastburg, which John Messmore later expands into a carding, spinning, fulling and weaving mill.
11. 1823 — The Pleasant Hill (Yankeetown) Methodist society, organized in 1817 by Henry B. Bascom, dedicates its hewed-log chapel, with 32 members.
12. 1840 — In June the commissioners divide the township on the householders' petition; the southern half becomes Marion Township.
13. 1857 — Elizabeth Andrews Gregory, who remembered the Boston Tea Party and Bunker Hill, dies at Yankeetown aged ninety-nine.
14. 1859 — William Harrison builds a large steam flouring mill, the Madison Mills, around which the hamlet of that name grows.
15. 1869 — Madison Chapel, organized in 1868, is dedicated December 19; it cost $2,459.73.
16. 1878 — Madison Grange No. 229 is organized November 27; its hall stands over a store at Madison Mills.
17. 1910 — Madison Township has 1,233 people; Pancoastburg (old Waterloo) about 250, Cook 70 and Madison Mills under 150.
18. 1914 — A county-wide survey recorded 42 mounds still visible in Fayette County; Jackson Mound in Madison Township is the only one that survives today.
19. 1975 — Jackson Mound was added to the National Register of Historic Places (reference 75001397), the county's only archaeological listing.

Stories

The last mound standing

In 1914 surveyors counted 42 Indian mounds still standing in Fayette County. A century of farming with heavier and heavier equipment leveled all but one. Jackson Mound, on a terrace above a small stream four miles north of Pancoastburg in Madison Township, kept enough of its original 75-foot diameter and 5.5-foot height to be recognized in 1975 as the county's only National Register archaeological site. It has never been excavated, so no one has confirmed what lies inside, but its siting on a high terrace above a small stream matches the burial mounds Adena people built elsewhere in the Scioto and Paint Creek valleys between about 800 BC and AD 100. It has not escaped the plow either: years of plowing in the farm field around it have damaged it, wearing down what was probably once a more conical mound.

Half a pig

Jerusha Pancoast came to Deer Creek in the spring of 1810 with her father, Isaiah Pancoast, from Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The family lived under wagon covers stretched on poles until they had cleared and planted seven acres of corn, and did their trading at Chillicothe; there was no family between them and Washington. Indians camped across the creek. The women came often to trade venison for meal, and the hunters floated the deer they killed down the creek to be dragged out and dressed at the camp. When the camp moved, a small pig was left behind; it wandered to the Pancoast place and was penned and raised. When one of the older men came back, her father showed him the grown hog and told him to take it; he killed and dressed it, left half hanging for the Pancoasts, and carried the other half to his camp.

Waterloo becomes Pancoastburg

Isaiah Pancoast and Jesse Woodson laid out a town called Waterloo on June 20, 1816, on the road from Chillicothe to Urbana, in the southeast corner of Madison Township. Not a lot sold, and only in 1829 did Pancoast have it resurveyed and hold a sale, at which eight or ten lots went. Nathan Loofbourrow built the first house after the resurvey and opened a store in it; John Messmore built a brick house in 1833 or 1834. Meanwhile Samuel Pancoast had started a carding machine there in 1822, and with a partner from Springfield and then Messmore it grew into a mill that carded, spun, fulled, dyed and wove wool, adding steam power in 1860. The family's name stuck: by 1914 the county history called the village 'Pancoastburg (old Waterloo),' with about 250 people.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · rrcs.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Mount Sterling Village46% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Washington Court House40% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells
• Village of Bloomingburg12% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Sunset Mobile Home Park2% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc0% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Fayette County - culpepper Subdivision0% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Mounds and earthworks (1)

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