Madison Township, Perry County

How Madison Township, Perry County began

Madison Township forms the northeast corner of Perry County, bordering Licking and Muskingum counties, with Jonathan's Creek running through its center. It is one of the county's original townships, settled about 1800 by William Dusenbery, a New Jersey Revolutionary War veteran, and named for President James Madison. Its principal settlement is Mount Perry, which grew up around Hendricks's mill of about 1820, was laid out about 1828, and has had a post office since 1843; Sego, on the Zanesville-Somerset-Maysville pike (built 1839), had its own post office from the 1840s. The 1883 county history records a Dunker church about 1817, a Methodist class about 1818, and Madison Academy (1871), and Congressman Thomas Richey, who got Philip Sheridan his West Point appointment, farmed here. No village in the township ever incorporated.

Settled c. 1800 (William Dusenbery, at the junction of Jonathan's Creek and Turkey Run), platted c. 1828 (Mount Perry, first lots laid out by Nathan Melick), by William Dusenbery (first settler); Nathan Melick (Mount Perry lots).

Where the name comes from

Named for President James Madison, and organized soon after the county was formed in 1818; Madison is one of the original townships of Perry County. Ohio has twenty Madison Townships.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or treaty site specific to Madison Township is documented in the sources consulted. The 1883 Perry County history says there was no history or tradition of any permanent Indian town in the county, though Indians often camped on Sunday and Monday creeks and near the Great Swamp, and it notes an Indian trail that crossed the Muskingum at Zanesville and ran across Perry County to Standing Stone (Mount Pleasant), followed most of the way by Zane's Trace and 'not far from the line' of the Zanesville and Maysville Turnpike, which crosses Madison Township. The same history names the Shawnee, Delaware (Lenape) and Wyandot as the principal occupants of the county in the fifty years before settlement.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot.

• Indian trail to Standing Stone, along the line of the Zanesville-Somerset-Maysville pike (trail) — from the Muskingum at Zanesville across Perry County; the later pike crosses Madison Township, before white settlement (archive.org)

Timeline

1. c. 1800 — William Dusenbery, a Revolutionary War veteran from Sussex County, New Jersey, settles at the junction of Jonathan's Creek and Turkey Run, traditionally the first settler in Madison Township; his son Jonathan, lost while hunting turkey, gives Turkey Run its name.
2. 1804 — The Hammer family, Henry Flowers, the Ritcheys and the Williamses arrive in the township.
3. 1815 — James Richey, from Bedford County, Pennsylvania, settles on a Madison Township farm his wife Rachel Wilson had picked years earlier; their son Thomas becomes a general of militia and a member of Congress.
4. c. 1817 — The Dunker (Brethren) church is organized and builds a hewed-log church at or near Mount Perry; about 1832-38 the Dunkers sell it to the Methodists and move to Hopewell Township.
5. 1819-04-17 — The Bethel Methodist Episcopal class, begun about 1818 at Robinson Chilcote's house, gets a deed for two acres from Philip Miller and builds a hewed-log church that stands until 1838.
6. c. 1820 — Hendricks builds a water mill on Jonathan's Creek where Mount Perry now stands, one of the first water mills in Perry County, for sawing and grinding.
7. 1828 — Mount Perry, in the township's north end northeast of Somerset, is laid out.
8. 1828-08-17 — Bethel Church organizes its Sabbath school, with Vincent Kelley as the first superintendent.
9. 1838 — The Bethel Methodist church replaces its hewed-log building with a brick one.
10. 1839 — The Zanesville, Somerset and Maysville pike is built across the township.
11. 1843 — A post office named Mount Perry opens; it remains in operation as of this writing.
12. 1846 — William Curry builds a blacksmith shop on the new pike at Sego; a store and a woolen mill follow.
13. 1848 — General Thomas Richey, in Congress, gets a post office established at Sego, a name William Curry gives it for a small town in Africa; Jacob Miller is the first postmaster. The postal-history list dates the Sego office from 1850 to 1903.
14. 1852 — General Thomas Richey of Madison Township, a farmer and county treasurer, is elected to Congress for the last time; he had earlier obtained Philip Sheridan's West Point cadetship.
15. 1871 — Madison Academy is established by donations of citizens, with Rev. James White as first president.
16. 1876 — John Danison lays out the Danison addition at Mount Perry, west of Main Street.
17. 1880 — The machinery of the Mount Perry mill is removed to Hebron in Licking County; the frame still stands, and no mill operates in the township.
18. 1882 — Mount Perry has about 110 people, an academy, three churches, two stores and a post office; the township has about 183 voters, six public school buildings and 233 scholars.

Stories

A crossroads that never incorporated

Mount Perry has sat on State Route 204 in northern Madison Township since it was laid out in 1828, and it never became a chartered village. The 1883 county history says the place began as a natural collection of houses around Hendricks's water mill, one of the first in Perry County, and John Guysinger's blacksmith shop, and that Nathan Melick bought the mill, built a store and laid out the first lots east of Main Street. A post office named Mount Perry opened in 1843, and Madison Academy was founded there in 1871 by donations of citizens. The mill's machinery was taken to Hebron in Licking County in 1880, leaving no mill in the township.

How Turkey Run Got Its Name

William Dusenbery, a New Jersey man who had been nineteen when the Revolution began and remembered seeing General Washington, settled about 1800 at the junction of Jonathan's Creek and a smaller stream coming in from the south. Madison Township was a wilderness then, and the story told in the 1883 county history is that one day his son Jonathan went hunting for turkey and got lost in the woods. He kept firing his gun as an alarm, and his father followed the sound until he found the boy beside a run with a turkey he had killed. The stream was christened Turkey Run, a name it still carries. Dusenbery lived on the same farm until he died and was the first man buried with military honors in the township, on his own land. His two youngest children, Catharine and Abigail, were probably born there; Abigail was still living in Grant County, Indiana, in 1882.

I Put Sheridan in the Army

James Richey came from Bedford County, Pennsylvania, to Madison Township in 1815, to a farm that his wife Rachel Wilson had picked out on an earlier horseback visit to her father in Fairfield County, carrying her baby Gideon in her arms. Their son Thomas farmed there, rose to general in the state militia, was for many years county treasurer, and served two terms in Congress, the last time being elected in 1852. While he was in Congress, the 1883 county history says, he secured a cadetship at West Point for Philip Sheridan, the son of an Irish constituent. When news came in October 1864 that Sheridan had turned the lost morning at Cedar Creek into an evening victory, the old general was said to have ridden home from the post office at full gallop, shouting to neighbors who ran after him, 'They can't whip that boy of mine. I put Sheridan in the army; Lincoln promotes, and the whole world admires him.' Richey broke with the Democratic party in 1854 and died a supporter of Lincoln's administration. It was on his watch in Congress that Sego got its post office in 1848, as the county history also records.

A Post Office Called Sego

In 1846 William Curry built a blacksmith shop on a bit of Dusenbery's old farm cut off by the new Zanesville and Maysville pike, and a store followed. Benjamin Williams added a steam woolen mill in 1849 that carded, spun and wove wool; it stood only four years before it burned and was never rebuilt. When General Thomas Richey was in Congress in 1848 he had a post office established at the little crossroads, and Curry named it Sego, he said, for a small town in Africa. Jacob Miller was the first postmaster, and the mail came by a hack line between Somerset and Zanesville. By 1882 Sego had a grocery, a general store, a post office, and three or four houses. The postal-history list dates the office from 1850 until 1903.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · genealogytrails.com · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · postalhistory.com · postalhistory.com

Mostly private wells The water here

• Roseville47% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Maysville Regional Water24% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Muskingum County Water - Se14% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Somerset Village Of13% of residentsSomerset Reservoir + Lake St. Joseph
• Crooksville3% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-08

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