Malta

How Malta began

Malta was laid out in 1816 on the west bank of the Muskingum River, opposite McConnelsville, and named by an early settler who had visited the Mediterranean island of Malta while working as a sailor. The town grew as the west-bank partner to the county seat once locks and dams opened the Muskingum to steady trade between 1836 and 1841. A small stone jail built in the 1830s and forgotten for over a century was rediscovered during construction in 1964 and is preserved on Main Street as the Morgan County Dungeon. Population peaked at 1,017 in 1970 and stood at 559 at the 2020 census.

Settled 1815 (George Miller kept the first tavern on the site; Simeon Pool lived there before 1812), platted 1816, by Simeon Pool and John Bell, joint owners of the land.

Where the name comes from

Robertson's 1886 county history says the village was laid out in 1816 by Simeon Pool and John Bell and named by Pool, a former seafarer, to commemorate his visit as a sailor to the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. The chapter heading dates the plat 1817.

Before the town

No Native American sites specific to the Malta town plat are recorded. The 1886 county history and Wikipedia's account of the nearby Big Bottom massacre (January 2, 1791) describe Lenape (Delaware) and Wyandot warriors active along this stretch of the Muskingum in the years just before Ohio Company settlement, but that attack site is several miles downriver near Stockport, in Windsor Township, not at Malta.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1812 — Simeon Pool, a former sailor who traded a brick tavern at Marietta for the tract on the north side of the future town, is living on it and serving as justice of the peace before the county was organized.
2. 1815 — George Miller, who had been making salt on Salt Run, builds a hewed-log tavern on the town site, the first in Malta.
3. 1816 — The town of Malta is laid out on the west bank of the Muskingum River across from the future site of McConnelsville.
4. 1817-08-02 — John Seaman arrives from Zanesville by canoe on August 2, buys land from John Bell, becomes proprietor of most of the town and makes shoes for the village; William B. Young, later associate judge, builds a hewed-log house and the first ferry across the river between Malta and McConnelsville.
5. 1818 — Hyman Lazarus starts the first store, a very small stock of goods, whisky and ginseng; William Palmer, cabinetmaker, arrives in the fall; six families live in Malta (Young, Whitney, Miller, Seaman, McMullen, Palmer) and Judge Young builds a sawmill above the town on Clemens' Run.
6. 1826 — Ten or twelve dwellings stand in Malta; the original plat of 114 lots has been enlarged by Young's addition of 1821 and later ones in 1827 and 1829.
7. 1836-1841 — Locks and dams built on the Muskingum River open Malta and McConnelsville to steady river trade.
8. 1841 — William Palmer and his son Jackson J. found the Malta Furniture Manufactory, adding in 1851 a steam engine from the Dunsmoor & Dickerson foundry, the first built in the county; in 1875 the works produce the first parlor organ made in the county.
9. 1864 — W. P. and John Brown and James and Frank P. Manly take over the Dickerson foundry works, which become the Brown-Manly Plow Works, among the town's chief businesses in 1885 with tanners, furniture makers and the Malta National Bank.
10. 1877 — The Rock Hollow School, a one-room schoolhouse, is built; it was later relocated and restored.
11. 1883 — The Malta Real Estate Company lays out 'Upper Malta,' thirty-eight lots, an addition to the town.
12. 1910 — The census counts 971 residents, up from 652 in 1880 and 865 in 1890; the village is at its peak of 1,017 in 1970 and has 559 in 2020.
13. 1964 — A small stone jail built in the 1830s, long forgotten, is rediscovered during construction and later relocated and preserved on Main Street as the Morgan County Dungeon.

Stories

The dungeon under Main Street

Sometime in the 1830s, Malta built a small stone jail, about eleven by five by twelve feet, to hold prisoners for the young county. As the town grew up around it the little building was buried and forgotten, and for more than a century no one in Malta knew it was there. In 1964 construction work uncovered the stone chamber, which was later relocated and preserved on Main Street as the Morgan County Dungeon, marked today with an Ohio historical marker.

Two river towns, one crossing

Malta and McConnelsville sit across the Muskingum River from each other, and their fortunes rose together once locks and dams were built on the river between 1836 and 1841. The waterway carried freight and passengers past both towns for decades, tying the west-bank village to the same river commerce that built the county seat opposite it. A historical marker on the riverbank, "Two River Towns: McConnelsville and Malta," records the shared story of the crossing, and the two villages still hold a joint Civil War Encampment Days each July with reenactments on both banks.

The floating mill and the sailor's town

Malta's founder Simeon Pool was a seafaring man, a large and intelligent one, given, the 1886 history says, to profanity like most sailors, and he named the town in memory of a visit to the island of Malta; his partner and son-in-law John Bell, a boatbuilder from Tennessee who composed verses and songs, laid out the town with him in 1816. The river shaped its early trades. Judge William B. Young ran the ferry to McConnelsville, and when he died his widow rented it to Isaac Baker, who also built Malta's first mill, a floating mill of the rare pattern built on two flatboats. The story goes that Hyman Lazarus, the village's first storekeeper and an itinerant peddler before that, who ran his first store in 1818 selling whisky and ginseng, saw a steamboat on the river for the first time and ran to Baker astonished, shouting that his mill had broken loose and was coming up the river grinding. Malta's first families lived with panthers and bears near the hills: Mrs. William Sherwood recalled that a panther once leaped into the firelight where her family was boiling maple sugar-water, and was driven off with torches.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Malta Village89% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - West Malta6% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Community health centers (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 3 of 3 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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, released 2025-12-18

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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