Martinsville

• Reid HuntPerson · 1870-1948
• William Addison DwigginsPerson · 1880-1956

How Martinsville began

Martinsville was platted in 1816 on land John Wright had bought at two dollars an acre; Wright, a North Carolinian, built the village's first house and was the driving force behind laying it out. It sits in Clark Township in the southern part of Clinton County, on what is now State Route 28 between New Vienna and Midland, with Wilmington a few miles north by way of SR 134. By 1833 it held about 75 people; the 2020 census counted 416. The village's best-known landmark, the Martinsville Road Covered Bridge over the East Fork of Todds Fork just west of town, was built in 1871 as the first project of what became the Champion Bridge Company, one of the country's oldest continuously operating bridge builders.

Platted 1816, by John Wright of North Carolina, who bought the underlying land at $2 an acre, built the first house within the village and was mainly instrumental in laying it out.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted names the specific person or reasoning behind 'Martinsville' as a village name; it is a common Ohio village name pattern (a founder's or prominent settler's surname plus '-ville') but the sources consulted do not confirm which Martin, if any, it honors.

Before the town

No source consulted names a Native American village, camp, mound, or named leader sited within Martinsville itself or Clark Township specifically. Clinton County as a whole lies in territory ceded to the United States by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and was, before that cession, part of the shared hunting and travel range of the Shawnee, Miami (Myaamia), and Delaware (Lenape); a 2003 Ohio historical marker in Wilmington, 'Indian Trails of Clinton County,' documents several named trails crossing the county — the Kanawha Trace (a Shawnee, Cherokee, and Miami trade route, partly along today's Fife Avenue/Old SR 73), the Delaware Trace (a Lenape hunting route to Kentucky and eastern Ohio, partly along today's Rombach Avenue/US 22), the Mekoce Trace in eastern Clinton County (a warrior trail to Kentucky and Michigan, along SR 72), the Bullskin Trace in western Clinton County (a trade route to the French at Detroit, along SR 132/380), and the Simon Kenton Trace, which crossed a documented Shawnee hunting camp south of New Antioch. None of these named trails is sourced as passing directly through Clark Township or Martinsville itself.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Myaamia (Miami), Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1816 — Martinsville is platted; John Wright, who had bought the underlying land at $2 an acre, was mainly instrumental in laying it out and built the village's first house.
2. 1833 — Martinsville has grown to about 75 inhabitants.
3. 1871 — Bridge builder Zimri Wall constructs the Martinsville Road Covered Bridge over the East Fork of Todds Fork just west of the village; the following year Wall co-founds the Champion Bridge Company, which counts this bridge as its first job.
4. 1874 — The Martinsville United Methodist Church is built at 78 W. Main Street.
5. 1974 — The Martinsville Road Covered Bridge is added to the National Register of Historic Places (reference 74001421).
6. 1980 — Martinsville's population peaks at 539 before beginning a long decline.
7. 2013 — Clinton County authorities charge a former Martinsville village council president and village administrator with embezzling more than $100,000 in municipal funds.
8. 2020 — The U.S. Census records Martinsville's population at 416, a 10.2 percent decline from the previous decade.

Stories

A bridge builder's first job

In 1871, a carpenter and bridge builder named Zimri Wall put up a modest multiple-kingpost covered bridge over the East Fork of Todds Fork, just west of Martinsville on the road that still bears the village's name. It was unremarkable work for its time — Ohio counties were full of covered bridges carrying farm wagons over creeks. But Wall used the job as a launching point: the next year, 1872, he co-founded the Champion Bridge Company, which went on to build bridges across the country and was still operating more than a century later, one of the oldest continuously running bridge-building firms in the United States. The company came to consider the Martinsville Road bridge its first work. The National Register added the Martinsville bridge to its list in 1974.

A village platted by the man who broke the ground

John Wright came to Clinton County from North Carolina and bought land along what would become Martinsville at two dollars an acre — cheap even by the standards of the day for newly opened Virginia Military District ground. Rather than farm it quietly, Wright built the first house on the site and was mainly instrumental in laying out the village around it, platted in 1816, less than two decades after Ohio itself became a state.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · remarkableohio.org · hmdb.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com

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

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-10-16

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