Nellie

• Ohio's first peopleOhio's first people arrived at least 13,000 years ago, hunted mastodons and giant sloths, and carried Coshocton flint hundreds of miles on foot.

How Nellie began

Nellie is a small village on the Walhonding River in Jefferson Township, Coshocton County, immediately downstream and southeast of Mohawk Dam, the Army Corps of Engineers dry dam completed in 1937 for flood control on the river. Jefferson Township itself was organized in 1826 and settled from 1806 along the Walhonding by families including the Darlings, though no 19th-century source names a settlement at Nellie's own ground specifically. The village's population has slowly declined from a mid-century peak of 165 in 1950 to 122 at the 2020 census.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted confirms the origin of the name Nellie for this village, including the township's 1881 county history, which predates the village's own appearance in the record and does not mention it by name.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, or documented event specific to Nellie's own ground was found in the sources checked, including a full reading of Jefferson Township's chapter in the 1881 county history. That chapter does document extensive prehistoric activity elsewhere in the township: flint was mined from hillside veins on farms in the township's southern-central part, worked into arrowheads and spear points at nearby 'shops' where flint chips and finished and unfinished points are still found; a sepulchral stone mound on a hilltop near Colonel Metham's residence held a skeleton estimated at over seven feet tall along with flint darts, examined in 1855; and a semi-circular stone wall atop a bluff on Robert Darling's farm, across the river from the mound, may have been a fortification or a place of ritual, its purpose undetermined. None of these sites is confirmed to lie on Nellie's own ground. The village also sits on the Walhonding River not far downstream of White Woman's Town, the historic settlement at the Walhonding-Killbuck junction associated with Mary Harris, though no source ties a Native site to Nellie's own ground either.

Timeline

1. 1803 — Silas Bent Jr. surveys the northern half of Jefferson Township, the township in which Nellie lies, as Congress land; the southern half is two military sections, the eastern located by Col. William Simmons in 1800.
2. 1806 — The Darling family, among the first settlers of the Walhonding valley in what becomes Jefferson Township, arrives from Virginia and settles in the river bend north of the Walhonding.
3. 1806 — John Elder, an Ulster Presbyterian, comes from Virginia to the Walhonding valley with the Darlings; the Merediths follow about 1807-08.
4. 1823 — Pren Metham, agent for the Bell section's Philadelphia owner, moves to Jefferson Township; he later examines the flint-mining sites and in 1855 explores the stone mound on the hill east of his home with Rev. Boggs.
5. 1826 — Jefferson Township, in which Nellie sits, is organized.
6. 1837 — A Scotch-Irish colony of Moores, Givens, Thompsons and Mrs. Anderson, from Tyrone County, Ireland by way of Marshall County, Virginia, buys over 2,200 acres of the Bell section.
7. 1840 — The Mohawk Village church is organized in the fall at the Whittaker school-house by Rev. Harvey D. Camp, a year after a company from Ireland settled the Mohawk valley.
8. 1859 — Mohawk Village is laid out by William and James Thompson in the valley of Mohawk Run, in the southwestern part of the township, during the coal-oil excitement.
9. 1909 — The 1909 county history lists Nellie Village among the county's separate school districts, with its own school and corporation tax rate, showing Nellie existed as an organized village by then.
10. 1910 — The village's population is recorded at 133.
11. 1920 — The census counts 144 residents in Nellie.
12. 1935 — Construction begins on Mohawk Dam, just north and west of Nellie, in April.
13. 1937 — Mohawk Dam is completed in September.
14. 1938 — A photograph records the Nellie School building.
15. 1950 — The village's population peaks at 165.
16. 1960 — Nellie's population is 145, following the 165 peak of 1950; it was 150 in 1980 and 134 in 2000.
17. 2020 — The village's population is recorded at 122, down from 131 in 2010.

Stories

Living beside the dry dam

Nellie has spent most of its twentieth century in the shadow of Mohawk Dam, the earthen flood-control structure the Army Corps of Engineers raised just north and west of the village between 1935 and 1937 as part of a fourteen-dam system across the Muskingum watershed. Unlike a conventional reservoir dam, Mohawk Dam holds no permanent lake; it stands dry most of the year and closes off the Walhonding only during major floods, protecting downstream villages like Nellie and, further on, Coshocton and Warsaw. The village's own population has drifted downward for most of the decades since the dam was built, from a peak of 165 residents in 1950 to 122 in 2020.

The Darlings cross the mountains

The Darling family of Virginia were among the first to settle the Walhonding valley, in the bend north of the river on the Bell section. In the spring of 1806 two of the sons, Jonathan and William, came out early and raised a crop of corn; in the fall the rest crossed the mountains by wagon and on horseback. Mary, then eighteen, drove a four-horse team loaded with the family's goods, and her mother is said to have ridden horseback with an infant before her and a small boy, Thomas, holding on behind. William and Jonathan fought in 1812 and were at Sandusky when a younger brother, Abram, rode out to bring them stockings. The family held its land through the century, and Thomas, a county commissioner, introduced blooded cattle into the valley.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Warsaw100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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.
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-12-19

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