Nelson Township, Portage County

How Nelson Township, Portage County began

Nelson Township, the only Nelson Township in Ohio, organized in 1817 and most likely took its name from Nelson, New York. The 1885 county history credits three Mills brothers among its early settlers, one of whom, Captain Delaun Mills, killed a man around 1803 in a confrontation his own son later described in a letter (later tales call the dead man Big Cayuga, but the letter names no one); Cayuga people are separately recorded as frequent campers near the township's Nelson Ledges. Most of the village of Garrettsville grew out of the township's southwestern corner. The distinctive rock formations of what is now Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, and the adjoining Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, have hosted hiking and, since 1972, music festivals. Today the township has 3,101 residents (2020).

Settled spring 1800 (Delaun and Asahel Mills, as ax-men for the surveyors under Amzi Atwater), incorporated September 1817 (township organized and named Nelson), by Urial Holmes, Ephraim Root, Timothy Burr and Appolos Hitchcock (proprietors); Delaun Mills (first settler).

Where the name comes from

The township's name most likely transfers from Nelson, New York, following a common Western Reserve pattern of naming new townships for the New England or New York hometowns of their settlers or proprietors.

Before the town

The 1885 county history describes Nelson as originally a fine hunting ground for the Indians, and names the chiefs and hunters who often hunted here: Big Cayuga, Snip Nose Cayuga, Seneca, Nickshaw and John Mohawk, the last of whom shot a man named Diver of Deerfield. It reports that blacksmith Abraham Dyson was kept busy repairing the Indians' guns, and that an Indian camp stood near the cranberry marsh later owned by Benjamin Stow. Many stories were told of Captain Delaun Mills killing Indians, the historian says, but the only authentic one is his son Urial's letter of 1879: about 1803 an Indian who had threatened Mills shot a hole through the hat Mills had held out from behind a tree, ran at him with a tomahawk, and was shot and buried by Mills. The same letter tells how a few days later another Indian, angry about an incident with Asahel Mills, was thrown about Mills's house, struck on a rock and carried off, and how the band shot Diver and left for Sandusky; the injured man returned later and was fed and given a bear's hind quarters. The 1885 history says Mills is 'said to have killed' Big Cayuga and Snip Nose Cayuga, but the stories naming them are not authenticated. The 1957 Portage Heritage history is reported to list Nelson Township among those with recorded mounds, village sites and burials, without locations; and local historians have thought the Nelson Ledges rock shelters sheltered Native people in several periods.

Nations recorded here: Cayuga, Seneca, Mohawk.

• Indian camp near the cranberry marsh (camp) — cranberry marsh later owned by Benjamin Stow, Nelson Township, about 1803 (archive.org)
• Nelson Ledges rock shelters (other) — Nelson Ledges, northern Nelson Township, undated (archive.org)

Timeline

1. c. 1800 — Three Mills brothers, hired to help survey and lay out the township, settle in Nelson.
2. 1800 — Three sons of Deacon Ezekiel Mills of Becket, Massachusetts reach Youngstown and are hired as ax-men by the surveyors under Amzi Atwater; Delaun Mills, given 100 acres by the proprietor Urial Holmes, moves his family into the surveyors' cabin in the fall, the first habitation in Nelson, and Asahel follows in 1801.
3. 1801 — Forty-three bushels of wheat are raised from three pecks of seed sown in Delaun Mills's turnip patch; on October 14 Dianthea Mills is born, the first child in the township.
4. 1803 — Captain Delaun Mills shoots and buries an Indian who had threatened to kill him and attacked him with a tomahawk, according to his son Urial's 1879 letter; later tales name the dead man Big Cayuga, but the 1885 county history says only the letter is authentic.
5. 1803 — Seven families arrive from Massachusetts and Connecticut, among them the Baldwins, Stows, Bancrofts, Owens and Kennedys; they are the whole population in 1804.
6. 1804 — Hannah Baldwin teaches the first school at the Center; Col. John Garrett, for whom Garrettsville is named, settles in July and Abraham Dyson, the first blacksmith, repairs guns for the Indians.
7. 1805 — Col. Garrett builds a combined saw and grist mill at the future Garrettsville, the settlers' first mill; Amzi Atwater surveys a road from Mantua to it.
8. 1807 — The first church organization, a Baptist one, meets at Johann Noah's house with Rev. Thomas G. Jones; the Congregationalists organize in 1813, build a church at the Center in 1822 and the Methodists in 1832.
9. 1815 — An enumeration lists thirty-three heads of families in the township.
10. 1817 — Nelson Township formally organizes.
11. 1818 — Delaun Mills is appointed captain of the Big Hunt; he dies on April 20, 1824, after a rattlesnake bite in 1812 had left him paralyzed for a time.
12. 1842 — An epidemic of an unnamed fever, beginning like ague, carries off many people and baffles the best physicians.
13. 1852 — Nelson Academy Association is permanently organized on January 6 with nine trustees.
14. 1880 — The population is 890, down from 1,383 in 1850 and 1,355 in 1870; in 1884 the township has three cheese factories and has sent 109 soldiers to the Civil War, twenty of whom died.
15. 1972 — Music festivals begin at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, a tradition that continues into the present.
16. 2020 — The census counts 3,101 people in Nelson Township, which includes Nelson Kennedy Ledges State Park and Nelson Ledges Quarry Park.

Stories

A hat shot through

About 1803 an Indian grew angry at Delaun Mills and said he would kill him. Mills, hunting in the fall, found in the snow the tracks of an Indian following his own trail and knew he was being stalked. The two sheltered behind trees. Mills hung his hat on his gun stock and held it out where the other could see it; the Indian shot a hole through the hat and ran at him with a tomahawk, and Mills stepped out and shot him dead and buried him. He told his wife, who told their son Urial, who set it down in a letter of August 22, 1879, which the 1885 county history calls the only authentic of the many stories about Mills and the Indians. Those tales, the history adds, have grown until one would think the Captain's business was killing Indians, with Big Cayuga and Snip Nose Cayuga named among his victims, whereas Mills was a humane man with a wife and children, and the Ledges where Cayuga hunters camped were a favourite resort of the Indians for hunting.

A bear in a borrowed trap

One of the first cases tried in Nelson Township after it was organized in 1817 was Delaun Mills against James Knowlton, an action to recover the price of a bear. Mills owned a bear trap; Knowlton baited it, caught a bear, and took it home; Mills claimed the animal because it had been caught in his trap. The court awarded Mills 25 cents for the use of the trap and made the two men split the costs. Earlier, before the township was organized, the magistrate Benjamin Stow, called to try a fight between Thomas Kennedy and Wareham Loomis, fined both men $5 and made each pay half the costs; asked by a friend of the loser why he had done something not in the law, he answered that he was 'Chief Justice of this domain' and cared not a fig for the law. And when Captain Mills was haled before the Trumbull County court for selling whisky at his tavern without a licence, he pleaded guilty, until Judge Kirtland, who had often been refreshed there, suggested to Judge Pease that the plea be changed; Mills said 'not guilty' and was discharged.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Garrettsville Village81% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Pm Estates10% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Homestead Manor MHP8% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• West Farmington Village1% of residentsEast Branch Mahoning River
• Plalan Lake Water Assoc.1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Nelson Ledges Estates MHP0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Shale and injection wells (4)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

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