Oxford Township, Tuscarawas County

How Oxford Township, Tuscarawas County began

Oxford Township occupies the southwest corner of Tuscarawas County and holds most of Newcomerstown, on the site of Gekelemukpechunk, the Delaware (Lenape) capital under Chief Netawatwes ('King Newcomer') in the 1760s and early 1770s. It was one of the four original townships the county commissioners laid out in 1808, much larger than today's. A colony of about sixty families from Morris County, New Jersey, led by Nicholas Neighbor, arrived in 1815 and sheltered in the empty Indian huts; Newcomerstown was laid out in 1827 along the new Ohio Canal. The township had 4,789 residents in 2020.

Settled about 1804 (John Mulvane, in the valley by then); main settlement 1815 (New Jersey colony), platted 1827 (Newcomerstown), incorporated 1808 (one of the four original townships of Tuscarawas County), by Nicholas Neighbor and a New Jersey colony of about sixty people, 1815.

Where the name comes from

Oxford is a common Ohio township name, shared by six townships in the state; the 1884 county history gives no local reason for the choice, saying only that the township was one of the four original townships formed in 1808. Newcomerstown, in the township, is named for the Delaware chief Netawatwes, also called King Newcomer.

Before the town

Gekelemukpechunk (also spelled Gekelukpechink), the capital of the Delaware nation, stood on the north side of the Tuscarawas River east of present Newcomerstown, on a low plateau near Nugen's bridge; the town plat was probably a mile long, and the cornfields lay on the south side, where David Mulvane remembered signs of about 300 cleared acres. When the Moravian missionary Zeisberger first visited in March 1771 as the guest of Netawatwes, the town held about 100 houses, nearly all of logs; the chief's house was the largest, built of dressed logs with a shingle roof, sawed-board floors, a staircase and stone chimneys. An Indian trader, Capt. Kollender of Carlisle, had his headquarters there, with nearly a dozen other white traders. In 1775 the capital moved to Goschachgunk (Coshocton) and most residents followed (Wikipedia gives 1776), though Indians lingered for years. Settlers of the 1815 New Jersey colony took shelter in Indian huts at 'Newcomerstown' until they could build cabins; the name is traced to Netawatwes, who signed state papers as King Newcomer. Squatter hunters such as George Bible and John Hartley, not Native people, are the next occupants named. The land was ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

• Gekelemukpechunk (Newcomer's Town) (village) — north side of the Tuscarawas River east of present Newcomerstown, near Nugen's bridge; cornfields on the south bank, 1760s-1775 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1760s — Netawatwees (Newcomer) founds the Lenape town of Gekelukpechink at the site that becomes Newcomerstown, in what is now northern Oxford Township.
2. 1771 — In March the Moravian missionary David Zeisberger visits Gekelemukpechunk as the guest of Netawatwes; the capital of the Delaware nation has about 100 log houses and a dozen white traders.
3. 1775 — The Delaware capital is moved from Gekelemukpechunk to Goschachgunk, the site of Coshocton, and most residents go with it.
4. 1776 — The Lenape abandon the town for Coshocton as the Revolutionary War begins; more than 700 Lenape and several traders had lived there.
5. 1800 — John Beaver enters the whole 4,000-acre northwest quarter of the township, which he sells in tracts as years pass.
6. 1804 — John Mulvane is living in the valley, as shown by his running account at David Peter's store at Gnadenhutten; David Johnson is there in 1805 with 269 acres and a distillery.
7. 1808 — The county commissioners lay out Oxford as one of four original townships, covering a quarter of the county, which gradually shrinks to its present size.
8. 1814 — Nicholas Neighbor of Morris County, New Jersey, tours the valley and buys 1,900 acres in the northwest part of the present township from Godfrey Haga.
9. 1815 — A colony of about sixty New Jersey emigrants, including the families of Nicholas, David and William Neighbor, reaches the valley after a four-week wagon journey and lives in the Indian huts of Newcomerstown until cabins are built.
10. 1818 — Jacob J. Miller probably teaches the first school in the township, at his cabin north of the river near the county line.
11. 1825 — On September 9 the post boy William Cartmell is shot and killed on the Coshocton road near John Booth's cabin; John Funston, a young farmer of the township, is hanged at New Philadelphia on December 30, the only public execution in Tuscarawas County.
12. 1827 — Newcomerstown is laid out with 34 lots along the Ohio Canal; John Tufford adds West Newcomerstown with 40 lots the same year.
13. 1831 — Nicholas Neighbor and Jacob Overholt open the first store in Newcomerstown.
14. 1843 — The People's Methodist Episcopal Church is organized; Bird's Run Baptist Church moves from Guernsey County in 1853 and builds in 1870.
15. 1880 — Newcomerstown has 926 residents (270 in 1840, 476 in 1850, 577 in 1860, 791 in 1870), with the canal and two railroads, the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis and the Wheeling and Lake Erie, passing through.
16. 2020 — The census counts 4,789 residents over 24.9 square miles.

Stories

The Delaware capital with a shingled council house

In March 1771, when David Zeisberger visited Gekelemukpechunk as the guest of Netawatwes, he found the Delaware capital at its height. About a hundred log houses lined the low plateau north of the Tuscarawas, and across the river lay corn fields that David Mulvane remembered as covering some three hundred acres. The chief's own house was the largest, of dressed logs, with a shingled roof, floors of sawed boards, a regular staircase and chimneys of stone laid in mortar. An Indian trader, Capt. Kollender of Carlisle, kept his headquarters there, and Zeisberger counted nearly a dozen other white men, mostly bartering. Netawatwes, who also signed state papers as King Newcomer, ruled the nation from here until 1775, when the capital moved down to Coshocton. When the New Jersey colonists arrived forty years later the empty Indian huts were still standing, and they lived in them until their own cabins went up. The village that grew on the spot kept the chief's English name.

The post boy and the scar on the hand

On September 9, 1825, William Cartmell, a Coshocton boy who carried the mail between Coshocton and Freeport, was shot dead from a thicket near John Booth's cabin. A traveling companion, William Johnston, had stopped a moment at a spring and rushed up to find him dying; a stranger walked up, agreed to go for the neighbors, and slipped away. Johnston was arrested at first himself. He insisted he could recognize the man, so the county's young men were lined up at New Philadelphia, and Johnston at once picked out John Funston, a 22-year-old farmer of Oxford Township, even describing a scar on his hand that officers then found. A $10 note described in the Tuscarawas Chronicle had been passed by Funston to a gunsmith. Convicted in November 1825, he tried to hang himself the night before his execution, confessed that he had meant to rob a drover named Smeltzer, and was hanged on December 30 in a drizzling rain before a huge crowd, Sheriff Walter M. Blake cutting the rope. It was the only public execution in Tuscarawas County, and Post Boy Station on the railroad in the township remembers the murdered boy.

Sixty New Jersey emigrants and the Indian huts

In 1814 Nicholas Neighbor of Morris County, New Jersey, went west to inspect the Tuscarawas valley, liked what he saw, and bought 1,900 acres from Godfrey Haga on behalf of himself and others. The next year about sixty people set out in wagons, four weeks on the road: the families of Nicholas, David and William Neighbor, Nicholas's son Leonard, William Gardner, Townsend Cobb, John Welch and others. Reaching the river they found the old Indian village of Newcomerstown with huts still standing, and they moved into them until they could cut logs for cabins, the half-hewed cabins that stood out among the plain log houses of the neighborhood. Neighbor stayed in the township except for 1818 to 1831, was an associate judge of the county from 1818 to 1832, and opened the first store in Newcomerstown with Jacob Overholt; settlers first called the place Neighbortown in his family's honor, though the Indian-and-trader name Newcomerstown prevailed.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Newcomerstown Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Private schools (1)

Shale and injection wells (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (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 to 2024, released 2025-12-09

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