Palmyra Township, Portage County

How Palmyra Township, Portage County began

Palmyra Township, the only Palmyra Township in Ohio, was surveyed as Town 2, Range 6 and received its first settler, David Daniels, on June 4, 1799 — one of only five Portage County townships settled that early. Daniels, a Revolutionary War veteran who carried grain thirty miles to be ground, was followed by Capt. John T. Baldwin (1805), the Gilbert family of Litchfield, Connecticut (1806), and blacksmith-trapper-dentist Artemus Ruggles (1807), whose homemade tools and rough dental extractions were long remembered locally; mail contractor Jabez 'Moses Jabe' Gilbert later drove the Pittsburgh-to-Cleveland stage through flooded streams on foot rather than miss a delivery. The great Indian trail from Fort McIntosh to Sandusky crossed the township near the Center, and Welsh immigrants settled heavily here from the 1830s onward, giving Palmyra Center's Welsh Horse Fair and Welsh-language churches a distinctive character. A post office served the township from 1810 to 1904, coal mining was a major 19th-century industry, and by the mid-1880s the township supported several factories, stores and three saloons. Today it has 2,780 residents (2020).

Settled June 4, 1799 (David Daniels, first settler), incorporated Set off from Deerfield Township as Palmyra, March 6, 1810; first township election April 2, 1810, by David Daniels (first settler); proprietors Elijah, Homer and David E. Boardman, Elijah Wadsworth, Jonathan Giddings, Zephaniah Briggs, Stanley Griswold and Roderick Wolcott.

Where the name comes from

Most likely named after Palmyra, New York, itself named for the ancient Syrian caravan city — a popular place name across the early 19th-century United States. The 1885 county history does not give an explicit naming story for the township beyond noting the survey designation Town 2, Range 6.

Before the town

The 1957 county history 'Portage Heritage' places Onondaga and Oneida villages generally 'near Palmyra Center and Aurora,' the fullest specific attribution of a historic Native American settlement anywhere in the township, though without a location precise enough to fix a spot within the township beyond the Palmyra Center area. The 1885 county history separately records that the great Indian trail from Fort McIntosh on the Ohio River to Sandusky passed through the township just north of the Center, past a cabin belonging to a Native individual named Nickshaw, and that this trail was used both by Native travelers and by their pursuers after the shooting of a settler named Diver in neighboring Deerfield. The township is also among those Portage Heritage lists as holding recorded prehistoric mounds, village sites and burials. For the county's broader Native history.

Nations recorded here: Onondaga, Oneida.

• Onondaga and Oneida villages near Palmyra Center (village) — near Palmyra Center, documented late 1700s/early 1800s (archive.org)
• Fort McIntosh-to-Sandusky trail and Nickshaw's cabin (trail) — just north of Palmyra Center, pre-1810s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. June 4, 1799 — David Daniels, a Revolutionary War veteran born in Grafton, Connecticut, becomes the township's first settler, arriving on Lot 21 a mile and a half south of the Center; he later carries a bushel of his own wheat 30 miles to Poland to be ground.
2. 1805 — Capt. John T. Baldwin arrives from Warren, Connecticut, camping at the future township Square; two years later he opens the township's first tavern.
3. 1806 — Truman Gilbert Sr. arrives from Litchfield, Connecticut with seven sons and a daughter; during his house-raising the same year, Native onlookers, frightened by a solar eclipse, fire arrows skyward at the darkening sun to scare off the perceived evil spirit.
4. 1807 — Artemus Ruggles, a blacksmith who also practiced rough frontier dentistry and trapping, settles in the township and becomes known across several townships for his handmade tools and iron work; the same year the first frame house is built by David Daniels, Capt. Baldwin opens the first tavern, and the township's first post office is established with David Waller as postmaster.
5. March 6, 1810 — The county commissioners set off Towns 2 and 3 from Deerfield Township under the name Palmyra; the first township election follows April 2.
6. 1865 — Coal mining begins in earnest in the township, ranking with the well-known Briar Hill coal; by 1883 mines produce over 1 million bushels of coal valued at more than $91,000.
7. n.d. (1830s onward) — Welsh immigrants settle heavily in the township, eventually forming a large share of the population and establishing Welsh-language Congregational, Baptist and Methodist churches at the Center.
8. 1904 — The township post office closes, per Wikipedia's township article.

Stories

Moses Jabe and the mail that always got through

Jabez Gilbert, who arrived in 1811, was known across the township for an iron will and a seemingly unlimited capacity for the kind of work no one else would take on. He built nearly all the township's early bridges, hauled steamboat boilers and machinery from Pittsburgh to Cleveland over roads barely worth the name, and eventually held the mail contract between the two cities, a route that grew from a weekly two-horse coach to a daily line under his hand. Two other men in the extended Gilbert family answered to 'Jabe' as well, so this one went by 'Moses Jabe,' from his habit of swearing 'by Moses' when the roads or the weather turned against him. When streams ran high enough to stop a coach, he carried the mail on his own back, ax in hand to cut his way through if he had to, going through 'or die in the attempt,' as he liked to say. He was, alongside Artemus Ruggles the blacksmith-dentist-trapper who pulled teeth with a turnkey and laughed at his own suffering patients, one of the two men the 1885 county history singles out as embodying the rough, resourceful character the township's earliest years demanded.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Portage County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Ravenna City52% of residentsLake Hodgson
• Newton Falls City42% of residentsEast Branch Mahoning River
• Maple Del Manor Llc1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Birchwood Manor Mhc New1% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)
• All Seasons MHP1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Trumbull Co. - Braceville Twp1% of residentsEast Branch Mahoning River
• Ranch Club Estates Water Association0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Orchard Estates I Mhc, Llc0% of residentsBuried valley/sandstone aquifer wells (12 county wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (4)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-07-21

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