Penn Township, Morgan County

How Penn Township, Morgan County began

Penn Township, in the southern part of Morgan County along Wolf Creek and the old Harmar-Lancaster road, was settled beginning around 1813 mostly by Quakers and Quaker sympathizers from Jefferson and Belmont counties, and formally organized in 1819. Its village, Pennsville, was platted in 1828 by Nathaniel Sidwell and grew quickly into a small trading center with four general stores. Early industry centered on Wolf Creek: John Pierpoint's mill predates 1830, and tanneries and blacksmith shops followed through the 1830s. The township remains rural farmland today, with no incorporated municipality.

Settled c. 1813, platted 1828 (Pennsville), by township organized 1819 by Quaker and Quaker-sympathizing settlers from Jefferson and Belmont counties; Pennsville platted by Nathaniel Sidwell.

Where the name comes from

No explicit reason for the township's name is recorded, but Penn Township and its village of Pennsville both plainly echo William Penn and Pennsylvania, consistent with the Quaker character of the earliest settlers who came by way of Jefferson and Belmont counties.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Penn Township is recorded; the 1886 county history's settlement chapter for Penn makes no mention of Native people. The township lies within the Ohio Company purchase and the area ceded by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville; Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware) and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) people traveled and hunted the wider Muskingum valley before removal, but nothing site-specific is recorded for Penn Township.

Timeline

1. c. 1813 — The first Quaker and Quaker-sympathizing settlers, including Samuel Howard and the Widger, Winnor, McLain, King, Todd, Davis, Mills and Nash families, take up farms along Wolf Creek and the Harmar-Lancaster road.
2. 1813 — Nathan Sidwell, a Friend of good means who entered a large tract adjacent to the later Pennsville, and John Plummer settle among the earliest permanent settlers; John Simpson, from Frederick County, Maryland by way of Belmont County, settles about the same year and lives to 87.
3. 1819 — Penn Township is organized; Charles Howard is elected the township's first justice of the peace in July.
4. 1819-07-24 — The county court orders an election at John Harris's house; on July 24, 29 votes are cast, 27 of them for Charles Howard as justice of the peace, with Michael King, James Harris and Thomas Nash as judges.
5. 1821 — Michael King of Guernsey County settles a mile and a half from Pennsville on 320 acres; of his nine children, six sons later served in Union regiments.
6. 1827 — A Friends' Meeting (Quaker congregation) is organized in the township.
7. 1828 — Nathaniel Sidwell platted Pennsville, which quickly becomes a small trading village with four general stores.
8. 1828-06 — The county commissioners attach sections 25 and 26 of township 8, range 13 to Union Township and the west fraction of section 31 of township 10, range 11 to Penn.
9. 1830 — Mt. Zion Church is organized in the township.
10. 1830 — John Penrose settles in Pennsville and opens its first blacksmith shop, then a store; Samuel King had opened the first store, and Eli Matson settles near the village and becomes class leader in the Methodist Protestant church.
11. 1831 — John and Samuel Rogers establish tanneries in Pennsville.
12. 1832 — Pennsville has only three or four frame buildings among its log cabins in dense woods; by 1841 it has 200 to 300 inhabitants, with a tannery, merchants, a cabinetmaker, a shoemaker and a physician.
13. 1863 — The two-story frame school building of Pennsville is erected, replacing the primitive log schoolhouse; the village has never had a bar-room.

Stories

A Quaker crossroads on the old Harmar-Lancaster road

Penn Township's earliest settlers arrived by way of Jefferson and Belmont counties, most of them Quakers or people who sympathized with Quaker practice, and they clustered their farms along Wolf Creek and the old road connecting Fort Harmar (at Marietta) to Lancaster — one of the region's earliest overland routes. When Nathaniel Sidwell platted Pennsville in 1828, the settlement grew fast enough within a decade to support four general stores, an unusually strong commercial base for what the 1886 county history calls 'a small but very pleasant village.' The Friends' Meeting organized there in 1827 anchored the township's religious life even as Methodist Protestant and Christian congregations arrived in the following decades.

Milling and tanning on Wolf Creek

Before 1830, John Pierpoint had already built a mill on Wolf Creek to serve Penn Township's farms, and Samuel King ran a horse-powered mill as an alternative. Tanning followed in 1831, when brothers John and Samuel Rogers opened tanneries in Pennsville, converting the township's abundant oak bark and cattle hides into leather for the surrounding farm trade. Blacksmiths John Penrose and Jesse Sidwell rounded out the village's early trades — together they made Pennsville, for a rural township with no other town, a genuinely self-sufficient little manufacturing center by the 1830s.

Fugitives at Pennsville and Chester Hill

Pennsville, platted in 1828 for Nathan Sidwell, was of Quaker origin and in the 1886 county history's words has always been moral, quiet and well-behaved: there was never a bar-room in it, even in the years when some hotel-keepers sold liquor. Like other Quaker communities, the history says, it was strongly abolitionist and figured prominently in the management of the Underground Railroad: fugitive slaves who succeeded in reaching Pennsville or the neighboring village of Chester Hill were reasonably safe from recapture and were sent on their way rejoicing. The village itself was modest. In 1832 a visitor found three or four frame buildings among log cabins and dense woods, and in the early years, the history thinks, its population was probably as great as in 1886. Anthony Fowler, a clockmaker, made eight-day wooden-works clocks there, some of them still in use; his brick house is the oldest brick building in the village, and Dr. Williams's weatherboarded log house on its original foundation is probably the oldest house in town.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Stockport Village78% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Malta Village15% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - West Malta5% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Chesterhill Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 4 of 4 passed.

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.
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-17

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