Perry Township, Fayette County

How Perry Township, Fayette County began

Perry Township, on Fayette County's southern line between Rattlesnake Creek and Paint Creek, was formed in 1845 from parts of Green and Wayne and named, like 25 other Ohio townships, for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Its settlement is among the oldest in the county: Jonathan Wright squatted on a Revolutionary officer's survey in 1804, and in 1805 Quaker families led by Isaac Todhunter, who had left Tennessee to get away from slavery, settled on Walnut Creek and founded the Walnut Creek Friends meeting. Methodists followed, organizing some of the county's earliest classes, and mills rose on the Little Wabash and Sugar Creek. Its one village, New Martinsburg, laid out by Thomas Ellis in 1831, was home to Gershom Perdue's pioneer nursery; the township had 930 people in 1910 and about 1,100 in 2020.

Settled 1804, incorporated 1845 (township organized), by Jonathan Wright (first settler); petition of Robert Eyre (township).

Where the name comes from

Named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812; Ohio has 26 townships bearing his name.

Before the town

The 1872 pioneer record, compiled from Perry Township informants, reports an Indian camp beside a large sulphur spring on Robert Scott's farm as late as 1811, and a mound on the same farm; Scott's land lay on the Little Wabash in the north of the township. It also reports large skeletons dug from an ancient burial place on William Bush's farm, and a cliff called Cedar Bluff, above a deep pool called Cedar Pond, which it says the Indians called 'Mollie's Leap.' None of these has been surveyed or dated. The 1881 history tells how, about 1806, six painted men on horseback entered Isaac Todhunter's cabin while the parents were away; fifteen-year-old Abner Todhunter fed them, and they left peaceably. The land was ceded under the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. Fayette County's one surviving listed mound, Jackson Mound, is in Madison Township, and the Samuel Smith House and Travellers' Rest Inn are in Greenfield, Highland County, not here.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Adena culture.

• Indian camp at the sulphur spring, Robert Scott farm (camp) — large sulphur spring on Robert Scott's farm on the Little Wabash, historic, occupied as late as 1811 (archive.org)
• Mound on the Robert Scott farm (mound) — Robert Scott's farm on the Little Wabash, unknown (archive.org)
• Burial place on the William Bush farm (burial) — farm of William Bush, unknown (archive.org)
• Cedar Bluff ('Mollie's Leap') and Cedar Pond (other) — cliff and pool on land first owned by Mathias Vandeman, later Anderson Irion, name recorded 1872 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1804 — Jonathan Wright, from Kentucky by way of Chillicothe, squats on Military Survey No. 658, owned by C. Monroe of Virginia; he moves to Wayne Township the next year.
2. 1805 — In the spring Isaac Todhunter, a Friend from Lost Creek, Tennessee, buys 1,200 acres (Survey No. 2620) on Walnut Creek from Nathaniel Massie and sells 600 to Thomas and Mordecai Ellis.
3. 1805 — John Buck of Virginia buys part of the Monroe survey and farms it until his death in 1830.
4. 1806 — Barnabas Cochran of Cape May, New Jersey, settles on land bought from Seth Smith; Methodists later organize at his house and build Cochran Chapel on a lot he gives.
5. 1809 — The Friends receive permission to hold a meeting and build Walnut Creek meeting house on a lot given by Isaac Todhunter.
6. 1810 — Fayette County, including the future Perry Township, is organized from Ross and Highland Counties.
7. 1810 — Charles Cox teaches in the Ayers school house, the first school building in the township of which the 1881 history has a record.
8. 1815 — Henry Snyder builds a saw-mill on Sugar Creek, adding a grist mill in 1818; the dam washes out in the spring of 1832.
9. 1816 — Thomas Stout builds the township's first water mill, on the Little Wabash near the Martinsburg pike crossing.
10. 1816 — Methodists organize a society at Jesse Rowe's house; Rowe builds Rowe's Chapel on his own land in 1834.
11. 1820 — Rev. John King, later called a founder of Methodism in the county, organizes a Methodist class at his house.
12. 1831 — Thomas Ellis lays out Martinsburg, later renamed New Martinsburg when its post office is established.
13. 1836 — Gershom Perdue moves his nursery, begun at Leesburg in 1816 or 1817, to New Martinsburg.
14. 1837 — Samuel Briggs buys the Snyder mills from Nicholas Kline and builds a flouring mill on the site, later William Sturgeon's mill.
15. 1839 — Thomas Fishback builds a carding machine and oil works at Martinsburg.
16. 1845 — After a failed 1844 petition, the commissioners grant Robert Eyre's petition of June 4 for a new township from Green and Wayne; opponents appeal, and the court upholds it.
17. 1851 — The township's only post office opens at Martinsburg, with Gershom Perdue as postmaster for fifteen years.
18. 1862 — Wilstach Lodge No. 368, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, is instituted at Martinsburg on January 1.
19. 1910 — Perry Township has 930 people; New Martinsburg about 250 and the hamlet of Walton 60.
20. 2020 — The census records 1,118 residents across the township's 28.7 square miles.

Stories

A Quaker colony on Walnut Creek

Isaac Todhunter, a member of the Society of Friends at Lost Creek, Tennessee, left the South to remove his family from the influence of slavery. His sons Isaac and Richard went ahead in the spring of 1804, squatted on a small prairie at the site of Leesburg, and raised corn to feed the family through its first year. In the spring of 1805 the father bought 1,200 acres on Walnut Creek from Nathaniel Massie and sold half to Thomas and Mordecai Ellis, also Friends from Tennessee; David Dutton soon joined them. They met at first in a building in the corner of Todhunter's yard, and in 1809 received permission from the Fairfield Quarterly Meeting to build the Walnut Creek meeting house on a lot he donated. By 1881 the meeting had two hundred members, some of them across the line in Highland County.

Six visitors at the Todhunter cabin

About 1806, the 1881 county history says, fifteen-year-old Abner Todhunter was minding the younger children in his father's cabin when six painted men rode up and came inside. Frightened, he nonetheless asked them to sit down, set out the best food in the house and stepped back while they ate. When they finished, one of them rose and came toward him; instead of harming him, the man patted him on the head and said, 'White man heap good, feed Indian,' and the party rode away. The story was told by Abner's son Amos, and was retold in the 1914 county history.

The Pioneer Nursery

Gershom Perdue, born in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1790, came to Highland County in 1813 and worked as a tanner and merchant. He then started what the 1881 history calls the first nursery in Ohio, the Pioneer Nursery at Leesburg (the history gives 1816 in one place and 1817 in another). In 1836 he moved it and his family to New Martinsburg, where he also kept store and served fifteen years as the first postmaster from 1851. His sons M. P. and T. K. Perdue carried on the nursery, and in 1881 were doing an extensive business in trees, flowers and shrubbery.

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

Groundwater wells (8 wells) The water here

• Washington Court House48% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells
• Greenfield Village40% of residentsGroundwater wells (8 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc9% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)
• Leesburg Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Fayette County - culpepper Subdivision0% of residentsPaint Creek (Washington C.H. Reservoirs) + wells

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

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