Pike Township, Coshocton County

How Pike Township, Coshocton County began

Pike Township, in the southwestern corner of Coshocton County, was first settled in 1808 by Daniel Ashcraft, who brought his family west from Pennsylvania by flatboat down the Ohio and packhorse through the wilderness, and was organized in August 1818, one of eight Pike Townships in Ohio. Its only village, West Carlisle, was laid out in 1817 by John Perkins and John McNabb and named by Perkins for his native Carlisle, Pennsylvania; it remains the recognized place in the township's northeastern part, holding the township hall. A three-sided hunters' shelter called Slab Camp, once used by Indians, stood near the mouth of Winding Fork when the first settlers arrived.

Settled 1808 (Daniel Ashcraft), incorporated August 1818, by first officers elected at the house of James Bryan.

Where the name comes from

Named for one of Ohio's eight Pike Townships, a name common across the state (also given to Pike County) usually honoring explorer and army officer Zebulon Pike; the 1881 county history does not tie the specific choice here to a local event.

Before the town

No Native village, trail, or treaty line is documented specifically within Pike Township, but the 1881 county history records that the only vestige of Indian habitation visible to the first settlers was a rickety three-sided hut called Slab Camp, standing near the mouth of Winding Fork, which hunters continued to use as a shelter after the Indians who built it had abandoned it. The township borders Washington Township, home to the former Shawnee town of Wakatomika.

• Slab Camp (camp) — near the mouth of Winding Fork, Pike Township, pre-settlement, still standing c. 1808-1818 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1803 — John Matthews surveys the township, which, with Perry, is the only township in the county made up wholly of congress land.
2. 1808 — Daniel Ashcraft, traveling from Pennsylvania by flatboat down the Ohio to Marietta and then by packhorse, becomes the township's first settler, on the southwest quarter of section 22.
3. c. 1813 — David Knowles settles in the eastern part of section 19; David Moore, a cooper, and James Thompson follow about 1814 on section 12.
4. c. 1816 — Eli Seward's brother Ebenezer Seward, James Chapin and John Taylor come from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania; Eli Seward settles in the western part in February 1817.
5. 1817 — West Carlisle, the township's only village, is laid out in August by John Perkins and John McNabb on the line between their two quarter sections; Perkins names it for his native Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
6. 1818 — Pike Township is organized in August, with elections held at the house of James Bryan.
7. c. 1818 — John Taylor builds a sawmill on Winding Fork, and James and George Crawford start a small distillery; Joshua Lemart's horse-mill grinds corn for neighbors when the creek mills fail in dry seasons.
8. 1821 — The tax duplicate lists resident property-holders including George and Francis Crawford, John McNabb, John Perdew, Kimble Rakestraw and William Wright, a local surveyor and wheelwright.
9. 1823 — West Carlisle's Presbyterian church, the oldest of the village's three congregations, is incorporated by the state legislature.
10. c. 1824 — A school cabin is built on the hill south of Hiram Noland's house on the southeast quarter of section 12, with William Wright, said to be proficient in Latin, as first teacher.
11. 1833 — Frederick Zellers builds a sawmill on Tomica Creek and adds a flour mill the next year, later known as the Gault mill; West Carlisle in 1833 has two churches, three stores, a tavern, a physician and 107 people.
12. c. 1835 — The Evangelical Lutheran church is organized, with Jacob Seidle as first minister; its early members include Henry Billman, George Sossaman and Solomon Exline.
13. c. 1841 — A nondenominational meeting house known as the 'Broomstick church,' or People's church, is built about two miles south of West Carlisle on land donated by Hiram Noland, open to all denominations that do not conflict in scheduling.
14. 1880 — West Carlisle has 154 people; its 1881 directory lists two dry goods stores, a grocery, a wagon shop, a saddlery and a carriage works employing seven or eight workmen.
15. 2020 — Pike Township has 689 residents.

Stories

By flatboat, keel-boat and packhorse

Daniel Ashcraft and his son-in-law Thomas McKee built a flatboat some twenty by forty feet on the Cheat River in Pennsylvania, loaded it with their families, furniture and teams, and floated it down to the Ohio and on to Marietta, since it was too unwieldy to bring up to Zanesville. From Marietta, Ashcraft hired three keel-boats to carry his goods on to Zanesville while the teams came by land; from there he packed his most necessary belongings on horseback through the wilderness to reach what became Pike Township in 1808, leaving his heavier goods behind near Frazersburg. He built a bark camp for shelter, then a log cabin, and eventually a hewed-log house sawed with lumber he had hauled from Zanesville by whip-saw. Along with his blacksmithing, coopering and tannery, he later kept a house of entertainment for travelers on the newly opened Newark road, charging twelve and a half cents for a meal and six and a quarter cents for a night's lodging.

A six-hundred-pound bear and a fifteen-year-old's aim

Richard Meck, an early settler on the northwest quarter of section 22, left home one day with his wife, leaving his son Samuel, scarcely fifteen, in charge of his younger sisters. While the children amused themselves springing saplings in the woods, Samuel spotted what he took for a bear behind a fallen log; he sent the girls to keep watch while he ran for his father's rifle, a gun so heavy he could barely carry it. Lying on the ground and steadying the barrel across the log, he took aim and fired, and the ball killed the animal outright. He drew a butcher knife and finished it in old hunter fashion, then fetched a horse and sled and had the bear home by the time his parents returned; it weighed, by the county history's account, more than six hundred pounds.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Frazeysburg79% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Warsaw19% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Country Hills MHP2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

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