Pike Township, Madison County

How Pike Township, Madison County began

Pike Township occupies the extreme northwest corner of Madison County, bounded by Union and Champaign counties, and was erected by the county commissioners on September 5, 1814. It is one of the smallest and most regularly shaped townships in the county, drained by the Little Darby and Barron Run. Early settlers arrived along the Little Darby by about 1812, many of them squatters at first who hunted the abundant deer and turkey before more permanent farmers bought the land outright. The township's only village, Liverpool, was platted in 1836 by Darius Burnham, a Connecticut-born settler who had arrived in 1820, and grew up around Andrew Andrews's earlier Rosedale post office and store. Pike Township remained overwhelmingly agricultural and, unusually for the county, had no organized church left standing by the early 1880s. Today it is still farmland, with the village of Plain City and the city of Marysville, in neighboring counties, serving as its nearest population centers.

Settled 1812, incorporated 1814-09-05, by erected by the Madison County Commissioners, Joshua Ewing and William Gibson presiding.

Where the name comes from

The 1883 county history records only the commissioners' order creating "Pike" township on September 5, 1814, without explaining the choice of name; "Pike" was a common township name in early Ohio, often honoring a state or National road, or explorer Zebulon Pike, but no source found here confirms a specific reason for Madison County's Pike Township.

Before the town

No mound or named Native village within Pike Township itself turned up in the sources searched, but the township was still Native hunting ground when settlement began. George Van Ness, who settled on the Little Darby in the township's northwest corner in January 1813-14, is recorded as having Native neighbors: "Indians were his neighbors, and deer, wild hogs and game of all kinds were in abundance." Pike Township lies along the Little Darby, a stream named, according to the 1883 county history, for Darby, a Wyandot chief who lived near the site of Plain City just to the north (a later researcher found little evidence for the chief); county-wide, the Little and Big Darby valleys were regular Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware and Mingo hunting and camping ground into the early 1800s, with a large sepulchral mound on the Little Darby documented a few miles southeast of this township, near Jefferson.

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

Timeline

1. 1812 — John Erwin settled in the northwest corner of Pike Township, probably the first settler in the west part of the township; a railroad station was later named Erwin for him.
2. 1813-14 — George Van Ness, a Revolutionary War veteran who had served with Washington at Valley Forge, settled on the Little Darby in the township's northwest corner, where Native families were still his neighbors.
3. 1814-09-05 — The Madison County Commissioners erected Pike Township, naming Joshua Ewing and William Gibson as the officials who signed the order.
4. 1820 — George Van Ness built a three-story frame grist-mill on the Little Darby, the first known grist-mill in the township; its dam washed out after about two years and it was never rebuilt.
5. 1820 — Union County was erected, cutting off part of Pike Township's original territory and forcing a change in its north boundary.
6. 1832 — Capt. Andrews of Chillicothe secured a post office at his Rosedale farm, becoming its first postmaster; the office kept the Rosedale name even after it moved into the village of Liverpool.
7. 1836-05-19 — Darius Burnham surveyed and platted the village of Liverpool, recording the plat at London; John and David Snyder opened the first store in Burnham's new frame building.
8. 1839-03-04 — The Madison County Commissioners resurveyed and reset Pike Township's boundaries following the loss of territory to Union County.

Stories

The Barrens, a survey party, and a young nation's fortunes

In October 1805, Peter Helphenstine, a Revolutionary War major from Virginia, reached Chillicothe and fell in with Col. Elias Langham, who was heading up into what settlers called "the Barrens" to lay out land warrants; this survey trip, which cut through what would become Pike and neighboring townships, drew Helphenstine and his companion David Watson back to Virginia to gather their families. In September 1806 a party of thirty-nine people in six or seven wagons set out for Madison County, arriving at Chillicothe by the end of October; Helphenstine reached his claim and, with Watson's help, built a cabin, moving his family in that January. The story, recorded in the Paint Township chapter of the 1883 county history because Helphenstine ultimately settled there rather than in Pike, nonetheless illustrates how the same surveying party opened Pike Township's own "Barrens" prairie to settlement in the same years.

A pair of pants combed from a cow

Claudius Mitchell, born in Vermont in 1794 to poor parents, drifted with his family through New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and southern Ohio before reaching Madison County in 1815 and settling on the Urbana and Liverpool pike near Pike Township's west line. He never learned to read or write; his first pair of pants, made by his mother, was woven from hair combed off the family cow during spring shedding and mixed with flax tow, all spun and knit by her own hands. His first pair of shoes, bought at age ten, he earned himself by cutting and hauling wood for miles. In February 1816, newly married, he leased land on Spring Fork and built a cabin with six inches of snow on the ground; that first night he and his wife laid clapboards over the snow for a bed and knelt on the frozen earth to pray before sleeping. He split 350 rails his first day out on his own, paid in corn at 25 cents a bushel, and later paid $300 a year in taxes on land he had built from nothing.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Mechanicsburg Village98% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Catawba Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Colleges (1)

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-05-21

Cite this page