Pleasant Township, Perry County

How Pleasant Township, Perry County began

Pleasant Township, in the southeastern part of Perry County, was organized in 1850 out of sixteen sections taken from its neighbors, nine from Bearfield, three each from Monroe and Pike and one from Salt Lick, which made it the second-smallest township in the county. It has never had an incorporated municipality. William Fowler, who rode from Maryland and entered land about 1814, is named as its first settler; the ridge dividing the Muskingum and Hocking drainages runs through it, and on that ridge Job Tharp laid out Oakfield in 1838. Moxahala, laid out in 1873 by A. S. Biddison on the Ohio Central line, became an iron town when the Moxahala Iron Company's furnace went into blast on January 1, 1878, and a stoneware pottery followed in 1880.

Settled about 1814, platted 1838 (Oakfield); 1873 (Moxahala), incorporated 1850 (township organized), by William Fowler (first settler); Job Tharp (Oakfield); A. S. Biddison (Moxahala).

Where the name comes from

No source gives a specific reason. The 1902 county history says only that 'the origin of its name is manifest,' implying a descriptive name; it is one of fifteen townships of that name in Ohio.

Before the town

No site-specific Native American record was found for Pleasant Township in the sources checked. The 1902 county history's list of prehistoric earthworks has no entry for Pleasant Township, and its account of historic Native trails does not name a trail segment within the township, though the Monongahela Trail is described as following the Jonathan-Sunday Creek divide westward from Porterville, the same ridge on which Oakfield stands. The 1883 chapter on the township records no Native encounters.

Timeline

1. 1814 — William Fowler, from Maryland, enters land in section 30, then part of Bearfield Township, about this year; the Biddisons and the Montgomerys follow.
2. 1817 — Franklin Harris builds a water and horse mill on the south fork of Jonathan's Creek, about two miles below the later Moxahala.
3. 1838 — Job Tharp lays out Oakfield on the dividing ridge, on land his father had entered.
4. 1840 — Mount Pleasant Methodist Episcopal Church, known as the Whippstown church, is organized about this year; its log church follows in 1842 or 1843.
5. 1850 — Pleasant Township organized within Perry County.
6. 1854 — St. Pius Catholic Church is organized and built about this year under Father Darchoe, south of Ferrara in section 24.
7. 1860 — A Presbyterian church is organized at Oakfield and builds its house the same year.
8. 1873 — Moxahala, the township's one named community, laid out in the township's north along what is now State Route 13.
9. 1873 — Geologist E. B. Andrews measures the Upper New Lexington coal seam at 5 feet at James Fowler's bank in section 30, Pleasant Township.
10. 1874 — Post office opened at Moxahala.
11. 1878 — The Moxahala Iron Company's furnace, built in 1877, goes into blast on January 1 and employs about fifty men making some forty-eight tons of iron a day.
12. 1880 — A stoneware pottery opens near Moxahala in September with ten hands; by December 1882 it doubles output to about 12,000 gallons a week and wins premiums at the Ohio State Fair.
13. 1882 — The south branch of Jonathan's Creek overflows and completely floods Moxahala.

Stories

Moxahala's furnace year

Moxahala was laid out in 1873 by A. S. Biddison near the middle of section 30, beside the Ohio Central line on the spot where a Biddison sawmill had run from about 1842. The hills around it held a four-foot coal seam and two kinds of iron ore: black band, in steady seams of eight to eighteen inches yielding about forty percent iron, and pot ore, richer but so uneven that it was seldom worked at a profit. In 1877 the Moxahala Iron Company built a blast furnace there to use that ore, and it went into blast on New Year's Day 1878, charging half native ore, a quarter mill cinder and a quarter lake ore or hematite and turning out about forty-eight tons of pig iron a day with fifty hands. A stoneware pottery opened nearby in 1880, digging its clay a mile away. By 1883 Moxahala had about 375 people, three general stores, two hotels and a two-story schoolhouse, even after a flood of Jonathan's Creek swept the town in 1882.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Crooksville54% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Lexington15% of residentsNew Lexington Reservoir(s) (Old & New Reservoir)
• Corning, Village Of12% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-hemlock5% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-buckingham4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-mainesville4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.3% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-congo3% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Oakdale Water District1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Northern Perry Co.water #20% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-30

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Pleasant Township, Perry County, Perry County and its school district:

• Perry County: Renews a 1-mill property tax levy to maintain & operate county home of Perry County for 5 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

Cite this page