Port Washington

How Port Washington began

Port Washington was originally laid out in 1827 under the name Salisbury (rendered "Salesburg" in one county history) by John Knight, on Salem Township land along the Ohio and Erie Canal in southwestern Tuscarawas County. It took its present name when the Port Washington post office opened in 1832, reflecting its role as a small canal port. The Port Washington Town Hall on Main Street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, is the village's National Register listing. The village had 548 residents at the 2020 census.

Platted 1827 (as Salisbury; replatted 1829 and 1832), incorporated 1868, by John Knight.

Where the name comes from

Laid out in 1827 as Salisbury (recorded elsewhere as "Salesburg"), the town was renamed Port Washington when its post office opened in 1832, marking it as a landing on the Ohio and Erie Canal.

Before the town

No Native American history specific to the site of Port Washington was found; the village was platted in 1827, more than three decades after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville ceded most of the surrounding land. For the county's record of prehistoric mound-building cultures, the historic nations who lived, hunted or traveled through the Tuscarawas Valley, and the treaties and removal that affected the county.

Timeline

1. 1827 — John Knight lays out the town of Salisbury on Lot 21 in Salem Township, the site that becomes Port Washington.
2. 1829 — Salisbury is replatted with 65 lots, then 73 in 1832 and enlarged by John Knight in 1838 with 62 more lots.
3. 1831-1832 — Milligan and Gaskill build a saw mill serving the Port Washington area of Salem Township.
4. 1832 — A post office named Port Washington opens, and the town takes that name.
5. 1840 — Port Washington has 116 residents; a frame meeting house shared by Methodist Protestants and Methodist Episcopals is built about this time.
6. 1843 — Lawbaugh builds a grist mill at canal lock 18 near Port Washington capable of grinding 200 barrels of flour daily.
7. 1848 — A Methodist church and a Lutheran church are built in Port Washington the same year, per the genealogytrails township history; the 1884 county history instead dates the frame Methodist meeting house to about 1840 and the German Lutheran congregation's organization to 1851.
8. 1850 — Population 260.
9. 1851 — The German Evangelical Lutheran congregation is organized under Rev. Carl Doeppenschmidt.
10. 1857 — The public union school system is adopted about this year; a two-story frame school is built in 1859 and first used in September 1860.
11. 1868 — Port Washington is incorporated as a village; Dr. David Nelson is elected the first mayor but resigns, and L. A. Cornet fills the vacancy.
12. 1877 — The village buys its fire engine; in 1878-79 it builds the three-story brick town hall for about $3,500.
13. 1979 — The Port Washington Town Hall on Main Street is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 22.
14. 1880 — Population 634 (425 in 1870).
15. 1882 — The Port Washington Moravian church is organized on March 5 with 28 members by Rev. J. H. Clewell.

Stories

From Salisbury to a canal port

When John Knight laid out his town on Lot 21 of Salem Township in 1827, he called it Salisbury. The name did not stick. When the community got its own post office in 1832, it took the name Port Washington instead, a name that announced what the settlement actually was: a stop on the Ohio and Erie Canal, the waterway then transforming the Tuscarawas Valley from a scatter of farms into a trade corridor. Mills followed the canal traffic — a saw mill in 1831-32, and by 1843 a grist mill at lock 18 large enough to turn out two hundred barrels of flour a day, a scale that only made sense with a canal to ship the flour out on. The Port Washington Town Hall still stands on Main Street and is the village's entry on the National Register of Historic Places, listed in 1979.

The man who came to build a mill

John Knight came to the Salem tract from Antrim, in Harrison County, to build a mill across the Tuscarawas just above the bridge, but a fever stopped the project. He laid out a town instead, which he called Salisbury, on the new Ohio Canal in 1827, opened a store and warehouse, and finished a tavern begun by Thomas Moore. Charles Hill and Richard Carr built the first houses; Hill opened the first store in his own dwelling and built a canal boat in the street, while Benjamin Carr kept the first tavern near the towpath. Knight kept the inn for many years before moving to a farm in Oxford Township. The town grew with the canal to 634 people by 1880.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Tuscarawas County on the full map

No water-system data is linked to Port Washington's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Police stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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