Rarden Township, Scioto County

How Rarden Township, Scioto County began

Rarden Township, in the northwestern corner of Scioto County bordering Pike and Adams counties, was the youngest township in the county, organized on January 10, 1891 from Brush Creek Township, although its first settlers arrived shortly after 1800. It is named, like the village at its center, for pioneer Thomas Rarden. In the 1840s Pennsylvanians who came into the hill country found a people who dressed in buckskin and hunted, nicknamed them 'Pottawattomies' and called the Rarden settlement 'Moccasin'; Orville Grant, brother of Ulysses S. Grant, ran a tannery here and renamed the town Galena in 1850; and the Norfolk & Western brought stone quarrying and a cooperage, and the Mt. Joy fair began in 1895. The 2020 population was 1,106, most of it in or near the village of Rarden, covered in its own entry.

Settled shortly after 1800 (John Smith, James and Oliver Jones, Charles Ross, Isaac Gifford, John and Matthew Williams and Enos Mustard on Rarden Creek), incorporated 1891-01-10 (separated from Brush Creek Township), by first township officers: trustees S. S. Blosser, Milton Mustard and William Keese; clerk D. A. Gardner; treasurer William Newman.

Where the name comes from

Named for pioneer settler Thomas Rarden, who is also the namesake of the village of Rarden; the 1903 county history says the town 'received the name Rarden after Thomas Rarden, one of the earliest settlers in that vicinity.' It is the only Rarden Township in Ohio. The Mt. Joy district in the township's northeast is named for Thomas Mt. Joy, an absentee land speculator of Maysville, Kentucky who held about 2,000 acres.

Before the town

No Native site or event specific to Rarden Township was found. The township lies in the Brush Creek hills west of the Scioto and within the land ceded by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. The 1903 county history records only that Pennsylvania settlers of the 1840s, finding locals in buckskin and moccasins who rode in groups and whooped, called them 'Pottawattomies' and the Rarden area 'Moccasin'; that was a settler nickname for rough frontier manners, not evidence of a Native community.

Timeline

1. c. 1800 — The first settlers reach Rarden Creek soon after 1800, followed on Mt. Joy by Willis Bull, Nathaniel Newman, Hugh Brown and others, and on Dunlap Creek by the Newmans and Walkers.
2. before 1830 — A few log schoolhouses already stand in the forested country west of the Scioto Valley, joined by foot paths and bridle paths; the 'dirt road' from northern Adams County down Brush Creek to Portsmouth is the nearest road to market.
3. 1846 — Asa L. Williams opens the first store in what the Pennsylvanians call 'Moccasin,' later Rarden; Aaron Moore, William Brooks, Eli Rigdon and Philip Leighly follow.
4. 1850-10-10 — Orville Grant, brother of Ulysses S. Grant, names the town Galena after his former home in Illinois when its first plat is recorded: 12 acres, 45 lots, from surveys owned by B. Edwards, Aaron Moore and the heirs of Jesse Edwards.
5. c. 1855 — The United Presbyterian church is built a quarter-mile west of Mt. Joy post office; the Mt. Joy Christian Church dates from 1854 and puts up a log church in 1867.
6. 1886 — The town of Rarden is incorporated, with Michael Freeman as mayor, D. A. Gardner as clerk and Scott Foster as marshal.
7. 1891-01-10 — Rarden Township is organized from Brush Creek Township as the youngest of the county's townships.
8. 1895 — The Rarden Stone Company is incorporated in July by the Waller brothers of Fairfield County, quarrying buff sandstone for building and paving; the Mt. Joy Fair, later the Tri-County Fair and the Scioto County Agricultural Society, holds its first show on August 26-27.
9. 1902 — The township has 309 pupils in seven districts with a three-and-a-half-month school year; the Taylor Cooperage Company turns out 40,000 barrels and tight packages a year and the Rarden M. E. Church, whose congregation dates to 1820, has 75 members.
10. 2020 — The census counts 1,106 residents in the township's 31.7 square miles.

Stories

'Moccasin' and the Pottawattomies

When settlers from Pennsylvania began coming into the Brush Creek hills in the 1840s they found people who had, the 1903 county historian wrote, 'adopted primitive ways of living and had patterned much after the Indians in their mode of dress.' The men wore buckskin hunting shirts and moccasins, carried rifles when they went abroad, and farmed less than they hunted. Whiskey was sold at houses here and there, and on special occasions a crowd would gather on horseback, carouse, and gallop off 'yelling and howling like a mob of Indians.' The newcomers called them 'Pottawattomies' and the Rarden area 'Moccasin.' The railroad brought saloons and, for a while, fights and drunken brawls with a large number of deaths; the historian thought the township's manners had improved by 1902, when its timber was nearly stripped and its quarries were beginning to be worked.

Orville Grant's tanyard

Orville Grant, brother of Ulysses S. Grant, with Andrew Montgomery and Milton Morrison, built a tanyard at Rarden before 1850. During the Civil War they made cavalry saddles for the government. Grant renamed the settlement Galena for the Illinois town where he had lived, and it was under that name that the first plat of 12 acres and 45 lots was made on October 10, 1850. Grant and Williams took over the tannery about 1865; S. S. Jones ran it from about 1870 until 1878, when it was converted into a pump factory, and it burned about 1885. The Galena name did not stick: by 1903 the town was Rarden, after pioneer Thomas Rarden.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Peebles Public Water System69% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells near Manchester)
• Adams County Regional Wd31% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (wells near Manchester)

Superfund sites (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2024: 0 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

Ballot issues

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-02-06

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