Roswell

How Roswell began

Roswell is a small village straddling Goshen and Union townships in Tuscarawas County, whose population has fallen by more than half since 1910. The village lies within Goshen Township, whose own boundaries once held the Moravian mission village of Goshen, a settlement of Christian Munsee (Delaware) converts active into the early 19th century, though no source ties that mission site specifically to present-day Roswell.

Where the name comes from

The origin of the name is not recorded in the available histories.

Before the town

Roswell lies in Goshen and Union townships. The 1884 county history places the Goshen Mission, a Moravian village of Christian Lenape (Delaware) founded by David Zeisberger in 1798, west of the river four miles below New Philadelphia, on Lot 39 of Goshen Township, and says its people were removed to Canada in the fall of 1823 (Wikipedia gives 1824). Zeisberger and the missionary Rev. Edwards (1801) are buried at Goshen. No source locates the mission relative to the village of Roswell, or any site on the Roswell tract.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Christian Munsee.

• Goshen Mission (Moravian) (village) — west of the Tuscarawas River, about four miles below New Philadelphia, on Lot 39, Goshen Township, 1798-1823 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1798 — David Zeisberger founds the Goshen Mission of Christian Lenape (Delaware) converts in what is now Goshen Township, west of the Tuscarawas River on Lot 39, four miles below New Philadelphia.
2. 1808 — Goshen Township, in which Roswell partly lies, is organized; the township's name is said to have been chosen to imply fertility of the soil, after the Biblical Land of Goshen.
3. 1808 — Goshen is one of the four townships into which the county commissioners divide the new Tuscarawas County at their first meeting in spring; the missionary Zeisberger dies that autumn and is buried at the Goshen burial ground.
4. 1823 — Rev. Abraham Luckenbach, the missionary, leads the Goshen Indians away in the fall; the mission is broken up and they travel by New Philadelphia and Sandyville to Cleveland, where they board a vessel for Canada.
5. 1833 — Union Township is organized on March 3 when the townships along the eastern side of Tuscarawas County are reshaped after the formation of Carroll County.
6. 1906 — A post office named Roswell opens, serving the village until 1930.
7. 1910 — Roswell village records a population of 514, its highest recorded figure.
8. 1920 — The census counts 420 residents, down from 514 in 1910.
9. 1930 — Population has fallen to 286, a decline of nearly 44 percent from 1910.
10. 1960 — The census counts 379 residents, up from 267 in 1950, the only substantial rise since 1910.
11. 2000 — The census counts 276 residents, then 219 in both 2010 and 2020.
12. 2020 — Census records Roswell's population at 219, unchanged from the 2010 count.

Stories

The Goshen Mission and the end of the Moravian Indians in the valley

Goshen was the last of the Moravian Delaware villages on the Tuscarawas, founded in 1798 by Zeisberger west of the river four miles below New Philadelphia. The missionary Rev. Edwards was buried at Goshen in 1801 and Zeisberger himself in 1808. The residents farmed a little but hunted widely, and the women made baskets from black-ash saplings soaked and pounded into splints, which they sold or traded to settlers. During the War of 1812 the whites forbade them to leave the village bounds under pain of being treated as enemies, and a young man's stealthy outing sometimes frightened a child or woman. In the fall of 1823 the mission was broken up under Rev. Abraham Luckenbach and the Indians, reluctant to go, walked up the west bank of the river, crossed at New Philadelphia and went by Sandyville to Cleveland to sail for Canada. Only Tom Lyons stayed, a figure the county historian says frightened children for years.

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

Wells in the sand-and-gravel aquifer within the Tuscarawas River valley near New Philadelphia The water here

• New Philadelphia City97% of residentsTuscarawas River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (wells)
• Aqua Ohio - Midvale2% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Tcmsd-wainwright0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tuscarawas Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Dover City0% of residentsSugar Creek Basin sand-and-gravel aquifer (Dover wellfield)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-08-05
• Basic Audit, 2021 to 2022, released 2024-07-16

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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