Rush Township, Scioto County

How Rush Township, Scioto County began

Rush Township, in central Scioto County, holds one of the county's two major Hopewell-culture earthwork sites, Tremper Mound and Works, on a Scioto River terrace near West Portsmouth. American settlement reached the area by 1796, though the township itself was not organized until June 3, 1867, on a petition headed by Levi Kirkendall, and named for Dr. Benjamin Rush, the physician and Founding Father. McDermott, its main modern community, sits in the township's west; the vanished hamlet of French, founded and long run by Swiss immigrant postmaster Joseph C. Montavon, once stood elsewhere within its bounds. Its 2020 population was 2,939.

Settled about 1796-1797 (Abraham Wykoff), incorporated 1867-06-03, by Levi Kirkendall and others petitioned; Abraham Wykoff first settler.

Where the name comes from

The 1903 county history says the township was named for Dr. Benjamin Rush; it was cut from Union Township on June 3, 1867, and ranks as the youngest of the townships but two.

Before the town

Tremper Mound and Works, a Hopewell-culture earthen enclosure about five miles northwest of Portsmouth on a Scioto River terrace near West Portsmouth, lies within Rush Township. The roughly oval enclosure, 480 by 407 feet, was surveyed by Charles Whittlesey in the 1840s for Squier and Davis's landmark study of American earthworks, then excavated in 1915 by William C. Mills of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Mills's team found the outline of a wooden building 200 by 100 feet at the base of the central mound, and in one of its eastern chambers more than 500 objects that had been deliberately broken, including 136 smoking pipes carved mostly from pipestone traded in from as far as northwestern Illinois — ninety of them carved as animal effigies: bears, wolves, dogs, beavers, cougars, otters, turtles and birds. The site, privately owned and once a working farm, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 6, 1972; it is not developed for public visits.

Nations recorded here: Hopewell culture.

• Tremper Mound and Works (earthwork) — Rush Township, on a Scioto River terrace near West Portsmouth, about 5 miles northwest of Portsmouth, Hopewell, c. 100 BC – AD 500; excavated 1915 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1796 — Settlement begins in what becomes Rush Township.
2. 1797 — Abraham Wykoff, probably the first settler, is in the township about 1796 or 1797 and dies there on August 11, 1799, aged 38; his tombstone stands on the river bank near the Bethany Brick Church. The Utts family arrives in 1797.
3. 1818 — William Lodwick builds the first boat ever built inland in the county at the mouth of Brush Creek, where Gen. William Kendall also built boats and ran a mill.
4. 1834 — Bethany Baptist Church is organized on November 30; George Heroedh builds and donates the brick church to the society, which is incorporated with 127 members.
5. 1840s — Charles Whittlesey surveys the Tremper Mound and Works earthwork for Squier and Davis's Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.
6. 1867-06-03 — On a petition headed by Levi Kirkendall, over a remonstrance by Milburn Coe, the county commissioners set off Rush Township from Union on June 3, naming it for Dr. Benjamin Rush; the first election is ordered at the schoolhouse near the mouth of Brush Creek.
7. 1868 — The Methodist Episcopal church at Rushtown is organized; it remains intact until 1895.
8. 1880 — Swiss immigrant Joseph C. Montavon, also a schoolteacher and justice of the peace, becomes postmaster of the hamlet of French; its post office runs until 1901.
9. 1884 — A suspension footbridge 312 feet long is built over Brush Creek near the Arnold schoolhouse at a cost of $495.
10. 1897 — William and Michael McDermott buy the quarries along the Norfolk and Western near Portsmouth and organize the McDermott Stone Company, incorporated March 23, 1898 with $100,000 capital.
11. 1898 — McDermott is platted on July 28 by the McDermott Stone Company and James and Honor Barker, 113 lots on 27 acres; a Methodist church there is organized in 1899.
12. 1900 — Bethany Baptist dedicates a new $3,000 church on the second Sunday of May; in 1902 the township's real and personal property is assessed at $201,674.
13. 1915 — William C. Mills excavates Tremper Mound, finding the outline of a large wooden building and, in one chamber, more than 500 deliberately broken objects, including 136 smoking pipes, ninety of them effigy pipes.
14. 1972-12-06 — Tremper Mound and Works is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Five hundred broken offerings

When William C. Mills opened the central mound at Tremper in 1915, he found something unusual even by Hopewell standards: postmolds that outlined a wooden building 200 feet long by 100 feet wide, with several smaller chambers at its eastern end, and in one of those chambers more than 500 objects that had been deliberately broken and left there. Among the wreckage were 136 smoking pipes, ninety of them carved as animals — bears, wolves, beavers, turtles, otters, birds — made overwhelmingly not from any Ohio stone but from catlinite pipestone quarried more than 500 miles away in northwestern Illinois. Whatever ceremony required breaking so much finely worked material at once, it argued for a trade network reaching well beyond the Scioto Valley, and for an investment of skilled labor its builders were willing to destroy on purpose rather than keep.

The sandstone town of McDermott

Sandstone beds in western Rush Township had been worked on a small scale for forty years when William and Michael McDermott, quarry operators of national reputation, bought the separate properties in 1897 and combined them into the McDermott Stone Company, with mills and standard-gauge track connecting the quarries to the Norfolk and Western ten miles northwest of Portsmouth. The company was incorporated on March 23, 1898 and the town of McDermott was platted that July. Its saws were fed with sand and water by a pump and ran day and night by electric light, and its stone, in ledges up to five feet thick under ten to twelve feet of earth, was sold from Boston to the Missouri River: the Williamson, West Virginia, courthouse, a bank in Louisiana, an asylum in Topeka, and footings for the ten-story Neave Building in Cincinnati. Over three hundred cars of flat rock went to the Miami Canal retaining walls in Cincinnati in 1901.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · ohioghosttowns.wordpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Northwest Regional Water District88% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Scioto Co. Regional Water District #19% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Scioto Water Inc.-rose Hill2% of residentsPurchased: Scioto Co. Regional Water Dist. #1 (Teays Valley Aquifer)
• Scioto Water, Inc.-davis Camp1% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (wells near SR 348)
• Portsmouth City0% of residentsOhio River

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Public schools (3)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Mounds and earthworks (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2021: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal caution: declared 2014-07-22, released 2018-11-15. source

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