Rush Township, Tuscarawas County

How Rush Township, Tuscarawas County began

Rush Township, in the southeastern part of Tuscarawas County, was constituted by the Board of Commissioners on December 1, 1828, out of territory that had earlier belonged to Oxford Township and the now-vanished Nottingham Township, and was named, at the suggestion of Judge Patrick, in honor of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a leading physician of the founding era. Its earliest documented settlement was in the Stillwater valley, part of the Dohrman land tract, settled from about 1808; Abijah Robnett had settled near what became Gnadenhutten before 1808, and other families followed into the Dutch Valley and Laurel Fork areas through the 1810s-1830s. A small part of the village of Gnadenhutten extends into the township's northwest corner, giving Rush Township an edge of the county's best-documented Moravian mission history, while the hamlet of Lima (its post office called Stillwater) and the vanished Rush post office mark its rural, farm-township character; the township has never had an incorporated village or town.

Settled 1806 (William Caples); Stillwater valley settled from about 1808, incorporated 1828-12-01, by constituted by the Board of Commissioners on December 1, 1828, at the suggestion of Judge Patrick, who proposed naming it for Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia.

Where the name comes from

Named, at the suggestion of Judge Patrick, in honor of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia -- physician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a leading figure of the early republic. This resolves what earlier sources (Wikipedia; Ohio's two other Rush Townships in Champaign and Scioto counties) left unexplained.

Before the town

Rush Township's own documented Native American history is limited: its earliest settler, Abijah Robnett, is recorded settling near Gnadenhutten before 1808, in the same valley where Moravian missionaries and Lenape converts had founded Gnadenhutten in 1772 and where, on March 8, 1782, Pennsylvania militia under David Williamson massacred about 96 unarmed Lenape men, women, and children. A small part of Gnadenhutten village lies within Rush Township's northwest corner, but the massacre site itself is recorded as south of downtown Gnadenhutten and is treated as belonging to the Gnadenhutten village file, not claimed here without a location source placing it inside the township boundary. No mounds, trails, or treaty lines specific to the township beyond this are documented in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1806 — William Caples settles in what will become Rush Township.
2. 1808 — Abijah Robnett settles near Gnadenhutten, before the township's formal organization; settlement of the Stillwater valley (part of the Dohrman land tract) begins around this time, with Thomas Archbold, Peter and Patrick Bennett, Richard French, William Lyons, James Martin, Hugh Nelson, John Niblack, Levi Porter, Andrew Sewell and William Wilson recorded as landowners there by 1820.
3. 1809 — The now-defunct Nottingham Township is formed in March, taking in the eastern part of what is now Rush Township.
4. 1825 — John Tolbert, having moved from a Quaker settlement at Richmond near Steubenville, builds a grist mill on Stillwater Creek about a half mile south of Lima; after a flood washes it away he rebuilds at Lima with his two bachelor brothers, and the mill becomes known as the Brainerd (Brainard) Flouring Mills.
5. 1826 — William Crom and Mary French are married in the township, recorded as its first marriage.
6. 1828 — Rush Township is formally constituted on December 1, named for Dr. Benjamin Rush at Judge Patrick's suggestion, with boundaries somewhat different from today's.
7. 1833 — John Minnich and Jerry Walton open the township's first store, a dry-goods business, at Lima; it remains in continuous operation into the 1880s.

Stories

Settling Dutch Valley and Laurel Fork

Rush Township's early population grew up in scattered valley settlements rather than one central town. Joshua Griffith and Connel O'Donnell took up land in Dutch Valley, followed by Jacob Buffington; along the Laurel Fork of Big Stillwater Creek, the Jones family put down roots around the same period. Casper Warner and the brothers Joel and Joshua Davis arrived around 1814, and John Tolbert moved in from the Steubenville area around 1825, later building the Brainerd flouring mills with his two bachelor brothers after the first mill washed away in a flood. Small crossroads hamlets grew up to serve these farm settlements: Lima got a dry-goods store in 1833, and Milligan and a post office called Rush gave the township two other names on the map. Gilbert Crom is remembered as the township's first death, buried in the pioneers' graveyard on John Barger's land -- the kind of small, specific memory that survives from a township that never grew a real town of its own.

The Screaming Iron Horse

The 1884 county history preserves a story from the Tuscarawas Chronicle about the arrival of the railroad. When the Pan Handle line was being built through Rush Township, the whistle of the construction trains, unfamiliar to isolated hill families, caused real alarm: some thought a person was lost in the woods, others blamed a panther, and one family, having lost a son killed while felling a tree, decided the unearthly sound was his ghost screaming through the woods. One morning, unable to bear it any longer, the family patriarch went out to the spot where his son had died to try to reason with the spirit -- while a visiting neighbor found the rest of the family sitting in solemn silence at home, each holding a book (some, lacking anything more devotional, held almanacs), having decided the time had come to get religious.

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

Tuscarawas River valley aquifer (local wells) The water here

• Twin City Water and Sewer District94% of residentsTuscarawas River valley aquifer (local wells)
• Gnadenhutten6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tuscarawas Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Shale and injection wells (8)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-01-13

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