Rushsylvania

How Rushsylvania began

Rushsylvania sits in central Rushcreek Township, which was organized in 1827 in northeastern Logan County. James Clagg, a Virginian, laid out the settlement in 1834 and it was first called Claggstown or Clagg Town; a post office named Rushsylvania opened in 1836 and the new name eventually replaced the old one. The village grew slowly through the 19th and 20th centuries, peaking at 610 residents in 1980, and stood at 491 people as of the 2020 census.

Settled 1834, platted 1834 (as Claggstown), by James Clagg.

Where the name comes from

The village was platted in 1834 as Claggstown. A post office called Rushsylvania began operating in 1836, and that name came to be used for the village itself. The origin of the name Rushsylvania is not recorded.

Before the town

No site inside the village is recorded. The 1880 county history says an Indian trail once ran from Lewistown by way of Brugler Springs to Upper Sandusky through Rush Creek Township, and describes nearby Rush Creek Lake, now about ninety acres, as the water in which Indians had paddled canoes not half a century earlier. It adds a tradition of two Indians who sank in the lake's mire while chasing a deer.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1827 — Rushcreek Township, in which Rushsylvania sits, was organized.
2. 1834 — James Clagg, a Virginian who had first settled on the Miami, sells that farm, buys the land where the village stands, lays out the town (called Claggstown or Clagg Town) and opens the first tannery in the township the same season.
3. 1836 — A post office named Rushsylvania opened, and the community came to be known by that name.
4. 1848 — Dr. Doran, who began practice in the village in 1840, becomes postmaster and holds the office for decades, handling over a million letters by 1880; Thompson Hughes and Jacob Niglebarger had kept the first post office.
5. 1853 — The Bellefontaine and Indiana Railroad, later the C.C.C. & I., is completed through the township; a workman killed in a fray among the construction hands is buried near the 'Big Fill' and his grave is unknown.
6. 1857 — Most of the business section burns to the ground; the fire starts in a grocery across an alley from Thomas Carson's tavern and spreads both ways, and the town never fully recovers.
7. 1862 — The Pymn Brothers build the stone mill, bought in 1866 by Robert Porter and in 1873 by the Day Brothers, who run it by steam with three run of burrs and a capacity of seventy-five barrels a day.
8. 1867 — James Adams, from Iowa, starts a woolen factory in Jacob Pymn's old grist mill on Rush Creek; floods carry the dam away in the spring of 1868 and an incendiary burns the mills in the spring of 1870.
9. 1869 — The present depot is finished, with John McCullough as first depot master; a telegraph office is secured in 1877 under his successor, Mr. Roberts.
10. 1870 — The village recorded 310 residents in the census, its earliest population figure on record.
11. 1874 — The Rushsylvania and Bellefontaine pike is built, the first pike after the Zanesfield and Hardin County road, and is extended to the Hardin County line in 1875.
12. 1880 — The village has two dry goods stores, two drug stores, a hardware store, three groceries, a furniture store, a jewelry store, a steam flour mill, a sawmill and a bank.
13. 1980 — Population peaked at 610 residents before beginning a long, gradual decline.
14. 2020 — Census recorded 491 residents.

Stories

The fire of 1857 and the fishing trip

In 1857 most of Rushsylvania's business section burned. The fire began in a grocery across an alley from Thomas Carson's tavern and spread both ways, consuming nearly all the business houses, mostly old log buildings, and some merchants left town for good. Carson set about making brick to rebuild his hotel, and on a rainy Saturday, June 20, he and his work hands went fishing on Rush Creek Lake. He and Martin Longstaff were drowned when the boat upset; the same boat had capsized a year earlier when a man named Edsal, subject to fits, fell out and drowned, and in 1870 a son of Edsal's also drowned while bathing in the lake. The 1880 county history reports that the village had never fully recovered, though newer buildings stood where the log huts had been.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · freepages.rootsweb.com · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Rushsylvania Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 2 of 5 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 2 of 5.

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.
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-04-08

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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