Salem Township, Champaign County

• Ohio CavernsOhio Caverns, Ohio's largest cave system near West Liberty, was found in August 1897 when a farmhand dug into a sinkhole. Albert H. Smith gave it its name in 1923.

How Salem Township, Champaign County began

Salem Township, immediately north of Urbana, was organized in 1805, the year Champaign County was created, with Christopher Wood and Daniel McKinney as its first trustees. Its first settlers came to King's Creek in 1802-04: Matthew Stewart and John McAdams from Pennsylvania, William Powell, the Baptist preacher William Wood, and John Taylor, who bought 640 acres from Isaac Zane at four dollars an acre and built a grist mill in 1810 with two block-houses beside it. Joseph Vance, later governor, came with his father in 1805 and built a merchant mill in 1818. The township was dry prairie and barrens, where in the early years Native hunters set fires to drive game; Methodists built the brick church on King's Creek in 1834, and Mount Tabor's congregation dates from 1814.

Settled 1802-04, incorporated 1805, by Matthew Stewart, William Powell and William Wood on King's Creek; first trustees Christopher Wood and Daniel McKinney.

Where the name comes from

The origin of the name is not recorded; Salem is one of fourteen Salem Townships statewide.

Before the town

Beers's 1881 county history, in a chapter by Dr. Thomas Cowgill, says the township's dry prairies and barrens were burned by Native hunters in the fall: at a time agreed by their chiefs, men stood with guns on the timbered land and set the dead grass afire, and the game ran to the high ground and was shot, and the Indians always gave settlers a week's warning to plow fire-breaks around their fences and cabins. It says that in 1805 there were at least a hundred Indians for every white person in the county, that Indian families lived on Mad River in the north in 1809, among them Capt. John Lewis and a woman named Molly Kiser, taken prisoner young and raised among them, and that squaws came daily to Taylor's mill at Kingston with corn on ponies. The Macacheek, a Mad River tributary, runs through the north of the township; the Shawnee towns of Mackachack, the peace chief Moluntha's, stood near West Liberty in Logan County and were destroyed by Benjamin Logan's militia in 1786.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Mackachack (Mac-a-cheek) towns (village) — near West Liberty, Logan County - not in Champaign County despite sharing a ZIP with Salem Township, 1700s, destroyed 1786 (ohio.hometownlocator.com)
• Dugan Prairie and the burned prairies of the barrens (other) — Southeast corner and barrens of Salem Township, before 1820 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1804 — Matthew Stewart and his sons Samuel and William, with John McAdams, settle on King's Creek; William Powell is already living nearby and the Baptist preacher William Wood lives where Kingston Mills now stand; Arthur Thomas, later killed by Indians, builds a grist mill at the mouth of King's Creek, probably the first in the county.
2. 1805 — Salem Township was organized as one of Champaign County's original townships.
3. 1805 — Christopher Wood and Daniel McKinney are the first trustees; Joseph Vance, born 1786, comes to the township with his father's family and begins as a wood-chopper and ox driver hauling salt.
4. 1806 — John Taylor of Virginia buys 640 acres on King's Creek from Isaac Zane for four dollars an acre, land Zane had received from the United States for his services to Wayne's army, and settles where the village of Kingston now stands.
5. 1808 — The trustees levy ten squirrel scalps on each taxable citizen on April 23, under the squirrel law, because squirrels move south in vast numbers about every ten years and clear the cornfields.
6. 1809 — Capt. Alexander Black, a veteran of Wayne's army, and Moses McIlvain settle on the Macacheek and Mad River in the north of the township, where several Indian families still live.
7. 1810 — John Taylor erects a grist mill at Kingston, and the settlers build two block-houses with tall pickets beside it for protection, though the Indians never disturbed them.
8. 1814 — Methodism was established in the area and the Mount Tabor congregation held its first camp meetings, worshipping in a log structure built in 1816.
9. 1818 — Abram Smith raises the first cabin in the barrens between King's Creek and the Macacheek (his family died of milk sickness about 1821); Joseph Vance builds a merchant mill with four run of burrs on King's Creek, which he owns until 1848.
10. 1834 — The old brick Methodist church is built on the north bank of King's Creek on Samuel Taylor's land, near the 'Little Brick' schoolhouse where Edward L. Morgan had been first teacher and which was used for worship and a Sabbath school from about 1829.
11. 1881 — Mount Tabor's present Gothic Revival brick church, its third building on the site, was constructed.
12. 1995 — Mount Tabor Church building, cemetery and hitching lot were added to the National Register of Historic Places, November 22.

Stories

A church that outlasted three buildings and its own address

Methodist circuit riders reached this corner of Champaign County by 1814, and the Mount Tabor congregation put up its first log meetinghouse in 1816, drawing large camp meetings in the years that followed. Two more buildings followed the first, the last a Gothic Revival brick church raised in 1881 with a slate roof and stone foundation, on State Route 245 just south of the Mount Tabor Road junction. Though its Wikipedia and National Register listing carry a 'West Liberty, Ohio' place name - the nearest post town, across the line in Logan County - the church, its cemetery, and its hitching lot all sit inside Salem Township, Champaign County, and the cemetery holds the graves of Revolutionary War veterans among its dead. It was added to the National Register in 1995.

Setting the prairie afire

Dr. Thomas Cowgill describes in Beers's 1881 history how the barrens of Salem Township looked when the whites came: dry prairie and rolling ridges of oak and hickory, with the large, low and once wet Dugan Prairie in the southeast corner that looked, much of the year, like a lake with timbered islands. The wild grass grew to an incredible height and fed thousands of buffalo, elk and deer. After the frost killed the grass, the Indian hunters, at a time agreed on by their chiefs, would place themselves with their guns on the timbered ground adjoining the prairie, and at a signal from the captain would set the dry grass afire. The animals hidden in it woke and ran for the high ground, where they were shot; great numbers of deer were killed that way, even after settlement began. The Indians always gave the settlers at least a week's notice, so that they could plow a few fresh furrows round their fences and cabins. Cowgill recalled that in 1805 there were, by his reckoning, a hundred Indians for every white person in the county.

Molly Kiser on the path

Dr. Cowgill wrote that a chief's family on Mad River in the north of Salem Township in 1809 included a white woman named Molly Kiser, taken prisoner when young and raised among the Indians, who was highly esteemed by the whites. He remembered seeing her several times riding through the woods or along a path in Salem Township with several ponies and dogs along. She had married an Indian and had two half-Indian daughters. She once stayed a night at the house of Col. John Thomas and next day traded horses with Daniel Corwin near the head of the North Fork of King's Creek; some time afterward she rode by on the horse she had got, which had been out in a hailstorm and had a good deal of its hair cut off its back. Cowgill, who also knew Capt. John Lewis and a man the Indians called Squalicee, 'the red-faced man,' James McPherson, set the stories down seventy years after they happened.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · ohio.hometownlocator.com · hmdb.org · archive.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Champaign County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Urbana City83% of residentslocal wells (sand and gravel outwash aquifer)
• West Liberty Village14% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Harvest Square Mobile Home Park2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Rolling Hills Mobile Home Park1% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Sunset Terrace Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Public schools (3)

Public EV charging (3)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

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, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-08-25
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-10-22

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