Salem Township, Washington County

How Salem Township, Washington County began

Salem Township sits in the northern part of Washington County bordering Noble County, one of fourteen Salem Townships in Ohio. Its village, Lower Salem, grew up along the Old Plank Road, a corduroy road to Marietta, and was settled largely by German immigrants before being formally laid out in 1850; by 1833 the township already had a meeting house, a store and a steam sawmill. The smaller community of Whipple, in the township's south, took its name from Whipple Run and had a post office from 1871 that has since closed. The 2020 census recorded 1,058 residents.

Settled before June 1797 (Amos Porter's family supposed first; 34 families on Duck Creek by 1797), platted 1850 (Lower Salem), incorporated December 1797 (court of quarter sessions; set off from Adams on the Duck Creek settlers' petition of June 3, 1797), by Amos Porter, Samuel Nash and Jonathan Delong among the first settlers.

Where the name comes from

The 1881 county history says that many of the first settlers were from near Salem, Massachusetts, 'which sufficiently accounts for the name'; the court of quarter sessions entered the name Salem on the first Tuesday of December 1797.

Before the town

No Native village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Salem Township is recorded.

Timeline

1. 1797 — Thirty-four families on Duck Creek petition the Washington County court of quarter sessions on June 3 to be set off from Adams, which they cannot reach over the hills; in December the court establishes Salem Township with Samuel Nash as assessor and Levi Chapman as constable.
2. 1807 — John True keeps a school in Salem for ten dollars a month; in 1813 Rebecca Perkins teaches in the frame house of Amos Porter, Jr.
3. 1808 — Fearing Township is established on March 8, cutting over three miles from Salem's south end; in December 1818 the formation of Aurelius takes more.
4. 1810 — The old Presbyterian church, begun in Fearing Township, holds its first recorded meeting on April 25 with James Amlin and Jesse Baldwin as elders; its first session in Salem is on October 12, 1812, and its building at Salem village goes up about 1830.
5. 1812 — At a barn raising at Amos Porter's, a recruiting officer arrives from Marietta, and six of the men there enlist for three years; only one of them is killed.
6. 1820 — Elisha Allen builds the township's first grist-mill and, shortly before, a saw-mill on Duck Creek below the lower ox-bow; Thomas Porter opens a tannery the same year.
7. 1822 — Ephraim Gould, seventeen, and his brother Dennis, nineteen, found a 'teetotal' pledge society among their neighbours, claimed to be the first temperance society in the west.
8. 1831 — S. N. Merriam builds a steam saw-mill on the upper ox-bow and follows it with a steam grist-mill in 1832; the millstones are quarried locally.
9. 1833 — Salem Township already has a meeting house, a store and a steam sawmill.
10. 1837 — Dr. William Hield, about this year or the next, becomes the first physician to open an office in Salem; until then the people sent to Marietta for medical care.
11. 1850 — Lower Salem, settled predominantly by German immigrants along the Old Plank Road to Marietta, is formally laid out.
12. 1871 — A post office opens at Whipple, on Whipple Run in the township's south.
13. 1873 — The Methodists dedicate a new church in Salem village, replacing the one Moses True built on the site in 1836; the Protestant Methodists finish a church nearby in 1878.
14. 1880 — Lower Salem's population peaks at 198 residents.
15. 2015 — The railroad trestle over State Route 821 at Whipple is removed after long community debate, to allow oil and gas company access.
16. 2020 — The census counts 1,058 people in Salem Township.

Stories

A corduroy road brought a German village to the hills

Lower Salem had its start when a corduroy road, called the Old Plank Road, was built through it to Marietta. The town site was not laid out until 1850, and was settled predominantly by German immigrants. Wikipedia's article says the village was once home to a hotel, a doctor's office, an armory, Wagner's General Store, and a gas station and auto parts shop; the buildings remain standing, but all of the businesses have gone out of business. The village had 198 residents in 1880 and 75 in 2020.

The iron wedge in the millstone

When S. N. Merriam built his steam grist-mill on the upper ox-bow of Duck Creek in 1832 he hired John Magee to get out the millstones. Magee went south of the ox-bow and worked out a stone that lay under a layer of rock a foot thick, beneath an oak about eighteen inches across. The 1881 county historian reports what he found: a line had been chiseled across the stone and wedges set in it, but the workmen had been cutting across the grain and had failed to split it. They had knocked out all the wedges but one, which the rock held too tightly, and there was the wedge, a short iron tool such as quarrymen use, still in the stone. Magee cut the stone out with the wedge in it, and it served as the upper millstone of Merriam's mill, a sight for the curious, until the stones were moved to a mill near the mouth of Bear Creek. The historian asks who made that wedge, and whether it proves the stone age is older than supposed or that rock can be laid down faster than geologists allow.

A barn raising that became a recruiting station

At the beginning of the War of 1812 the Porter brothers of Salem Township decided to put up frame barns in place of the old log ones. At the raising of Amos Porter's barn a recruiting officer arrived from Marietta, and in an amazingly short time six men who had come only to help a neighbour put up a shelter had signed their names instead. They were Amri Sutton, Thomas Taylor, Hugh Jackson, James Walker, 'Doc' DeLong and one whose name was forgotten, and the term of enlistment was three years. The 1881 county history says only the last of them was killed. It adds that the Porter house, a frame building over a hillside cellar, was where Rebecca Perkins taught school in 1813, and that the cellar was probably the first in the township.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Lowell Village96% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Putnam Community Water Association3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Tri-county Rural W and S District1% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 2 of 2 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

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, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-06-09

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