Sinking Spring

How Sinking Spring began

Sinking Spring was the site of the first settlement within the limits of Highland County, made by John Wilcoxson in 1796; Jacob Hiestand platted the town itself in 1815, naming it for a losing stream — one that sinks underground — near the original town site. A post office has operated there since 1817, and the village's octagonal schoolhouse, built in 1831 and still standing on the town square, is the only building of its kind in Ohio. U.S. District Judge Charles Willing Byrd, grandson of the founder of Richmond, Virginia, retired to Sinking Spring for its water and died there in 1828. The village, in southeastern Brushcreek Township near Fort Hill, remains a small crossroads community of just over 100 residents.

Settled 1796, platted 1815, by Jacob Hiestand (1815 plat); John Wilcoxson was the first settler.

Where the name comes from

The village was named for a losing stream — one that disappears underground — near the original town site.

Before the town

No named Native villages, trails or burial sites are recorded within the village of Sinking Spring itself in the sources checked. The Hopewell-built Fort Hill earthworks (100 BC to AD 500) lie a few miles away in the same Brushcreek Township, on the Brush Creek valley, but Fort Hill is a separate site in unincorporated township land, not inside the village's corporate limits, and is not attributed to the village here. The land was within the roughly two-thirds of Ohio ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795), signed by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa and other nations.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Hopewell culture.

Timeline

1. 1796 — John Wilcoxson settles at Sinking Spring, the first settlement within the present limits of Highland County.
2. 1815 — Jacob Hiestand plats the town of Sinking Spring.
3. 1817 — A post office called Sinking Spring begins operating in the village.
4. 1828 — August 25: U.S. District Judge Charles Willing Byrd dies at Sinking Spring, where he had settled for the believed medicinal properties of its water, and is buried in the village's old rural cemetery.
5. 1830 — The village's population is recorded as 109.
6. 1831 — An octagonal one-room schoolhouse is built on the village's town square; it is later used as a Civil War militia headquarters and arms store, and remains the only building of its kind in Ohio.
7. 1844 — The Sinking Spring Methodist Church is built; it is the oldest church in Highland County still in use as a church.
8. 1900 — The village records 238 residents.

Stories

A federal judge retires for the water

Charles Willing Byrd was a grandson of William Byrd II, the founder of Richmond, Virginia, and had served as secretary and then acting governor of the Northwest Territory before President Thomas Jefferson named him a U.S. District Judge for Ohio in 1803, a post he held for the rest of his life. Byrd was famously careful about health: he kept a small silver scale on his family's dining table to weigh out food portions. Late in life he came to believe that the waters at Sinking Spring, in what was by then Highland County, possessed medicinal properties conducive to health and longevity, and he moved there. He died at Sinking Spring on August 25, 1828, and was buried in the village's old rural cemetery, where a marker and plaque still stand.

The eight-sided schoolhouse

In 1831 the village built its schoolhouse with eight sides instead of four, a design meant to give the single room better light and ventilation than a conventional square building. It is the only schoolhouse of its kind in Ohio. Local tradition holds that one prosperous farmer objected to the odd-looking building and refused to pay the school tax for it; the township treasurer responded by seizing his eldest son's horse and holding it until the tax was paid, after which the farmer's children attended the school like everyone else's. During the Civil War the schoolhouse served the village as a headquarters and arms store for its home militia. The building still stands on the town square and was photographed for the federal Historic American Buildings Survey in 1937.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · timesgazette.com · roadsideamerica.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · archive.org

No water-system data is linked to Sinking Spring's ZIP codes yet.

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-29

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

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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