Starr Township, Hocking County

How Starr Township, Hocking County began

Starr Township occupies the southeastern corner of Hocking County, organized in 1811-12 at the request of pioneer Joseph Starr and settled first by Henry O'Neill's family on the Raccoon Creek bottoms in 1810. Underlaid with coal, fire-clay, and iron ore, it became an iron-making center: the Five Mile Furnace, built in the mid-1850s and later renamed Union Furnace, anchored the unincorporated village of Union Furnace and drew a mixed population of furnace and mine workers. The township also held the platted but never-boomed village of New Cadiz and the depot community of Haydenville (whose railroad station and post office fell technically within Starr Township even though the village itself sits in Green Township). Its 2020 population of 1,455 is spread over a rough, hilly landscape better suited to grazing and orchards than row crops.

Settled Summer 1810, by Henry O'Neill and his sons James and Thomas, who built a cabin on the south bank of Raccoon Creek near present Starr post office; the family moved there permanently the following spring, platted New Cadiz platted February 1854 by James Blackburn and Melissa Putin, surveyed by Colonel Levi Davis of Logan, incorporated Organized as Starr Township (No. 3) from townships 11 and 12, range 16, doing business under that name by July 1812, by Henry O'Neill (first settler); Joseph Starr (petitioned for the township's creation and name).

Where the name comes from

In 1811 Joseph Starr wrote to Henry O'Neill asking him to petition the Ohio Legislature to organize town 12, range 16, in what is now Hocking County (the county was not formed until 1818), and name it Starr; O'Neill did so, and the township was transacting business under the name Starr by July 1812. Starr himself was described elsewhere in the county history as a pioneer settler instrumental in the township's organization. It is the only Starr Township in Ohio.

Before the town

No named village, trail, mound, or treaty ground specific to Starr Township is recorded in the sources checked; the 1883 county history's dedicated Starr Township chapter opens its settlement account in 1810 with Henry O'Neill and says nothing about earlier Native occupation of the township itself. At the county level, Hocking County lay within lands historically used by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), and Mingo, and the county and river name (Hockhocking) is generally traced to a Delaware-language word. Documented Adena/Hopewell mound sites in the wider Hocking Valley region (including well-known groups on Wolf's Plains) lie in adjoining Athens County, and mound sites the 1883 history and NRHP records place within Hocking County are in Salt Creek Township, not Starr.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga).

Timeline

1. 1810 — Henry O'Neill and his sons James and Thomas build the first cabin in Starr Township on the south bank of Raccoon Creek; the family relocates from Portage County the following spring.
2. 1811-1812 — Joseph Starr petitions (through Henry O'Neill) to have the township organized and named Starr; the township is transacting business under that name by July 1812.
3. 1815 — James O'Neill builds the township's first saw mill and dam on the O'Neill farm; Starr post office is established the same year with Henry O'Neill as postmaster.
4. 1825 — Joseph Sudlow builds what the county history calls the first brick house in Hocking County, on the northwest quarter of section 19.
5. February 1854 — New Cadiz is platted on the northwest quarter of section 23 by James Blackburn and Melissa Putin, surveyed by Colonel Levi Davis.
6. mid-1850s — A stock company led by Daniel Dunn, William Montgomery, John Westenhaver, and Robert Wright builds the Five Mile Furnace in Starr Township.
7. 1858 — John Garrett buys the furnace, operating it until 1865; sources differ on when the works and settlement took the name Union Furnace.
8. 1873 — A post office opens at Union Furnace, formalizing it as a permanent community.
9. 1883 — The county history counts ten cemeteries and ten school districts in Starr Township, and records the Union furnace as one of six iron furnaces then operating in Hocking County, consolidated that year into the Columbus and Hocking Iron and Coal Company.
10. 2020 — Township population recorded at 1,455 in the U.S. Census.

Stories

A letter that named a township

In 1811 a settler named Joseph Starr sat down and wrote a personal letter to Henry O'Neill, the man who a year earlier had built the first cabin on Raccoon Creek in what would become the township. Starr's request was simple: petition the Ohio Legislature to organize town 12, range 16, of what is now Hocking County into its own township, and give it his name. O'Neill obliged, though the exact date of his petition was already lost to record by the time the county history was written in 1883. What is certain is that by July 1812 the new township was transacting business as Starr, and it remains, as one source notes, the only Starr Township anywhere in Ohio - a rare case of a place naming itself after the man who simply asked.

From Five Mile Furnace to Union Furnace

As the coal boom around Straitsville and Nelsonville gathered pace in the 1850s, investors realized the same hills held rich iron ore. A stock company headed by Daniel Dunn, William Montgomery, John Westenhaver, and Robert Wright built the Five Mile Furnace in Starr Township, trading under the name Robert Wright & Co. In 1858 the company sold out to John Garrett, who ran the furnace until 1865; under later ownership it was renamed Union Furnace, and a post office by that name opened in 1873. By 1883 it was one of six iron furnaces still working in Hocking County, folded that year into the Columbus and Hocking Iron and Coal Company. The furnace settlement gave its name to the unincorporated community that still sits in the township today, a rare surviving trace of the Hanging Rock Iron Region's reach into Hocking County.

New Cadiz, a town that never quite arrived

In February 1854, James Blackburn and Melissa Putin platted a new town on the northwest quarter of section 23, laying out a sixty-foot-wide Main Street running north-south and a matching Water Street crossing it. They called it New Cadiz. For some years it supported a store, and by 1883 it still had a doctor, a blacksmith shop, and a Presbyterian church, with a reported population of about 100. But it never got its own post office; residents made do with what they called the 'Five-mile box' at the Logan post office, with whoever went to town carrying mail back for the whole neighborhood. By the time the county history was written, that arrangement itself was obsolete: New Cadiz residents were getting their mail from Union Furnace instead, a quiet sign of which settlement had won out.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Nelsonville77% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Logan, City Of23% of residentsGroundwater wells (8 wells)
• Carbon Hill Water Association1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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