Stoutsville

How Stoutsville began

Stoutsville was laid out in 1854 by Benjamin Stout, whose father George Stout had settled a mile to the north fifty years earlier, on the line of the railroad that became the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley. The village grew quickly once the line was running, its population more than doubling between 1870 and 1880, and by the early twentieth century supported two grain elevators, a bank, and its own newspaper, the Fairfield-Pickaway News. Two GNIS-listed historical names sit inside its ZIP code: "Wyandotte," a neighboring stop on the same rail line, and "Millers," which no source consulted could confirm or explain. Stoutsville today is a small Clear Creek Township village whose children have attended school in nearby Amanda since 2003.

Settled 1797 (Jacob Shumaker, credited as Clear Creek Township's first settler) or 1804 (George Stout, father of the village's founder, settles about a mile north of the future village site), platted 1854, by Benjamin Stout, by Benjamin Stout.

Where the name comes from

Stoutsville is named for its founder, Benjamin Stout, an early settler's son who laid out the village on his own land in 1854. Graham's 1883 and Miller's 1912 county histories, Scott's 1877 history, and Wikipedia all agree on this simple derivation without variation.

Before the town

No source consulted records a Native village, camp, treaty line, or documented encounter at Stoutsville itself or elsewhere in Clear Creek Township. The nearest documented prehistoric site is Cross Mound (also called the Tarlton Cross Mound), a Greek-cross-shaped earthwork about ninety feet along each arm, standing in Fairfield County near Tarlton and reached historically from Stoutsville by the old Amanda and Tarlton pike that ran through the township; Wikipedia reports ongoing scholarly disagreement over who built it, with an Ohio archaeologist favoring a Middle Woodland (Hopewell) date and other researchers proposing construction after AD 1000 by Fort Ancient-culture people. The GNIS historical name "Wyandotte," attached to Stoutsville's ZIP code, was in fact the name of a station on the same Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad line as Stoutsville, per Miller's 1912 county history; no source found ties the station name to any documented Wyandot village or encounter at that spot, so it may be no more than a commemorative railroad-era name. See the county file for the wider record of Wyandot and Delaware presence across Fairfield County.

• Cross Mound (Tarlton Cross Mound) (earthwork) — Cross Mound Park, Fairfield County, near Tarlton, reached historically from Stoutsville by the Amanda and Tarlton pike, disputed -- possibly Middle Woodland (Hopewell), or built after AD 1000 by Fort Ancient-culture people (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1797 — Jacob Shumaker settles in what becomes Clear Creek Township, the township's first recorded settler.
2. 1804 — George Stout, from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, settles about a mile north of the future village site.
3. 1807 — John Leist settles in Clear Creek Township; he goes on to serve in the Ohio Legislature for eight years and as a canal-damage commissioner for twenty-two.
4. 1854 — Benjamin Stout lays out the village of Stoutsville on the line of the railroad that becomes the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad.
5. 1855 — Stoutsville's post office opens.
6. 1870-1880 — The village's population grows from 160 to 340, a 112.5 percent increase over the decade.
7. October 31, 1855 — The cornerstone is laid for the union church shared by Stoutsville's Lutheran and German Reformed congregations.
8. August 25, 1888 — H. O. Hardin founds the Fairfield-Pickaway News at Stoutsville, an eight-page, non-political paper that by 1912 has never changed ownership.
9. 2003 — Stoutsville's local elementary and junior high schools close, and students begin attending the Amanda-Clearcreek Local School District in nearby Amanda.

Stories

A Village Built on the Railroad

When Benjamin Stout laid out his namesake village in 1854, he set it directly on the line of the railroad that would become the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley -- a line chartered in 1851 to connect Cincinnati, by way of Zanesville, to the eastern seaboard. The gamble paid off quickly: by the early 1880s Stoutsville had two steam mills with grain elevators, one of them said to be among the finest on the whole line, two dry-goods stores, a drugstore, and its own four-room school. The village's population more than doubled in the 1870s alone, from 160 to 340 people, as farm families from across Clear Creek Township shipped their grain out through the depot Stout's railroad-side plat had made possible.

A Newspaper That Never Changed Hands

H. O. Hardin founded the Fairfield-Pickaway News at Stoutsville on August 25, 1888, an eight-page paper serving the farm country straddling the two counties' line. By the time Fairfield County's 1912 history was written, the paper had never once changed ownership, operated out of a building of its own, and carried a circulation of 600 subscribers who paid in advance -- a small but stable institution the county history singled out as non-political but independent in its opinions.

Photographs

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

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

Cite this page