Syracuse

How Syracuse began

Syracuse is an Ohio River village four and a half miles upstream of Pomeroy, in Meigs County, built up around 19th-century salt and coal works and settled heavily by Welsh miners; Henry Howe's 1888 collections describe it as a coal-and-salt town with Welsh Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches. Its population stood at 1,545 in 1880 and has fallen by roughly half since, standing at 781 at the 2020 census. Today it is a small residential river village whose most visible landmarks are its former 1911 public school (now village hall) and 1930 elementary school (now a community center).

Where the name comes from

No source located directly documents why the Meigs County village was named Syracuse; the name almost certainly echoes Syracuse, New York (itself named for the salt-producing ancient Sicilian city), reflecting the Ohio village's own 19th-century salt industry, but no primary source making that link explicit for this specific village was found.

Before the town

No site-specific written record of a named Native American village, camp, or trail inside present Syracuse was found. The village sits on the Ohio River within the area that the Treaty of Greenville (1795) recognized as already ceded to the United States by the earlier treaties of Fort McIntosh (1785) and Fort Harmar (1789); the Ohio Valley here was used as hunting and travel ground by the Shawnee and other nations before removal. For county-wide Native American history.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1880s — Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio describes Syracuse as a coal-and-salt village on the Ohio River, population largely Welsh, with one Welsh Congregational, one Presbyterian, and one Methodist church, and coal shafts sunk as deep as 87 feet.
2. 1880 — Village population stands at 1,545 residents at the census.
3. 1911 — The Racine Public School (later Racine-Syracuse-area school; now the village hall) is built at Fifth and Main Streets in Syracuse.
4. 1913 — A major Ohio River flood strikes the village (recorded in the village's own historical photographs).
5. 1930 — Syracuse Elementary School is built on Seventh Street; it later becomes a community center.
6. 2020 — Census population is 781, down from 826 in 2010 and roughly half the 1880 figure.

Stories

A Welsh mining village on the Ohio River

By the 1880s Syracuse had grown into one of the many small industrial villages that lined the Ohio River in Meigs County, its economy built on salt evaporation and deep-shaft coal mining rather than farming. Henry Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, compiled in that decade, records that the village's population was 'largely Welsh' and that one of its coal shafts went down 'eighty-seven feet' perpendicularly, a serious undertaking for a small river town. The Welsh community supported its own Welsh Congregational church alongside Presbyterian and Methodist congregations, a pattern repeated up and down the Ohio Valley wherever Welsh miners settled in the nineteenth century. The village counted 1,545 people in the 1880 census, roughly double what it is today, before the salt and coal works that built it gradually wound down over the following decades.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · freepages.rootsweb.com · syracuseohio.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Groundwater wells (2 wells) The water here

• Syracuse Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 4 of 4 passed.

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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-12-09

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.

Cite this page