Tiverton Township, Coshocton County

How Tiverton Township, Coshocton County began

Tiverton Township, in the northwestern corner of Coshocton County, was first settled in 1806 by Isaac Draper and organized December 8, 1824, as Union Township, renamed Tiverton the following March for Tiverton, Rhode Island, the former home of many of its first settlers; fellow settler Isaac Hart is credited with urging the new name. One of Johnny Appleseed's nurseries stood in the township before 1807, and the crest of a ridge above the Mohican River preserves a stone embankment and, nearby, a burial pit holding the mingled bones of several prehistoric people. It has never held an incorporated village; its one small crossroads community, Tiverton Center, grew up near the geographic middle of the township and for forty years held a post office confusingly named Yankee Ridge, while the once-thriving canal village of Rochester, platted in 1833, has faded to a handful of structures east of the Mohican.

Settled 1806 (Isaac Draper), incorporated December 8, 1824 (as Union Township; renamed Tiverton in March 1825), by settlers from Tiverton, Rhode Island; the new name urged by settler Isaac Hart.

Where the name comes from

First organized on December 8, 1824, under the name Union Township; renamed Tiverton in March 1825 for Tiverton, Rhode Island, the former hometown of a large share of the first settlers. The 1881 county history credits settler Isaac Hart, another Rhode Islander, with suggesting and pressing for the new name until it was adopted.

Before the town

Traces of a prehistoric people survive in Tiverton Township along the Mohican River valley. On S. H. Draper's farm, a stone wall or embankment about eight rods long runs across the top of the ridge fronting the valley. A circular earthen fortification enclosing about three acres stood on the old Borden place, on the northwest quarter of section 8. Near the Walhonding canal, on lot fifteen of the military section, a site yielded large quantities of flint chips and tools, stone axes and pestles, and, nearby, a circular pit about two rods across filled with the fragmentary bones of several human skeletons jumbled together with coals and ashes and covered by about two feet of earth. Separately, one of the nurseries of John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, stood in the township before 1807, near the north line of lot 36, section 3, close to the Mohican River; tradition holds he planted three bushels of apple seeds there while lodging at John Butler's house in adjoining Knox County, and the earliest orchards in the vicinity, including one on Isaac Draper's own land, grew from its stock. No source ties these remains or Chapman's nursery to a specific historic nation, trail, or treaty line.

• Old Borden place circular fortification (earthwork) — northwest quarter of section 8, on the old Borden place, prehistoric (undetermined) (archive.org)
• Lot fifteen flint site and burial pit (other) — lot fifteen of the military section, near the Walhonding canal, prehistoric (undetermined) (archive.org)
• Johnny Appleseed nursery (other) — near the north line of lot 36, section 3, close to the Mohican River, before 1807 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1803 — Silas Bent Jr. surveys the Congress land of the township; Alexander Holmes surveys the southwest quarter, a military section, into forty 100-acre lots in 1808.
2. 1806 — Isaac Draper, a Virginian, becomes the township's first settler, on the northwest quarter of section 15, and remains a lifelong resident.
3. before 1807 — John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) plants one of his nurseries, about an acre in extent, near the Mohican River in what becomes Tiverton Township, while lodging at John Butler's house in Knox County.
4. c. 1812 — William Humphrey brings his family from near Fall River, Massachusetts, on a pole litter strapped between two horses; his door-less, floor-less cabin is visited by wildcats and coons on the roof, and he evades a draft officer by walking deeper into the forest.
5. 1816 — The first school is taught by Mrs. Stephen Thatcher in a school cabin on Thatcher's lot 39; about the same year emigration from Virginia and Rhode Island sets in steadily.
6. c. 1818 — Isaac Hart, a Rhode Island house-joiner, moves to section 7, plants mulberry trees for a failed silk venture and presses for the name Tiverton; Abram Simmons, Lemuel Church and John Conner arrive the same year.
7. 1822 — The tax duplicate lists only a dozen resident taxpayers, among them Draper, Humphrey, Durban, Thomas Borden, Stephen and Isaac Thatcher, Hart, Hyatt, Holt, Conner, Simmons, Church and Charles Ryan.
8. 1824 — The township is organized under the name Union Township on December 8.
9. 1825 — The township is renamed Tiverton for Tiverton, Rhode Island, home of many early settlers, at settler Isaac Hart's urging.
10. 1830 — The township's population is 237; it grows to 665 in 1840 and 940 in 1880, with Germans filling the southeast, many first employed on the Walhonding canal.
11. 1833 — Rochester is laid out in January by Isaac Thatcher and Isaac Draper on the Mohican River, where the two had already built a saw and grist mill; the Walhonding canal briefly gives it a commercial boost.
12. c. 1836 — The Disciples society is organized about this time, with first services at the house of Lemuel Church; its first church, built about forty years before 1876, stands across the road from the present one.
13. 1837 — Bradford Borden opens a small distillery on his father's place, run for only a few years.
14. 1840 — The German Reformed church in the southeast builds its first church for $300; the present frame building is raised in 1867 for $1,200.
15. 1841 — The Tiverton Regular Baptist church is constituted; about 1850 it raises a frame house of worship seating 500 on the northeast quarter of section 6.
16. 1854 — A post office named Yankee Ridge opens at what becomes Tiverton Center.
17. c. 1861 — The post office, kept by Henry Borden two and a half miles north of Rochester, moves to the Center after Rochester's Dr. Singer and successors held it earlier.
18. 1873 — The Chestnut Ridge Baptist church is organized in the school-house west of the river; it is soon moved into Knox County.
19. 1876-11 — The Disciples dedicate a handsome $2,000 church with tower, bell and stained glass, the strongest congregation of its denomination in the county with about 150 members.
20. 1894 — The Yankee Ridge post office closes.

Stories

New Englanders on the Ohio frontier

When settlers from Tiverton, Rhode Island reached this stretch of northwestern Coshocton County, they were numerous enough that the young township, first organized in 1824 as plain Union Township, was renamed for their New England hometown within a year, reportedly at the urging of settler Isaac Hart. The township never grew an incorporated village of its own; its one hamlet, Tiverton Center, took shape near the township's geographic middle and for four decades was served by a post office that, in another nod to the settlers' New England roots, bore the name Yankee Ridge rather than Tiverton itself, from 1854 until 1894.

A canal village that could not outlast its own terminus

Isaac Thatcher and Isaac Draper had already built a saw and grist mill on the Mohican River, with a dam across the stream and three run of buhrs turning, before they laid out the village of Rochester around it in January 1833. The construction of the Walhonding canal, whose slack-water navigation reached as far as Rochester, seemed to promise the village a prosperous future, and a large warehouse handled grain there for a few years. But the canal was never extended past a point about a mile below the village, and the commercial momentum Rochester needed never arrived; by 1881 its population had fallen from a peak of 111 to a scatter of uninhabited, dilapidated structures, and the county history predicted it would soon pass into oblivion, hastened by a new railroad four miles to the north that drew trade to towns along its own route.

Charles Ryan and the cabin that never was

Folly Run in Tiverton Township got its name from Charles Ryan, an early settler who lived near its mouth. He once prepared the hewed timber for a cabin on its banks and, for some inexplicable reason, never put it up; the logs decayed where they lay, and neighbours gave the stream a name for his folly. Ryan was a singular character, fond of hunting and careless about his affairs, and always indebted to his neighbours, who paid him in harvest labor. It was not unusual for him to promise to work for five or six men on the same day and then spend it hunting, disappointing them all. Asked about it, he said he did not wish to see his neighbours leave him feeling downhearted, and so he felt bound to promise each of them his help.

Johnny Appleseed's acre on the Mohican

The 1881 county history places one of Johnny Appleseed's nurseries near the north line of lot 36, section 3, a short distance from the Mohican River. Tradition held that Johnny, John Chapman, had planted three bushels of apple seed in the acre, and that he lodged while tending it at the house of John Butler, about a mile away in Knox County, before 1807. The earliest orchards in the neighborhood came from that nursery: Isaac Draper, the township's first settler, had one on the northwest quarter of section 15, and pioneers from Knox County came for trees. The last survivor of the orchard stood on the farm of Kidder B. Cummings, twelve feet around and badly broken but still blossoming every spring, though it had not borne fruit in years.

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

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