Trimble

How Trimble began

Trimble was platted in the early 1800s as Oxford and later renamed to honor Governor Allen Trimble. A post office named Trimble has operated continuously since 1839. The village grew as a coal-mining community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; its census population peaked at 806 in 1920 and was 329 in 2020.

Platted before 1869 (first known as Oxford; Jonathan Watkins built a mill there in 1825), by not stated; Jonathan Watkins built the first mill at the village in 1825.

Where the name comes from

The 1869 county history says the village was first known as Oxford and has since been called Trimble; it says Trimble Township was named after Governor Allen Trimble, one of the early governors of Ohio.

Before the town

No source specific to the Trimble village site was found. At the county level, the Shawnee are recorded as occupying the Hocking Valley including Athens County before white settlement, and Lord Dunmore's 1774 expedition against the Shawnee camped along Sunday Creek — the same creek that runs through Trimble — during its march through the county. No mounds, villages, or named trails specific to the Trimble site are recorded.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Dunmore's 1774 encampment on Sunday Creek (camp) — Sunday Creek, Athens County (exact point near Trimble not specified in the source), 1774 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. early 1800s — The site was platted as Oxford, later renamed Trimble for Governor Allen Trimble.
2. 1802 — Solomon Tuttle Sr., with his son Cyrus and brother Nial, all from Vermont, make the first settlement in what becomes Trimble Township, on the main branch of Sunday Creek; Jonathan Watkins, a blacksmith from Athens, settles in the lower part about 1803 and shoots a buffalo soon afterward.
3. 1820 — Bagley family from Vermont settles on the west fork of the creek; William Bagley, a clothier, sets up the first cloth-dressing factory and flour mill in the township.
4. 1822 — Nancy Bagley teaches a school near the forks of the creek; about 1824 John Morrow teaches in a floorless log schoolhouse at $1.50 a week.
5. 1825 — Jonathan Watkins builds a saw mill, with a grist mill added after two or three years, at the village then called Oxford; it is the township's principal mill until 1865.
6. 1827 — Trimble Township is separately organized from Ames in April, named for Governor Allen Trimble; the first election is held at William Bagley's house.
7. 1830 — The township has 190 inhabitants, 762 in 1840 and 924 in 1850, as farming and the Eggleston salt works on Green's Run support settlement.
8. 1839 — A post office named Trimble began operating and has run continuously since.
9. 1860 — A well bored for oil on the Zanesville road near the northern county line, over 1,000 feet deep, strikes a strong flow of salt water; coal, iron ore and limestone are known but wait on branch railroads.
10. 1869 — Trimble village, on section 8, has a post office, two stores, three physicians and about two hundred people; the Baptists, Methodists and Christians are the leading religious societies.
11. 1920 — Trimble's population peaked at 806 during the Sunday Creek coal-mining boom.
12. 1997 — Ohio EPA found the lower 13 miles of Sunday Creek, which runs through Trimble, 'irretrievably damaged' by low pH from historic acid mine drainage, unable to support appreciable aquatic life.

Stories

From Oxford to Trimble, farms to coal

Trimble was originally called Oxford when it was platted in the early 1800s, and was later renamed in honor of Governor Allen Trimble. A post office named Trimble has operated continuously since 1839. Wikipedia says the village grew as a coal-mining community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the census listed 806 residents in 1920, the highest count of any census year since 1870.

The buffalo on Sunday Creek

Jonathan Watkins, a blacksmith from Athens, settled in the lower part of what is now Trimble Township in 1803, and like most early settlers he hunted when he could. Soon after arriving he shot a buffalo and broke its foreleg. He pursued the crippled animal from Green's Run in Trimble across the Wolf Plains and over the Hockhocking River some distance, but in the end failed to get it, the county historian recorded. Watkins later built the first mill in the village, the saw mill of 1825 at Oxford, whose grist mill ground the township's grain until 1865.

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

Six wells (4 MGD combined) in a sand-and-gravel aquifer in the Hocking River Buried Valley aquifer system, Dover Township, Athens County (2025 CCR). Ohio EPA's May 2012 source water assessment rates the source highly susceptible to contamination (thin clay cover, aquifer less than 20 ft deep). The water here

• Trimble Village100% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 3 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 2014-05-13, released 2026-05-14. source
• Fiscal Emergency Analysis - Termination, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-05-14
• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-07

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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