Tuscarawas Township, Stark County

How Tuscarawas Township, Stark County began

Tuscarawas Township in western Stark County was organized by the county commissioners on March 5, 1810, from the parts of Canton and Plain townships lying west of the Tuscarawas River, only a year after settlers first entered the land. The first permanent settlers were two Scotch-Irish Presbyterian brothers, John and Robert Warden, from Washington County, Pennsylvania, who came after the 'New Purchase' west of the river opened in 1807; New York families, Pennsylvania Germans and the Poe family followed. The township's crossroads hamlets, Brookfield and Greenville, never grew into towns because the Ohio & Erie Canal made Massillon the shipping point, and the township's eastern edge now takes in part of Massillon. It had 5,801 residents in 2020.

Settled 1807-1810, incorporated March 5, 1810, by John and Robert Warden, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Where the name comes from

The township takes its name from the Tuscarawas River, a Lenape (Delaware) word usually translated 'old town' or 'open mouth.' Perrin's 1881 county history, in a chapter contributed by Robert H. Folger, adds that the true name is Tuscarora, as the treaties by which the territory was obtained and Francis Parkman show. The township shares its name with a separate Tuscarawas Township in Coshocton County.

Before the town

The township takes its name directly from the Tuscarawas River, a Lenape (Delaware) word usually translated 'old town' or 'open mouth,' and the river corridor carried the Great Trail and the Cuyahoga-Muskingum Trail through this part of Stark County. No specific Native village, mound, or treaty site within the township itself is recorded; the township lies in the area ceded by the Treaty of Greenville (1795).

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1807 — Settlement begins in the New Purchase west of the Tuscarawas River; John and Robert Warden, brothers from Washington County, Pennsylvania, ford the river at the foot of what became Massillon's Clay Street and make the first permanent settlement, entering the quarter-section later owned by David Gib.
2. 1810 — On March 5 the Stark County commissioners, on the petition of settlers west of the Tuscarawas River, organize Tuscarawas Township from parts of Canton and Plain, with the first election set for the first Monday of April.
3. 1810 — The Methodist circuit rider Rev. James Dixon is appointed to the Tuscarawas circuit on November 1, the first licensed minister in the township; the federal census of the year counts 145 inhabitants, nearly every man a head of a family.
4. 1812 — Goudy's mill, with wooden gearing, is built, one of the few mills for settlers of what are now Tuscarawas, Jackson, Lawrence and Perry townships; the Oberlin family comes from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, the first of many Pennsylvania German families.
5. 1814 — Families from northern New York, among them Stephen Thacker, William Eldredge and Henry Doxsee, settle on Pigeon Run, forming a New York neighborhood distinct from the Washington County, Pennsylvania, settlers in the north of the township.
6. 1816 — A hewed-log Presbyterian church is built on Ebenezer Shaw's land on Pigeon Run, where he gave three acres for a church and burying ground; Lawrence Township is organized the same year, taking some of Tuscarawas's territory.
7. 1820 — The Pigeon Run Presbyterian Church is organized in Ebenezer Shaw's barn with William Johnson, Nathaniel McDowell and Shaw as elders; the Baptist Elder Otis had earlier organized the first Baptist church in Stark County, Pigeon Run Baptist, in the township.
8. 1826 — Massillon is platted just north of the township by James Duncan, later extending into Tuscarawas Township's eastern edge.
9. 1828 — The Ohio and Erie Canal reaches the Massillon area along the Tuscarawas River.
10. 1828 — William Byal resigns as postmaster at Greenville, the township's first post office, which paid little, and the office is discontinued; it is later re-established as East Greenville.
11. 1830 — Judge William Henry moves to Brookfield about this year, opens a store and builds the township's only steam flouring mill, saw mill and woolen factory to compete with Massillon; the enterprise fails and is torn down.
12. 1833 — The township's economy includes one gristmill, five sawmills, a fulling mill, two tanneries, and two stores.
13. 1838 — Adam Poe, a veteran of the 1782 fight with the Wyandot Big Foot on the Ohio River, dies at the house of his son Andrew Poe in the township on September 23, aged 93, and is buried at Sixteen Church.
14. 1915 — A 1915 advertisement shows purebred Percheron horses being raised in the township.
15. 2020 — The U.S. Census records 5,801 residents in Tuscarawas Township.

Stories

A river's Lenape name, twice over in Ohio

Tuscarawas Township takes its name from the river that defines it, a Lenape (Delaware) word usually translated 'old town' or 'open mouth' that had already been attached to a Delaware town on the river before American settlers arrived. The name proved durable enough that Ohio ended up with it twice: this Stark County township and a separate Tuscarawas Township in Coshocton County, both named independently for stretches of the same river system. In Stark County the name marks a stretch of the valley that carried the Great Trail and a branch of the Cuyahoga-Muskingum Trail before it carried the Ohio and Erie Canal, and later the Lincoln Highway, whose vintage motor courts still dot the township's roads as a later layer of the same transportation history.

The Poes of Tuscarawas Township

In 1782 two Pennsylvania frontiersmen, the brothers Andrew and Adam Poe, were in the fight at the mouth of Tomlinson's Run on the Ohio River against a band of Wyandots led by the chief known as Big Foot. Perrin's 1881 county history, tracing the family, says the individual struggle with Big Foot and another Native man was Andrew's, not Adam's as usually told, yet also says Adam was the one who actually shot Big Foot, and a footnote adds that Isaac Poe in the 1810 census was a brother. Adam, born at sea in 1745 while the family was crossing to America, married Elizabeth Cochran, whose first husband had been killed by Indians on the Ohio opposite East Liverpool. He died in Tuscarawas Township on September 23, 1838, aged 93, at the house of his son Andrew, who had moved the family there from Columbiana County in 1812; Adam and his widow are buried at Sixteen Church. Their grandsons included Adam Poe, a Methodist preacher who headed the Methodist Book Concern in Cincinnati.

Brookfield against Massillon

After navigation opened on the Ohio Canal to Massillon in the 1820s, trade from the western side of Stark and from Wayne County began to center there, and Judge William Henry, who had been the merchant of Perry Township, found his occupation gone. About 1830 he moved to Brookfield, a hamlet on the bridle-path country west of the river that had never been laid out as a village and took its early name, Slusser's Tavern, from Philip Slusser's inn. Henry opened a store meant to intercept the western trade, and when that failed built a steam flouring mill, a saw mill and a woolen factory, the only establishment of the kind in the township. Massillon was by then the great shipping point for produce and woolens, and the Brookfield works became dead capital; Henry handed them to his son-in-law C. B. Cummins, who took his stock to Massillon and went out of business in 1854. By 1881, Perrin says, not one stone was left upon another at Brookfield.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Aqua Ohio - Massillon89% of residentsWells in Tuscarawas Valley sand & gravel aquifer
• Navarre Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Dalton Village4% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Lake Sherman Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Brewster Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Canton Public Water System1% of residentsGlacial sand-and-gravel aquifer (3 well fields)
• Heritage Green Condominium Assoc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Lincoln Terrace Estates0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mount Eaton Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Public schools (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-08-12: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 4 of 5 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-02

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