Union Township, Morgan County

How Union Township, Morgan County began

Union Township was carved out of Deerfield Township in 1821 and named, by tradition, for Mrs. Quigley, wife of first settler John Quigley, who had entered the township's first land claim with William Corner in 1811. Rough terrain along Wolf and Sunday creeks was known early on as 'Horse-thief Valley' for the organized horse theft that plagued its sparse early settlement, a problem that eased as farms filled in. Three small villages grew up in the township: Ringgold, platted in 1846 and named for a Mexican War officer; Morganville, laid out in 1833; and Rosseau, a tobacco-packing and tanning settlement from the mid-1830s. Its best-known landmarks today are the 1875 Adams Covered Bridge and the relocated one-room Rock Hollow School, both preserved by the Morgan County Historical Society.

Settled 1811, platted 1821 (township); 1833 (Morganville); 1846 (Ringgold), by John Quigley and William Corner (first land claim, 1811); township organized 1821, formerly part of Deerfield Township.

Where the name comes from

The 1886 county history credits Mrs. Quigley, wife of first settler John Quigley, with giving the township its name, Union, though it does not explain her reasoning. Ringgold, the township's chief village, was platted in 1846 by Aquilla Amos and named for Major Samuel Ringgold, a U.S. Army officer killed at the Battle of Palo Alto in the Mexican-American War.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Union Township was found in the sources checked; the 1886 county history's settlement chapter for Union makes no mention of Native people. The township lies within the Ohio Company purchase and the area ceded by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville; Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware) and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) people traveled and hunted the wider Muskingum valley before removal, but no site-specific record for Union Township was located.

Timeline

1. 1811 — John Quigley and William Corner enter the first land claim in what would become Union Township and build its first cabin.
2. 1821 — Union Township is organized out of Deerfield Township, entitled to two justices of the peace; elections begin in December.
3. 1828 — William Corner builds the township's first mill, on Wolf Creek.
4. 1829 — The township's first church is built.
5. 1833 — S. Short lays out the village of Morganville with thirty-seven lots.
6. 1835 — Joshua Davis establishes the settlement of Rosseau, which develops a tannery and tobacco-packing operations.
7. 1846 — Aquilla Amos plats the village of Ringgold, named for Major Samuel Ringgold of the Mexican-American War.
8. 1847 — William B. Amos opens the first store in Ringgold.
9. 1875 — The Adams Covered Bridge is built in Union Township.
10. 1877 — Rock Hollow School opens two miles south of Ringgold; John D. Davis of Ringgold teaches the first class in November.
11. 1934 — Rock Hollow School closes after 57 years of one-room instruction.
12. 1991 — The Morgan County Historical Society relocates the disassembled Rock Hollow School to Malta to protect it from vandalism at its remote original site.
13. 1999 — The Adams Covered Bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Horse-thief Valley

Before Union Township's farms filled in, the hilly country along Sunday Creek earned the nickname 'Horse-thief Valley,' the 1886 county history records, for organized horse-stealing rings that operated there while settlement remained sparse. The name faded as more families like the Hughes, Ward, Love and Priest households — early arrivals from Belmont County and Pennsylvania who first made their living hunting and trapping — took up permanent farms through the 1810s and 1820s. Wolf Creek itself, the county history notes, was named for 'the great number of wolves found among its hills by the trappers,' a reminder of how recently the township had been unbroken wilderness when Quigley and Corner staked their first claim in 1811.

A one-room school saved twice

Rock Hollow School opened in November 1877 in a wooded ravine two miles south of Ringgold, and for fifty-seven years it was where the township's children, twenty to twenty-five at a time, learned grades one through eight in a single room. When it closed in 1934, former student and teacher Hettie Woodward bought the building in 1937 and kept it standing on her own property until her death; her heirs donated it to the Morgan County Historical Society in 1980. Fearing vandalism at its remote ravine site, the society disassembled the school in 1991, moved it board by board to Malta, and rebuilt it exactly as it had stood, rededicating it on November 1, 1992 — a rare case of a one-room country school surviving not by staying put, but by being carried, piece by piece, to safety.

Photographs

Local history sources: ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · remarkableohio.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Every historic place in Morgan County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Malta Village77% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Glouster Public Water System10% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - West Malta6% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Stockport Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water2% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Trimble Village0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-irish Ridge0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Chesterhill Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Shale and injection wells (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.
• Basic Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-09
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-05

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