Walnut Township, Pickaway County

How Walnut Township, Pickaway County began

Walnut Township's organization predates Pickaway County itself, though the early township records that would fix an exact date have been lost. William Williamson and his brothers Cornelius and John, from Hampshire County, Virginia, made the first permanent settlement in 1797 or 1798, and the township's boundary with Harrison Township was later drawn along Walnut Creek for the settlers' convenience. Whiskey distilling was the leading early industry, so widespread that the sites of 34 former distilleries could reportedly be seen at once from a single farm before the Ohio Canal and the railroads opened wider markets for corn. The township remains rural and unincorporated today, its small villages of East Ringgold (once called Grand View) and Nebraska never growing past a few hundred people, and its ZIP codes reaching toward Circleville and the neighboring village of Ashville, which lies just across the line in Harrison Township.

Settled 1797 or 1798 (William Williamson and his brothers Cornelius and John, Hampshire County, Virginia), incorporated before 1810; the exact organization date is lost because the township's early records were destroyed, by William Williamson and brothers, first settlers; organizers of the township itself are not named in the surviving record.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains why the township is called Walnut. Walnut Creek forms nearly its entire western boundary and gave its name to the boundary line agreed with Harrison Township, so the township most likely takes its name from the creek; the 1906 county history notes that the township's early timber included large stands of walnut, butternut, hickory, maple and oak, which may be the creek's own namesake, but no source ties the name to a specific event or person.

Before the town

No source consulted names a Native American village, trail, treaty encounter, or removal event specifically within Walnut Township. The 1906 county history records only that three conical mounds, attributed generically to 'the Mound Builders' without identifying a culture or period, stood in a nearly straight line a few yards apart near East Ringgold, each 15 to 20 feet high, and that other unspecified Mound Builder remains had been found elsewhere in the township. No excavation or further study of these mounds is recorded. The village of Ashville, whose depot is sometimes associated with this township because they share a ZIP code, is documented as lying in neighboring Harrison Township, not Walnut, so its own Pekowi Shawnee and Hopewell mound history (see the Ashville unit) is not repeated here. The township lies well north of the Pickaway Plains, the documented core of Shawnee settlement in the 1770s, which is covered in the Pickaway Township file; no county-level file yet exists for Pickaway County to point to for the wider Native history of the area.

• East Ringgold conical mounds (mound) — near East Ringgold, Walnut Township, unspecified; attributed by the 1906 county history only to 'the Mound Builders' (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1797-1798 — William Williamson and his brothers Cornelius and John, from Hampshire County, Virginia, make the township's first permanent settlement, leasing school land in section 16 and putting in six or seven acres of corn.
2. 1802 — William Ward and his family, from Pendleton County, Virginia, settle in the township; the family of nine includes seven children.
3. 1811 or 1812 — Richard Ward builds the township's first sawmill, on Little Walnut Creek.
4. 1834 — Edward Kennedy opens the first store at the hamlet of Walnut.
5. 1837 — A Mrs. Fink, probably the first settler at what is now East Ringgold, then called Grand View, is living there.
6. 1841 — Sebastian Miller settles at East Ringgold and takes up wagon-making; Aaron Stuckey settles the same year and erects a steam sawmill.
7. 1853 — Andrew Hedges opens the first store at Nebraska, near the center of the township, and becomes its first postmaster under the name Hedges' Store.
8. 1855 — A post office is established at East Ringgold, with William C. Finkel, later probate judge, as first postmaster; it operates for more than 50 years.
9. 1873 — Nebraska Grange No. 64, Patrons of Husbandry, is organized on June 16 with 23 members; its annual picnic later draws crowds of up to 1,000.
10. 1878 — Reber Hill Cemetery, on a 32-acre tract donated by John Reber and considered the finest in Pickaway County outside Circleville's Forest Cemetery, is formally consecrated on September 29.
11. 1906 — The East Ringgold post office, discontinued in September after more than 50 years, is replaced by rural free delivery from Circleville.

Stories

Thirty-Four Distilleries

In the early nineteenth century, whiskey was Walnut Township's leading manufacture, a practical answer to the problem of what to do with a corn crop too large to haul to any distant market. The 1906 county history recalls that the business was so widespread that from a single vantage point on one township farm, a viewer could once see the sites of 34 former distilleries at the same time. The trade only declined once the Ohio Canal and, later, the railroads gave farmers an easier way to ship their surplus corn directly, making home distilling no longer worth the trouble. No distillery site is named or dated individually in the surviving record, but the sheer number attests to how central corn whiskey was to the township's first economy.

From Grand View to East Ringgold

The village now called East Ringgold sits on the Royalton pike in the southeastern part of the township and was known for years as Grand View, for the high ground on which it stands, several hundred feet above Circleville. A Mrs. Fink was probably its first resident, arriving about 1837; within a few years Sebastian Miller had set up as a wagon-maker and Aaron Stuckey had built a steam sawmill, and by 1849 the town had its first store, opened by Daniel Bock. A post office followed in 1855 and lasted more than fifty years before rural free delivery made it unnecessary in 1906. The renaming from Grand View to East Ringgold is not dated or explained in the county history, only recorded as accomplished fact by the time of its writing.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Pickaway County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Ashville Village48% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Circleville City27% of residentsScioto River valley aquifer (sand & gravel wells)
• South Bloomfield Village12% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Columbus Public Water System8% of residentsScioto River (Griggs & O'Shaughnessy), Hoover Reservoir on Big Walnut Ck, plus wells
• Earnhart Hill Water District4% of residentsScioto River valley (Teays) aquifer wells
• Commercial Point Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (6 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc0% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

Public schools (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (3)

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 2 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, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-02-12

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