Washington Township, Pickaway County

How Washington Township, Pickaway County began

Washington Township lies along the eastern edge of Pickaway County, east of Circleville and bordering Fairfield County, drained by Hargus Creek and, in its southern sections, Scippo Creek. Settlement dates to 1797, when John Anderson arrived from Pennsylvania with his wife and ten children and took up land on Hargus Creek; German and Pennsylvania-German families followed in the next two decades, organizing the township's first church, a German Reformed and Lutheran congregation called Zion's, about 1808. It has never held an incorporated village of its own, remaining a township of farms, small country churches, and, since the twentieth century, the state's A. W. Marion State Park around Hargus Lake. Part of the city of Circleville lies within the township's western edge.

Settled 1797 (John Anderson, from Pennsylvania, with his wife and ten children).

Where the name comes from

No source consulted states directly why this township is named Washington. It is one of forty-three Washington Townships in Ohio, a name presumably honoring George Washington as it does elsewhere in the state, but the 1880 county history's chapter on the township, which describes its settlement and geography in detail, does not address the naming question at all.

Before the town

No source found records a Native American village, camp, mound, or trail within Washington Township's own boundaries. The only Native American content in the 1880 county history's Washington Township chapter concerns a German settler family, the Zeimmers, who farmed in the township from 1799 to 1812 before moving to Richland County, where the parents and a daughter were killed that same year during War of 1812 violence near Greentown, an unrelated Delaware (Lenape) village -- a tragedy that happened after the family had already left this township, not within it. Scippo Creek, whose banks in neighboring Pickaway Township carried the Shawnee towns of Cornstalk and his sister Nonhelema (the 'Grenadier Squaw') and the 1774 Camp Charlotte treaty ground, also flows through the southern part of Washington Township, but no source ties any specific site on that stretch of the creek to Native American use. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville, signed by the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Miami, Ottawa and other nations, ceded this land to the United States two years before John Anderson's arrival.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville cedes most of what becomes Ohio, including the future Washington Township, to the United States.
2. 1797 — John Anderson arrives from Pennsylvania with his wife and ten children and settles on Hargus Creek, the township's first recorded settler.
3. 1799 — A German immigrant family named Zeimmer settles in the township, taking up half of section twenty-seven.
4. 1808 — George Pontius Sr., his wife Catharine, five of their children, and a son-in-law's family arrive from Center County, Pennsylvania, after a four-week wagon journey in near-constant rain; Pontius later builds the township's first brick house.
5. 1808 — Zion's Church, a German Reformed and Lutheran congregation, is organized -- the first church in the township -- with a preacher named Foster; Jacob Leist later serves as its minister for about fifty years.
6. 1809 — Zion's church graveyard, the township's first burial ground, is laid out; the first burial is a child of Andrew Leist.
7. 1810 — Christopher Earnest settles along the old Lancaster (Westfall) road, the township's first road.
8. c. 1830 — St. Paul's Church of the Evangelical Association organizes, meeting in members' houses before building a frame church about 1849-1850.
9. 1835-1836 — The township is divided into six school districts, the same number it holds in 1880.
10. 1848 — The Pontius United Brethren Church is built on ground donated by Daniel Pontius, after a class organized about 1830 at his house.
11. 1874 — Bethany United Brethren Church is built in the winter, at a cost of about $1,400, dedicated by Bishop Weaver.

Stories

Four Weeks in the Rain

George Pontius Sr., his wife Catharine, five of their seven children, and their son-in-law Peter Row's family set out from Center County, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1808, bound for Washington Township. They came by wagon, and the 1880 county history records that the trip took four weeks, during which it rained every day but three. Pontius settled on the northwest quarter of section twenty-two and eventually gave each of his children a quarter section of their own. On the site where his son-in-law Daniel Haas's place later stood, he built the township's first brick house -- a mark, after that soaking month on the road, of a family determined to build something permanent.

A Family's Journey Ends in Tragedy Elsewhere

A German immigrant named Zeimmer settled in Washington Township in 1799 with his wife and seven children, taking up half of section twenty-seven. In 1812, as war with Great Britain broke out, the parents, one daughter, and the youngest son, Philip, left the township for Richland County -- and there, within months, the parents and daughter were killed, caught up in the violence that followed the forced removal of the peaceful Delaware village of Greentown near Mansfield. The 1880 county history reprints the episode at length from Henry Howe's 'Ohio Historical Collections,' under the anglicized name Seymour, as a window onto how suddenly the Ohio frontier could turn deadly even for families who, like the Zeimmers in their years in Washington Township, had lived without recorded incident among their neighbors.

Photographs

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Circleville City86% of residentsScioto River valley aquifer (sand & gravel wells)
• Earnhart Hill Water District13% of residentsScioto River valley (Teays) aquifer wells
• South Bloomfield Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Ross County Water Co. Inc0% of residentsTeays Valley Aquifer (buried valley groundwater)

High-hazard dams (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2023: 1 of 1 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 1 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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