Washington Township, Tuscarawas County

How Washington Township, Tuscarawas County began

Washington Township, in the southern part of Tuscarawas County, was organized on March 5, 1827, from parts of Oxford and Perry townships, and like dozens of other Ohio townships takes its name from George Washington. Ananias Randall, the first name to appear on the county tax duplicate as a resident landowner here, laid out the village of Newtown in 1817 (its post office is now called Peoli); Walter M. Blake founded the second village, Gilmore, in 1848, naming it for a wealthy Irish farmer, Nathaniel Gilmore, and the site carried an older local legend about a family of suspected robbers and murderers who once lived there. Neither village ever grew large, and the township has never had an incorporated municipality of its own; its clearest surviving landmark is a Civil War memorial near Gilmore, though we found only one source for it. It remains one of the county's smallest and most rural townships by population.

Incorporated 1827-03-05, by organized from parts of Oxford and Perry townships; qualified electors directed to hold their first election at the house of Benjamin Servisson on the first Monday of April 1827.

Where the name comes from

Named for George Washington, following the common Ohio pattern; the state has 43 townships named Washington.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, mound, or treaty line specific to Washington Township is documented in the sources checked. The township's Native American history is recorded only at the county level: the historic Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot, and related nations who lived along the Tuscarawas River valley to the north, and the Adena and Hopewell mound-building cultures documented elsewhere in the county, are not tied to any specific site within this township by any source found. This should be treated as a genuine gap rather than an absence of Native history in the region as a whole. The 1884 county history notes only that the township is five miles square 'except that the Salem Moravian tract encroaches slightly upon the northwest corner', without saying what lay on that corner. The same history says deer once grew so plentiful that they ravaged pioneer fields.

Timeline

1. 1808 — Tuscarawas County is organized from Muskingum County; the future Washington Township lies within the county's original townships (Perry Township, which later contributed its eastern part, is not formed until 1818).
2. 1817 — Ananias Randall, the first person to appear on the county tax duplicate as a landowner within the future township, lays out the village of Newtown with forty lots on the northeast quarter of Section 21; Samuel Hagans builds the first house, Randall keeps the first hotel, William Peoples is the first blacksmith, and Joshua Brown the first storekeeper.
3. 1817 — Richard Banning of New Jersey enters the southeast quarter of Section 19, the second landholder after Ananias Randall; his brother Joseph Lanning follows in 1819, and the first Methodist meetings in the township are held at Lanning's cabin.
4. 1827 — Washington Township is organized on March 5 from parts of Oxford and Perry townships.
5. c. 1830-35 — The first West Union Methodist church, a small rough log building, goes up a mile south of the future Gilmore on land given by Mordecai Davidson and Peyton Morris; the Hartwood Methodist Protestant society, also meeting in a log house with slab benches, forms in the northwest about the same time.
6. 1839 — Rev. John Miner organizes Wesley Chapel, a Methodist society of about thirty in the southern part of the township; its frame building replaces schoolhouse meetings about 1843.
7. c. 1840-45 — A Baptist society organized at Newtown by Rev. Stone builds the village's first church in 1845; it declines and the building is reused by a Disciples congregation about 1865.
8. 1846 — A post office called Peoli is recorded for Newtown in the postal-history list; the county history says Madison Snyder was its first postmaster.
9. 1848 — Walter M. Blake founds the town of Gilmore on the east end of Lot 9, naming it for Nathaniel Gilmore, a wealthy Irish farmer living in the vicinity; John Sewell Sr. and John Dinning erect the first houses almost simultaneously, and Philip Lanning opens a store that fall and serves as postmaster for decades after.
10. 1850 — The Protestant Methodist Church, the only church ever built in Gilmore, is organized by Rev. Henry Lossen.
11. 1854 — A post office is recorded at Gilmore, 1854 to 1950; the county history says Philip Lanning, who opened a store in the fall of 1848, was appointed postmaster and kept it more than thirty years.
12. 1856 — The Methodist Episcopal church at Newtown, organized about 1850 by Rev. J. Merriman, builds its first church; a brick building replaces it in 1870.
13. c. 1869 — The tannery that John Myers and Hugh Smith started soon after Gilmore was laid out is abandoned.
14. 1875-76 — A Disciples congregation is organized at Gilmore in the winter by Rev. T. J. Newcombe, meeting in the village hall; in 1878 the Protestant Methodists replace their church of about 1856 with a $1,500 building.
15. 1880 — Gilmore's population is recorded at 116, a slight decline from the 1870 and 1860 censuses; the village by this time has two stores, a drug store, three blacksmith shops, two shoe shops, and a wagon and carriage manufactory that produced 100 vehicles in the preceding year.
16. 1979 — The Port Washington Town Hall, several miles away in Salem Township, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 22 (a NRHP listing tagged to a ZIP code Washington Township shares, not a landmark within the township itself).

Stories

The legend of Gilmore

Before Gilmore was a town, the 1884 county history recounts, a family lived near the site who were widely suspected -- though never proven, by direct evidence -- to be robbers and murderers. Travelers passing through the wilderness on that road were said to disappear, and strange horses and property believed to belong to missing travelers turned up in the family's possession. After the family left the area, articles were reportedly found that could not have come into their hands honestly, feeding the belief that more than one traveler had lost his life there and been buried in the ravines near what became the village. Walter M. Blake founded the actual town on the same ground in 1848, naming it for a well-known local farmer rather than for the old story.

Joe Huff and the wolves at Gilmore

Joe Huff, a hunter from neighboring Perry Township, once had a close call near the future site of Gilmore. Having killed two bears and hung the carcasses out of reach in trees, he was making his way home through freezing rain and snow when a pack of wolves, fifteen to twenty strong, began circling him more and more boldly. When they finally rushed him in a ravine below a blacksmith shop, his rifle's priming was too wet to fire. He scrambled up a bushy sapling just ahead of them, dried his powder, and shot into the pack below, reloading and firing until ten or eleven wolves lay dead around the tree; the rest scattered, and Huff walked home.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Newcomerstown Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Private schools (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

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