Waterloo Township, Athens County

How Waterloo Township, Athens County began

Waterloo Township, organized in April 1826 in western Athens County out of Athens Township, takes its name — as suggested at the time by General John Brown of Athens — from the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, a naming fashion common to townships platted in the years just after that battle ended the Napoleonic Wars. Moses Hewitt was the first white settler, arriving about 1806 with no other family for miles; Col. William Lowry, who came to Waterloo from Athens in February 1820 when only three other families lived there, left a detailed account of the township's pioneer years. It borders Vinton and Hocking counties and has no incorporated municipality of its own; its population centers are the unincorporated communities of New Marshfield, Carbondale and Mineral, along with the railroad village of Marshfield, which grew up around the Marietta and Cincinnati line seven miles from Athens.

Settled 1806 (Moses Hewitt, the first white settler), incorporated 1826-04, by Joseph Hewitt and William Lowry were principally instrumental in securing the township's organization; name suggested by General John Brown of Athens.

Where the name comes from

The name of Waterloo was suggested by General John Brown, of Athens, at the township's organization in 1826 — a common naming choice for Ohio townships organized in the years after the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, though no source gives Brown's specific reason for proposing it.

Before the town

No source consulted documents a Native American village, mound, trail or treaty boundary specific to Waterloo Township. One settler's family history brushes against the topic at second hand and from outside Ohio: Col. William Lowry, who settled in Waterloo in 1820, recalled that as a child in Green County, Virginia, in the 1780s, his family's frontier neighborhood was 'infested with Indians' and that the inmates of a nearby frontier house, save one twelve-year-old boy, were killed in a raid — an episode from Virginia, not from Athens County. It lies in the same western-Athens-County hill country as neighboring townships where Adena/Hopewell mound-building activity and later Shawnee presence are documented at a county level; nothing site-specific to Waterloo Township itself was found.

Timeline

1. 1801 — Capt. John Hewitt builds the first mill Col. William Lowry remembers in the area, on Margaret's Creek within a mile of its mouth.
2. 1806 (about) — Moses Hewitt becomes the first white settler within the present limits of Waterloo Township; no other family lives within many miles of him.
3. 1820-02 — Col. William Lowry moves to Waterloo Township from Athens; only three other families live in the township at the time.
4. 1826-04 — Waterloo Township is organized, separately from Athens Township; the first election is held April 3, 1826, at the house of Joseph Hewitt.
5. 1830 — The first census of Waterloo counts 216 residents; the population then grows to 741 (1840), 1,016 (1850), 1,483 (1860), 1,695 (1870) and 1,957 (1880).
6. 1836 — Families from Morgan and Muskingum counties, among them Robert Cotton, Lewis Davis, James Mayhugh, Hugh Boden, Daniel McCoy, Samuel Allison and William and Joseph Johnson, settle in Waterloo.
7. 1856 — John Boden becomes the first station agent at Marshfield when the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad is completed through the township.
8. 1867 — Coal works open at Carbondale, with a branch railroad built before the year's end; the 1883 history calls them the first opened in southeastern Ohio, and 150 to 175 men work there.
9. 1880 — Carbondale gets a post office, with Charles Smith as postmaster; Mineral City, laid out by the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad Company, has about 150 residents and a post office.
10. 1883 — Waterloo has about 1,957 residents (1880 census), three mining and railroad villages (Marshfield, Carbondale and Mineral City) and Constitution Lodge No. 426, Free and Accepted Masons.

Stories

Col. Lowry's Waterloo

William Lowry was born in 1779 in Berkeley County, Virginia, and taken as an infant to Green County, where, he recalled, the country was 'a dense wilderness, infested with Indians,' and settlers fought raids every summer for four years; at one point his family's was the frontier's second-to-last house, and every person in the last one, save a twelve-year-old boy who escaped, was killed. In 1797, at eighteen, he came with his father down the Ohio River in flatboats and up the Hocking in canoes to settle near Athens, in a country so short of milled grain that the family pounded corn on a hominy block and depended on the woods for meat. Lowry moved to Waterloo Township in February 1820, when only three other families lived there and wolves and panthers were 'pretty numerous and very annoying'; he was still living in Waterloo, in his seventy-ninth year, when the county history recorded his account in 1869.

Carbondale and the first coal in southeastern Ohio

The 1883 History of the Hocking Valley describes Carbondale in Waterloo Township as a flourishing mining village of 250 to 300 people. Its coal works, opened in 1867 and operated by McClintock & Smith, were said to have been the first opened in southeastern Ohio, and a branch railroad was laid and finished before the year was out. The vein was four feet thick. The company employed 150 to 175 men and kept one of the village's two general stores; there was a school but no church building, and the post office dated only from 1880. Nearby Mineral City, which the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad Company laid out, had about 150 residents, two general stores and a drug store, and the historian remarked that its future 'does not come under the head of Great Expectations.' Thirteen years earlier, in 1869, Walker's county history had seen the township as mainly farmland whose coal lay unworked.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Athens64% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)
• Le-ax Regional Water District25% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (horizontal collector wells)
• Nelsonville10% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Athens Co., the Plains S.d. 10% of residentsHocking River Valley aquifer (wells)
• Carbon Hill Water Association0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

High-hazard dams (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 5 of 5 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked. The county's results on file run through 2026-05-05; later elections are not loaded yet.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-06-09
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-14

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Waterloo Township, Athens County, Athens County and its school district:

• Alexander Local School District: Authorizes an additional 0.75% income tax for the current expenses of Alexander Local School District for 5 years, beginning in 2027.
• Athens County: Authorizes an additional 1-mill property tax levy to maintain & operate health department of Athens County for 10 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

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