Wayne Township, Knox County

How Wayne Township, Knox County began

Wayne Township, in northwestern Knox County, was Township No. 1 in the county's original division into four townships on May 2, 1808 (alongside Clinton, Morgan and Union), named for General 'Mad Anthony' Wayne, whose 1794 victory at Fallen Timbers and subsequent 1795 Treaty of Greenville opened this part of Ohio to American settlement. The Greenville Treaty Line itself runs through the township, tracked today by Yankee Street, originally named Treaty Line Road; the line dips south through Ankenytown and passes near Batemantown before running northeast along Toms Road. Nathaniel Mitchell Young, a New Jersey blacksmith the Native people nicknamed the 'axe maker' for repairing their tools, settled on the south branch of Owl Creek in 1805 and is identified by the 1881 county history as the first permanent settler not just of Wayne Township but of all Knox County; kinsmen who followed him formed the 'Jersey settlement.' A circular Mound Builder earthwork with an interior mound once stood on the site of Fredericktown itself, destroyed by the town's own grading and construction. Most of the village of Fredericktown, laid out in 1807 by John Kerr, occupies the township's northeastern corner, and the township itself has stayed rural, with 993 residents counted in 2020.

Settled 1805 (Nathaniel Mitchell Young, first permanent settler of Wayne Township and of Knox County), incorporated 1808-05-02 (Township No. 1 of Knox County's original four townships); reduced to present limits 1825-03-09.

Where the name comes from

Wayne Township is named for General 'Mad Anthony' Wayne, hero of Stony Point and the Battle of Fallen Timbers, whose victory over a Native confederacy in 1794 and the resulting 1795 Treaty of Greenville directly shaped this part of Knox County: the treaty line itself runs through the township.

Before the town

The 1881 county history describes a circular Mound Builder earthwork that once stood on the highest point of the hill where Fredericktown now sits, directly in Sandusky Street a little east of the public square: a circular embankment two to three feet high with an interior ditch and an eastward gateway, covering about an acre, with a mound 30-40 feet in diameter and 7-8 feet high inside it; the work was entirely destroyed by the town's grading and construction, though older residents still remembered it in 1881. Several other mounds in neighboring Morris and Berlin townships were thought to have been intervisible with this one. By the time white settlement began, no permanent Native camp existed within the township, though temporary hunting camps and lone wigwams dotted Owl Creek, and Delaware and Wyandot people from the Sandusky plains, along with Greentown and Jerometown Indians under Chiefs Armstrong and Captain Pipe, regularly camped about three-quarters of a mile from a site on the south branch of Owl Creek where, in 1801, Ohio pioneers Elias Hughes and John Ratliff killed two Native men they accused of horse theft (see story) -- an incident that predates Wayne Township's own settlement by several years. Native people remained in the vicinity until the War of 1812, after which they 'generally disappeared, never to return,' in the 1881 historian's words.

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

• Fredericktown mound and enclosure (earthwork) — site of Fredericktown, on Sandusky Street east of the public square, Wayne Township; destroyed by town construction, unknown (Mound Builder) (archive.org)
• Owl Creek killing site and Native camping ground (camp) — south branch of Owl Creek, just south of Fredericktown, Wayne Township; a favorite Delaware and Wyandot hunting encampment about three-quarters of a mile from where two Native men were killed in 1801, to 1812 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1794 — General Anthony Wayne defeats a Native American confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
2. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville is signed August 3 at Fort Greenville, drawing a line through what becomes Wayne Township and opening land south and east of it to American settlement.
3. 1801 — Ohio pioneers Elias Hughes and John Ratliff, pursuing Native men who had stolen horses from their Licking County cabins, overtake and kill two of them on the south branch of Owl Creek, just south of the future Fredericktown.
4. 1805 — Nathaniel Mitchell Young, a blacksmith from New Jersey nicknamed the 'axe maker' by Native neighbors for repairing their tools, settles on the south branch of Owl Creek -- the first permanent settler of Wayne Township and, per the 1881 county history, of Knox County as a whole.
5. 1806 — The Jersey settlement's residents agree to pay nine bushels of corn per wolf scalp; three of them trap 41 wolves that winter. A party of Maryland Quakers, including William Y. Farquhar and Henry Roberts, also settles on Owl Creek this year.
6. 1807 — John Kerr and Samuel Wilson, Quakers, settle on the site of Fredericktown; Kerr begins building a grist-mill and lays out the town, acknowledging the plat November 11.
7. 1808 — Knox County is organized May 2 into four original townships, Wayne being Township No. 1, named for Anthony Wayne; the first regular election is held October 11 at the house of Daniel and Abner Ayers in Fredericktown.
8. 1809 — Settlers from Licking, Knox and Richland counties win a legislative petition for a road from Newark by Mount Vernon to Mansfield; William W. Farquhar surveys part of it that March, and a road also opens to the Jersey settlement from the forks of Owl Creek.
9. 1812 — With war against Great Britain underway and an Indian invasion feared, Jersey-settlement residents build a circular stockaded block-house on a high bank above the creek at Lucerne, logs set fifteen feet above ground.
10. 1812 — Nine log cabins and one frame building stand in Fredericktown; John Garrison opens its first store, in the frame house, and a school-house doubles as a fort during the war.
11. 1814 — A Mr. Williams, who bought out John Kerr in Fredericktown, builds on Kerr's lot the first brick house in the village and probably in the township.
12. 1825 — Wayne Township is reduced to its present limits on March 9, composed of the seventh township in the fourteenth range.
13. 1830 — Wayne Township, by then cut down to the seventh township of the fourteenth range, lists 16,258 acres for taxation and has 1,048 inhabitants.
14. 1835 — Daniel and Jabez Beers found the town of Lucerne around John Beebe's earlier saw-mill and windmill factory; the settlement later fades, leaving only a handful of dwellings.
15. 1850 — Township population reaches 1,864; it is 1,789 in 1860, 1,658 in 1870 and 1,618 in 1880.
16. 2020 — The census counts 993 residents in the township, up from 868 in 1990, 898 in 2000 and 892 in 2010.

Stories

A treaty line you can still drive

When General Anthony Wayne and Native leaders including the Wyandot chiefs Tarhe and Leatherlips, the Shawnee war leader Blue Jacket, the Miami chief Little Turtle, and the Potawatomi leader Gomo signed the Treaty of Greenville in August 1795, the boundary they drew was surveyed on the ground with wooden stakes and blazed trees, hard evidence in a landscape without fences or roads yet. More than two centuries later, that survey line still shapes Wayne Township: Yankee Street, which runs through the township's northwest, was originally named Treaty Line Road because it tracks the boundary almost exactly. The line dips south to pass through Ankenytown, runs near Batemantown, and follows what is now Toms Road before becoming the straight-edge border between Knox and Richland counties. Property lines, road angles, and even old fences in this part of the township still bend along a boundary that was never meant to last 'forever,' as the treaty promised, but that left its shape on the map regardless.

The axe maker of the Jersey settlement

Nathaniel Mitchell Young wandered up from New Jersey in the spring of 1805, likely carrying a military land warrant, and settled alone on the south branch of Owl Creek five or six miles southwest of the future Fredericktown -- the first permanent settler anywhere within what became Knox County. He built a simple log shelter, and because Native visitors came often, he began using his few tools to repair their knives, tomahawks, and guns between hunts, earning the name 'axe maker,' a nickname that stuck to him for more than fifty years. Kinsmen soon followed and settled around him -- Jacob Young, Abraham and Simeon Lyon, Eliphalet and John Lewis, James Bryant -- and the cluster of New Jersey transplants became known far and wide as the Jersey settlement, one of the most important pioneer communities in the county.

The killing on Owl Creek

In 1801, four years before Wayne Township saw its first permanent settler, a party of Native men stole horses -- including one belonging to a visitor named Bland -- from a small enclosure near the Licking County cabins of Elias Hughes and John Ratliff, Licking County's first white settlers. The two men, joined by Bland, tracked the thieves north and caught up with their camp at daybreak on the south branch of Owl Creek, near the future site of Fredericktown. Bland and Ratliff reportedly wavered, willing to simply recover the horses and let the men go, but Hughes, a hardened 'Indian fighter and hater,' insisted, and two Native men were shot dead. In 1835, decades later, township resident William Mefford, clearing ground to build a house on Mile Run, plowed up their remains along with a rusted gun barrel and brass guard; George Conkie gathered the bones and reburied them, and the house -- the old Peck place -- was built on the spot regardless.

How Sodom got its name

In the Jersey settlement on the south branch of Owl Creek, the Jersey pioneers who followed Nathaniel Mitchell Young included James Bryant, whom the 1881 county history describes as a strict, steady man with a Sunday-go-to-meeting face. Bryant thought the neighbors to the west of him did not walk as near to his way as they should, and he called the place Sodom, a name the county historian says it has borne ever since. The same settlers wrote their own rules: in the winter of 1805-6 they agreed to pay nine bushels of corn for each wolf scalp, and three of them trapped 41 wolves before spring.

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

Mostly private wells The water here

• Fredericktown Village43% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Mount Vernon City41% of residentsBuried Valley Aquifer (Kokosing River valley wells)
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.15% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Colonial Terrace Mhc Llc0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Westgate Mobile Home Community0% of residentsBuried Valley Aquifer (Kokosing River valley wells)
• Knox County Water and Wastewater0% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Grandview MHP A0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Elections for office

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

Cite this page