Wayne Township, Noble County

How Wayne Township, Noble County began

Wayne Township lies in the northern part of Noble County, on the Seneca Fork of Wills Creek, and holds the county's earliest recorded homesites: Joseph Reeves built a cabin here about 1799 and left for fear of the Indians before returning, and John Vorhies settled with his family in 1802, by his descendants' account the first permanent settler in the county. Jacob Yoho followed in 1805 and Edward Ward in 1807, and William Thompson's mill on the Seneca Fork was running by 1815. Before 1851 the land lay in Richland, Beaver and Wright townships of Guernsey County; the Noble County commissioners erected Wayne on May 1, 1851. It is farm country with the hamlets of Kennonsburg and Lashley, and the Abner Williams Log House of 1827 is its best-known surviving building.

Settled about 1799 (Joseph Reeves's cabin, abandoned and later reoccupied); 1802 (John Vorhies, first permanent resident by his descendants' account), incorporated erected May 1, 1851 by the Noble County commissioners, by Joseph Reeves; John Vorhies.

Where the name comes from

Wayne Township is one of twenty townships of that name in Ohio, the great majority named for Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne, whose 1794 victory at Fallen Timbers opened much of the Ohio Country to settlement; no source specific to this township's 1851 naming was found, so the common Ohio pattern is given rather than asserted as fact for this place.

Before the town

No Native village, mound or trail inside Wayne Township is recorded in the sources read, but the township's first settler is tied to the Native presence here. The 1887 county history says Joseph Reeves came about 1800, left after a few years through fear of the Indians, and later returned; it adds that he often went with Native hunters on their expeditions and knew Tecumseh, who gave him a powder horn that the family still kept in 1887. Martin's 1904 history dates Reeves's cabin to 1799. When John Hague's family came about 1812 there were still some Indians in the country. The land was ceded at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1799 — Joseph Reeves built a cabin in what is now Wayne Township, intending to stay, but left because of the loneliness and the hostility of the Indians; he later returned as a permanent resident.
2. 1802 — John Vorhies settled with his family on land later owned by Millhorn and others; his descendants claimed him as the first permanent settler in the county.
3. 1805 — Jacob Yoho settled at the forks of the creek and built a log building that still stood in 1887 with the date on it.
4. 1807 — Edward Ward came from Pennsylvania with his family and his son John, who later served as a first lieutenant in the War of 1812.
5. 1809 — James Law bought 480 acres, and Thomas Richey, a native of Ireland, settled on 160 acres with his wife and two children.
6. 1810-09-03 — Settlers petitioned Guernsey County for a road from the headwaters of the Seneca past Cornelius Bryan's and Jacob Yoho's to Cambridge; it was completed the following spring.
7. 1812 — John Hague came from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, about this year, when some Indians were still in the country.
8. 1815 — William Thompson's mill on the Seneca Fork of Wills Creek was named in a Guernsey County road petition, probably the earliest mill in the vicinity.
9. 1825 — Joseph Burson kept a store on his farm by this year and also had an early grist mill; the township was later erected partly through his influence.
10. 1827 — Abner Williams, then 29, bought land in Wayne Township and built the log house that stands today, finishing it before the end of the year.
11. 1830 — The Richland Township tax duplicate listed the owners of the first twelve sections of township 8, range 8, now in Wayne, among them Jesse Brown, Henry Cramer, William Lowrey, John and Isaac Mendenhall, Alexander Sprout and Robert Thompson.
12. 1851-05-01 — The Noble County commissioners erected Wayne Township, 25 sections, from land formerly in Richland, Beaver and Wright townships of Guernsey County.
13. 1851-07-12 — James Rich and Abner Williams were elected the first justices of the peace of the newly set-off township.
14. 1852-03-03 — The county commissioners took six half-sections from Wayne and annexed them to Beaver Township.
15. 1880 — The census counted 761 people in Wayne Township.
16. 1979 — The Abner Williams Log House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (reference 79001923).

Stories

Tecumseh's powder horn

The 1887 county history calls Joseph Reeves probably the first white man to make his home in the northern part of Noble County. He came near the close of the 1700s, stayed a few years and was driven out through fear of the Indians, then returned once the country was more settled and became a resident of the township. The history says he often went with Native hunters on their hunting trips and knew Tecumseh personally, and that Tecumseh gave him a powder horn which was still in the family's possession when the book was written.

A bear on a sapling, and a boy on a deer

Wayne's pioneers left a stock of hunting stories. Daniel and John Vorhies, out after raccoons, treed a large bear; one boy ran to Joseph Reeves's for a gun while the other kept the bear up the tree by lashing its flanks with a switch until his brother came back and shot it. Timothy Bates once gutted a bear, bent a sapling down, laid the bear on it and let the tree spring back, leaving the animal propped upright as if alive, and Joseph Reeves's daughters, hunting their cows, came on it and ran home frightened. Isaac Mendenhall climbed a young tree to escape a buck at bay, the tree bent under him and dropped him onto the deer's neck, and he held on until his companion killed it.

The log house Abner Williams built

Abner Williams was born in 1798, grandson of an early Guernsey County settler. In 1827, at 29, he bought land in a Wayne Township valley and by winter had a log house standing on it. He farmed it the rest of his life, growing his holding from an original 82 acres to nearly 300, and was elected a justice of the peace when the township was set off in 1851. The house he built survives and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, one of the few structures from Wayne Township's first settlement still standing.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Guernsey County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Quaker City82% of residentsBarnesville Reservoirs #1, #2 & Slope Creek Reservoir
• Byesville18% of residentslocal wells (mine-pool/groundwater under influence of surface water)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Shale and injection wells (10)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

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