Wesley Township, Washington County

How Wesley Township, Washington County began

Wesley Township occupies the far western edge of Washington County, bordering Morgan and Athens counties, and is the only Wesley Township in Ohio. It was established in 1810 on petition of Joseph Palmer and others, and counted the prominent Ohio statesman Thomas Ewing among its earliest settlers. Its center grew from two adjoining villages: Plymouth, founded by Harvey Smith in 1835, and Pleasanton, laid out about three years later by Milton Smith during a short-lived movement to make it a new county seat; the combined settlement took the name Bartlett from its post office, established in honor of first postmaster Amos Bartlett. An estimated hundred-plus enslaved people passed to freedom through the township on the Underground Railroad, which ran along the great Indian trail from the Ohio River through neighboring Decatur Township. The Shinn Covered Bridge, built in 1886 over the western branch of Wolf Creek, stands just northeast of Bartlett but is administratively in neighboring Palmer Township. The 2020 census recorded 952 residents, and no incorporated village has ever stood within the township.

Settled 1810 (Hon. Thomas Ewing and other pioneers, just west of Plymouth), platted 1835 (Plymouth, by Harvey Smith); about 1838 (Pleasanton, by Milton Smith), incorporated township established 1810, by petition of Joseph Palmer and others.

Where the name comes from

No source checked explains the township's own name (likely, as with many Ohio townships of the period, a reference to the Methodist founder John Wesley). Bartlett, the combined community that grew from the adjoining villages of Plymouth and Pleasanton, took its name from the Bartlett post office, established in honor of Amos Bartlett, who was instrumental in securing an office at the site and served as its first postmaster; Pleasanton itself was so named because its founders expected it would make 'a pleasant place for the new court house' during an 1830s movement to organize a new county with the village as its seat.

Before the town

No Native village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Wesley Township was found in the sources checked, but the 1881 county history records that a great Indian trail ran off Wolf Creek through the township's northwest corner, marked as late as 1837 by the skull of a horse hung in a tree -- believed to have been placed there by Native travelers as a guidepost along the only pathway through the wilderness, and regarded with superstitious dread by settlers as the 'Horse Skull fork.' The same trail later served as part of the Underground Railroad route through the township.

• the great Indian trail off Wolf Creek (Horse Skull fork) (trail) — northwest corner of Wesley Township, off Wolf Creek, undated in the source; marker noted as of 1837 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1810 — Wesley Township is established on petition of Joseph Palmer and others; the first officials -- Joseph Palmer, Cornelius Houghland, and John Rardin as trustees -- are appointed August 12.
2. 1810 — Among the township's earliest settlers is the Hon. Thomas Ewing, later a prominent American statesman, who builds a log cabin just west of the future site of Plymouth; a few fruit trees are the only surviving mark of the spot by 1881.
3. 1818 — A notice is served on 'James Lockwood and Phoebe, his wife, and all their children' ordering the family to leave the township for lack of visible means of support -- an early instance of a poor family being formally banished under the township's overseer-of-the-poor law.
4. 1825 — The Methodist Episcopal society erects the township's first church building, about a mile and a half north of Plymouth.
5. 1835 — Harvey Smith founds Plymouth, starting the town's first business, a hat factory, in a log cabin, and riding hats to Marietta on horseback to trade for groceries.
6. about 1838 — Milton Smith lays out Pleasanton adjoining Plymouth, during a movement to organize a new county with the village as its seat; the plan does not succeed, and neither village ever grows large enough for incorporation.
7. 1856 — Bartlett's Academy is organized, with Jefferson M. Heston as first principal, in a building purchased from the Presbyterian church.

Stories

Over a hundred to freedom

The Underground Railroad's secret network of guides and safe houses ran a line straight through Wesley Township, part of a route extending from the Ohio River through Decatur Township and on along the great Indian trail off Wolf Creek. Freedom seekers were guided by day through the township's dark ravines and deep recesses and hidden by night in the caves and caverns of its hills, passed from station to station by local abolitionists who fed, clothed, and encouraged them onward. The 1881 county history estimates that more than a hundred enslaved people escaped to freedom through the township by this route -- a substantial number for a single rural township, and a reminder that the same rugged terrain that made Wesley Township hard to farm made it valuable for exactly this purpose.

Two villages, one pleasant idea

Bartlett grew from the near-collision of two separate town-building efforts. Harvey Smith founded Plymouth in 1835, starting its first business himself -- a hat factory run out of a log cabin, with Smith riding a string of hats to Marietta on horseback to trade for groceries, which he then carried home in his saddlebags. About three years later, Milton Smith laid out Pleasanton right alongside it, timed to a short-lived local movement to organize a brand-new county with Pleasanton as its seat; the founders chose the name because they expected it would make 'a pleasant place for the new court house.' The county movement fizzled, but the villages grew together anyway, joining so closely that by 1881 it was hard to say where one left off and the other began. Neither ever grew large enough to incorporate, and the combined settlement eventually took its lasting name, Bartlett, from the post office established in honor of Amos Bartlett, its first postmaster.

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

Ohio River Valley Aquifer (own wells, Porterfield wellfield) The water here

• Little Hocking Water Association, Inc.86% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (own wells, Porterfield wellfield)
• Stockport Village9% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Amesville Public Water System5% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - West Malta0% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Sunday Creek Valley Water0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Chesterhill Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-02-24

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