West Liberty

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How West Liberty began

West Liberty was laid out in 1817 around a gristmill built on the Mad River in 1816 and was incorporated in 1834. It stands about a mile from the site of Mackachack (also spelled Mac-a-cheek), one of a cluster of Shawnee towns along the Mad River destroyed in General Benjamin Logan's 1786 raid, and near Wapatomica, the Shawnee nation's political capital in the same period; frontiersman Simon Kenton was forced to run the gauntlet at both towns as a captive in 1778. In the 1860s and 1870s, brothers Abram and Donn Piatt, sons of an early Logan County judge, built two Gothic-style family estates just outside the village and named them Mac-A-Cheek and Mac-O-Chee for the old Shawnee towns; both are on the National Register of Historic Places and Mac-A-Cheek remains open as a house museum. A major fire destroyed much of the village's downtown on May 13, 1880, an event still marked locally by an annual fire sale.

Settled 1816, platted 1817, incorporated 1834, by settlers around a Mad River gristmill built in 1816.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted gives a documented origin for the name 'West Liberty' itself; it is a common American place name of the era (paired here with Liberty Township, in which the village partly sits) and we do not assert an origin beyond that. The GNIS historical name 'Mackachack' attached to this ZIP reflects the nearby Shawnee town, and 'Old Pimtown' is a locally used name for a nearby place (a road called Pimtown Road runs through the area) whose own origin could not be verified in the sources checked.

Before the town

West Liberty sits at the edge of what local historians call the Mac-a-cheek towns: a cluster of roughly ten Shawnee villages that occupied the Mad River valley in Logan County from the 1760s/1770s until 1786, home at various times to Shawnee leaders Moluntha, Black Hoof, and Blue Jacket. Mackachack (Mac-a-cheek), about one mile east of present West Liberty, and Wapatomica, near present Zanesfield and for a time the Shawnee nation's political capital, were among the most important. In September 1778, Kentucky frontiersman Simon Kenton, captured on a scouting raid near Chillicothe, was marched among these towns as a prisoner marked for execution and was forced to run gauntlets -- lines of villagers who beat captives with sticks and clubs -- at both Mackachack and Wapatomica; he was one of the few captives to survive nine such gauntlets, and was eventually saved from execution through the intercession of Simon Girty and adopted by the Shawnee before being sold to the British as a prisoner of war and taken to Detroit, from where he escaped within a few months. In the fall of 1786, Kentucky militia under General Benjamin Logan burned Mackachack, Wapatomica, and the other towns of the cluster in retaliation for continued raids on Kentucky settlements; Shawnee chief Moluntha was murdered by militia colonel Hugh McGary during the raid despite having surrendered peacefully. The Shawnee who survived the 1786 destruction largely regrouped further north and west, and the region passed out of Shawnee control after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. A separate Wyandot presence is recorded a few miles east at Zanesfield in Jefferson Township, where trader Isaac Zane, adopted by the Wyandot as a boy and married to Myeerah, daughter of Wyandot chief Tarhe, settled with his family; see T38682-LOG for that history.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot.

• Mackachack (Mac-a-cheek) (village) — about one mile east of West Liberty, 1760s/1770s-1786 (hmdb.org)
• Wapatomica (village) — near Zanesfield, Logan County, to 1786 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1816 — A gristmill was built on the Mad River at the site that became West Liberty.
2. 1817 — West Liberty was laid out around the mill.
3. 1833 — The village held five stores, two taverns, a tannery, a merchant mill, a saw mill, a carding machine, and about 20 houses.
4. 1834 — West Liberty was formally incorporated.
5. 1864 — Construction began on Mac-A-Cheek, the Piatt family's Gothic-style stone house outside West Liberty, named for the nearby Shawnee town; it was completed in 1871 for Abram S. Piatt.
6. 1879 — Abram's brother Donn Piatt completed the neighboring house Mac-O-Chee, designed by architect John L. Smithmeyer, about three-quarters of a mile from Mac-A-Cheek.
7. 1880 — A fire beginning in a stable on May 13 spread through downtown West Liberty and destroyed much of it; the village still commemorates the event with an annual fire sale.
8. 1982 — Both Mac-A-Cheek and Mac-O-Chee were listed on the National Register of Historic Places, on May 3.
9. 2019 — Mac-O-Chee was sold at auction in October to local buyers for $561,000; Mac-A-Cheek remains in Piatt family hands and open for tours.

Stories

Simon Kenton's gauntlets at Mackachack and Wapatomica

In September 1778, Simon Kenton, a young Kentucky scout, was captured by Shawnee warriors during a raid near Chillicothe. Because Kenton had killed and stolen horses from the Shawnee before, his captors judged him an enemy important enough to be taken to Wapatomica, then the political center of the Shawnee nation, to be tried and executed. On the way, the Shawnee paraded him through their towns along the Mad River, including Mackachack, and at each stop forced him to run the gauntlet -- two lines of villagers armed with sticks, clubs and fists, meant to batter a captive half to death before he reached the end. Kenton ran the gauntlet at Mackachack and again at Wapatomica, was condemned to be burned at the stake, and was spared only when the renegade frontiersman Simon Girty, an old acquaintance, recognized him and argued the Shawnee council into sparing his life. Kenton survived nine gauntlet runs in all before the Shawnee were persuaded to sell him to the British as a prisoner of war; he was taken to Detroit and escaped within a few months. The towns where this happened stood within what is now Logan County, and West Liberty grew up a few decades later almost on top of the Mackachack townsite.

Judge Piatt's sons built castles named for the towns their family displaced

In the 1820s, Judge Benjamin M. Piatt and his wife Elizabeth Barnett Piatt moved from Cincinnati to the rolling farmland outside West Liberty, land that a generation earlier had been part of the Shawnee towns burned in 1786. Their sons Abram and Donn, both Civil War veterans, built substantial stone houses on the family property using stone, timber and brick quarried and milled on the land itself -- only the window glass and slate roofing were bought elsewhere. Abram named his 1871 house Mac-A-Cheek and Donn named his 1879 house, three-quarters of a mile away, Mac-O-Chee: both names taken directly from Mackachack, the Shawnee town that had stood nearby before Logan's raid. The houses, with elaborate painted ceilings, carved woodwork and even indoor plumbing, became family museums early in the twentieth century; Mac-A-Cheek is still open to the public today, while Mac-O-Chee was sold out of the family in 2019.

Photographs

Local history sources: mywestliberty.com · en.wikipedia.org · loganhistory.org · hmdb.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · loganhistory.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• West Liberty Village100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 3 of 4 passed; of those asking for new or higher taxes, 0 of 1.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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