Wilkesville

• William G. LeDucPerson · 1823-1917

How Wilkesville began

Wilkesville was laid out on June 10, 1810, by Henry Le Duc (locally Americanized to "Henry Due"), the land agent for an Eastern investor named Wilkes who had bought the site and much of the surrounding country about 1807. Due, a French-born former officer of the French fleet, brought his own family from Middletown, Connecticut in 1812 and became the town's leading citizen until his death in 1827; the Presbyterian church he helped found in 1821 anchored the village for decades, and its 1866 academy drew students from beyond the township. Wilkesville was incorporated in 1881, and its post office, opened in 1819, ran continuously until 2021. Today it is a small hamlet of just over 100 residents near several of the county's National Register covered bridges, its 19th-century commercial and church life far better documented than its recent history.

Platted 1810-06-10, incorporated 1881-08-12, by Henry Le Duc (Americanized locally to "Henry Due"), land agent for the town's owner, an Eastern gentleman named Wilkes.

Where the name comes from

Named for Wilkes, an Eastern gentleman (first name not given in sources checked) who purchased the town site and a large part of the surrounding country about 1807. In 1810 his land agent, Henry Le Duc, arrived, laid out the town on June 10, and named it Wilkesville in the owner's honor.

Before the town

No Native American site or village specific to the Wilkesville town site was found in the sources checked.

Timeline

1. 1807 — An Eastern gentleman named Wilkes purchases the future town site and a large part of the surrounding country.
2. 1810-06-10 — Henry Le Duc, Wilkes's land agent, lays out the town and names it Wilkesville; five families settle in the township that same year, the first being Isaac Hawk's.
3. 1812 — Henry Due brings his own family to Wilkesville from Middletown, Connecticut.
4. 1818 — Mrs. Crooker teaches the first school in Wilkesville.
5. 1819 — A post office called Wilkesville begins operation.
6. 1821-10 — The Presbyterian Church of Wilkesville, one of the first religious bodies in Vinton County, is organized by the missionary Rev. William R. Gould, with founder Henry Due among its seven original members.
7. 1827-06-27 — Henry Due, founder of Wilkesville, dies and is buried in the old hilltop graveyard; his tombstone epitaph records that he was born in France and came to America as an officer in the French fleet.
8. 1828 — The first Presbyterian church building is erected on the hill; a schoolhouse is also built about this year.
9. 1829 — A Masonic lodge, Orphan's Friend Lodge No. 100, is organized in Wilkesville; it later ceases work and is revived as Orphan's Friend Lodge No. 275.
10. 1866 — Wilkesville Academy is built through the efforts of Rev. Warren Taylor, drawing students from outside the village before later merging into the Wilkesville High School.
11. 1881-08-12 — Wilkesville is incorporated as a village.
12. 1888 — The Presbyterian church building and parsonage, erected in 1874, are destroyed by fire.
13. 2021 — The Wilkesville post office, in continuous operation since 1819, closes.

Stories

The Frenchman who named the town for someone else

In 1810 Henry Le Duc arrived at the site chosen by his employer, an Eastern land buyer named Wilkes, and on June 10 laid out a town he named Wilkesville in his boss's honor rather than his own. Due, as he Americanized his name, was born in France and had come to America as an officer in the French fleet; he built the brick house on High Street that still stood as the village's oldest more than sixty years later, and in 1812 brought his own family from Middletown, Connecticut, to settle for good. He became the town's leading citizen, a Presbyterian elder, and, in a fit of temperance zeal, once raised a log barn without a drop of whisky offered to the workmen, a novelty in the neighborhood. When he died on June 27, 1827, they buried him on the hill above town under an epitaph that called him simply the founder of the town, endeared to all his acquaintances; two sources give his age at death as 61, one as 64.

"You are in it now, sir"

In the village's early years, when Gallipolis still styled itself the metropolis of southeastern Ohio, a traveler from that town stopped his rig near the corner later occupied by Gillilan's store and called out to a Wilkesville pioneer wife, Mrs. Cotton, asking where Wilkesville was. Told she was standing in it, he looked around at the scattered cabins and sniffed that he didn't see it. "Puppies never see till they are nine days old, sir," she replied, and the deflated city gentleman drove on. The exchange, still remembered a generation later by the village's own historian, captured the pride small Ohio river-valley towns took in outlasting the condescension of their bigger neighbors.

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

Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Leading Creek Conservancy District100% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 1 of 2 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.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-08-25
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-09-05

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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