Windsor Township, Morgan County

How Windsor Township, Morgan County began

Windsor Township, in the southeastern corner of Morgan County along the Muskingum River, is the largest township in the county at 43.6 square miles and includes the village of Stockport. It lies wholly within the Ohio Company purchase and the Donation Tract, and was the earliest settled part of Morgan County. The unfinished Big Bottom blockhouse of a settlement of squatters was destroyed on January 2, 1791 with the loss of a dozen or more settlers; permanent settlement began about 1795-96 under families from New England, who planted the county's first orchards and floated apples to Zanesville in canoes. Windsor was organized in the summer of 1819, was enlarged in 1845 by part of Roxbury Township from Washington County, and by 1886 farmed river bottoms, fruit and salt. Stockport was laid out in 1834 and had a post office by 1838. The 2020 census recorded 1,414 residents (1,897 including Stockport village).

Settled 1790 (Big Bottom, destroyed 1791); permanent settlement 1795-96, by settlers at Big Bottom (1790); permanent settlers included Nicholas Coburn, Simeon Evans, George Corner (all about 1796) and Jonathan Baldwin (c. 1800); township organized summer 1819.

Where the name comes from

Not established in the sources checked; not stated in the township's Wikipedia article or the 1886 county history excerpts reviewed.

Before the town

The Big Bottom massacre, January 2, 1791, took place on the Muskingum River bottomland east of present-day Stockport, within Windsor Township. A war party of Lenape (Delaware) and Wyandot warriors attacked an unfinished, unguarded blockhouse built by about thirty-six settlers who had moved north from the Ohio Company's settlement at Marietta to squat on fertile bottomland the Company did not hold title to; between twelve and fourteen people were killed (accounts vary; the Ohio Historical Society counts nine men, a woman and two children). The attack opened four years of frontier warfare in the Ohio Country that did not end until the Treaty of Greenville in August 1795. The 1886 county history records that the Lenape occupied the Muskingum and Tuscarawas valleys generally before white settlement; no specific village, trail or mound site within Windsor Township beyond the massacre location itself was found in the sources checked.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot.

• Big Bottom massacre site (battle) — east of Stockport, Windsor Township, on the Muskingum River bottomland, January 2, 1791 (en.wikipedia.org)

Timeline

1. 1790 — Settlers drawn by the Ohio Company's offer of donation lands move up the Muskingum from Marietta and build the Big Bottom blockhouse, the first settlement in what becomes Morgan County; the logs are green beech and sugar maple.
2. 1791 — On January 2, Lenape and Wyandot warriors attack the unfinished blockhouse of a squatters' settlement at Big Bottom on the Muskingum River, killing a dozen or more settlers (accounts give 12 to 14); three are captured, four escape, and the event opens years of frontier warfare in the Muskingum valley.
3. 1792 — Congress authorizes grants of 100 acres to male settlers aged 18 or older in the 100,000-acre Donation Tract, a buffer zone for the Ohio Company settlements.
4. 1795 — The Treaty of Greenville follows Wayne's victory; the 1886 county history dates the first permanent white settlement of Windsor Township to 1795-96, after the peace.
5. 1796 — Nicholas Coburn moves from Waterford to northeastern Windsor, where he plants one of the first two orchards in the county; Simeon Evans and George Corner also settle about this year.
6. c. 1800 — Jonathan Baldwin of Connecticut clears land and plants an orchard on the upper end of the Blake farm; apples are canoed to Zanesville and bring high prices.
7. c. 1815 — Luke Emerson and Samuel White have the mill at Luke Chute in operation, the principal mill of the southeast part of the county, on a dam from the island to the shore that gave the 'chute' its name.
8. 1818-01-11 — Elder William Davis organizes the Windsor Baptist Church, first known as the First Baptist Church of Roxbury; its brick meetinghouse (about $1,000) is built in 1838.
9. 1819 — Windsor Township is organized in the summer; Adelphi Webster, an early schoolteacher, is chosen first justice of the peace.
10. 1822 — Joel Sherman is accidentally shot at a whisky-fueled wolf hunt near the head of Mill Run and dies at John Henery's house; John White's dam and mill at Big Ludlow, built this year, is later swept away by high water in 1840.
11. 1834 — Nathan Sidwell lays out Stockport on his land, a very small plat running from the river back to Washington Street.
12. 1838 — Samuel, William and George Beswick open the first store in Stockport; a post office is established soon after with Samuel Beswick as postmaster.
13. 1838 — The Stockport post office is established.
14. 1843 — James A. McConnel lays out Roxbury, a shipping point on the river that has a store and warehouse by 1886.
15. 1845 — Part of Roxbury Township, formerly in Washington County, is added to Morgan County and incorporated into Windsor Township.
16. 1849 — William McCaslin builds the Stockport flouring mill (soon sold to Seaman & Thomas), the present mill in 1886.
17. 1861 — The Carbon Oil Refinery begins operating at Stockport under Captain Stewart in 1861; it soon passes to a joint stock company and is later sold to the Standard Oil Company.
18. 1905 — Obadiah Brokaw, who identified the site of the blockhouse, erects a twelve-foot marble obelisk at Big Bottom and transfers it to the Ohio Historical Society.
19. 1970 — The Big Bottom Massacre Site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (#70000512).
20. 2020 — The census counts 1,414 residents in the township (1,897 with Stockport village).

Stories

An unfinished blockhouse

In late 1790 about thirty-six settlers, drawn by the Ohio Company's offer of donation lands, moved upriver from Marietta to squat on the level bottomland they called Big Bottom, on the east side of the Muskingum. Col. William Stacy had warned the group in late December by skating up the frozen Muskingum that the danger from the Native nations was real, but the settlers' blockhouse was still unfinished on the night of January 2, 1791. A war party of Lenape and Wyandot warriors, trying to drive the newcomers off land they considered theirs, stormed it, killing about a dozen men, women and children. John Stacy was among the dead and his brother Philemon was taken prisoner. The Northwest Indian War ran on until Fallen Timbers in 1794. For a time the exact location of the blockhouse was a matter of conjecture; by 1886 Obadiah Brokaw's efforts had fixed the spot in a field north of his house, marked by a stone slab, where traces of the logs and the remains of the dead were found, and in 1905 he raised a marble obelisk, now in the three-acre Big Bottom memorial park.

Apples by canoe

The first orchards of Morgan County were planted in Windsor Township around 1800 by Yankee settlers: Jonathan Baldwin of Connecticut on the upper end of what became the Blake farm, and Nicholas Coburn, who had come to Marietta in 1788 and settled on his northeastern Windsor farm in 1796. Several of Baldwin's apple trees and one pear tree still bore in 1886. The county history credits New Englanders with bringing the apple, peach, pear and cherry to the county. Apples were a cash crop for the pioneers, who canoed them to Zanesville and sold them for high prices; it took skill to take a heavily loaded canoe through the ripples. Visitors were offered russets or greenings with cider warmed by plunging a red-hot poker into the mug and flavored with red pepper and ginger.

The teacher who sang runaways to Canada

Rial Cheadle taught school in Windsor Township in its early years and was 'a noted character in the days of the underground railroad,' according to the 1886 county history: he 'was instrumental in assisting many a poor negro to Canada and freedom.' The history also describes him as a 'peripatetic rhymster and musician' who was made welcome wherever he went and whose songs were attentively heard. Other early teachers were Elder William Davis, Samuel M. Dyke, William Patterson, H. P. Dearborn and Timothy Eastman, paid about fifty cents a week for women teachers and six dollars a month for men in the subscription-school days. The history names no stations or other conductors.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Morgan County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Stockport Village72% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Mcconnelsville Village10% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Malta Village6% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - West Malta4% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Waterford Water/sewer Association3% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Chesterhill Village2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - Sr 3761% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Beverly Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Little Hocking Water Association, Inc.1% of residentsOhio River Valley Aquifer (own wells, Porterfield wellfield)
• Tri-county Rural W and S District0% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Morgan Meigsville Rural0% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Public schools (1)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (2)

Money issues on the ballot since 2017: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

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Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-05-08

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Windsor Township, Morgan County, Morgan County and its school district:

• Windsor Township: Renews a 1-mill property tax levy for the fire protection of Windsor Township for 5 years, beginning in 2027.

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