York Township, Morgan County

How York Township, Morgan County began

York Township, in the far northwestern corner of Morgan County, was organized in 1819 but first settled nearly a decade earlier, in 1810, when brothers Levi and Reuben Deaver arrived from Maryland. Levi Deaver laid out the township's only village, first called New Market and later Deavertown, in 1815, and it grew into a small trading center with stores, taverns, a tannery, a hat shop and mills on Jonathan Creek. German-descended families named Longstreth, Pletcher, Weller and Stoneburner filled out the township through the 1810s, building Lutheran, Disciple, United Brethren and Catholic congregations. It remains an unincorporated farming township today.

Settled 1810, platted 1815 (Deavertown, as New Market), by Levi and Reuben Deaver.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted records why York Township took its name (a common township name across Ohio, likely echoing York County, Pennsylvania or York, England, as with many townships settled by Pennsylvania-origin families). Deavertown, the township's village, was named for founder Levi Deaver, one of the two brothers who first settled the area; it was originally called New Market.

Before the town

The 1886 county history notes only that 'rumors of the hostility of the Indians' shaped the caution of early settlers, without naming a nation, village or specific event in York Township. No mound, trail or treaty site specific to the township was found in the sources checked. The township lies within the Ohio Company purchase and the 1795 Treaty of Greenville cession; Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware) and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) people used the wider Muskingum valley before removal, but no site-specific record for York Township was located.

Timeline

1. 1810 — Levi and Reuben Deaver arrive from Maryland as the township's first white settlers.
2. 1812 — A United Brethren in Christ congregation is established in the township.
3. 1815 — Levi Deaver lays out the village of New Market, priced at five dollars a lot (later renamed Deavertown).
4. 1819 — York Township is formally organized; the first election is held July 24 at John Stoneburner's house, with thirty votes cast.
5. 1820 — An Evangelical Lutheran congregation is organized in the township.
6. 1828 — A post office opens at Deavertown; it would remain in operation for 129 years, closing in 1957.
7. 1831 — A Disciples of Christ church is organized in the township.

Stories

The five-dollar town

When Levi Deaver laid out New Market in 1815, five years after he and his brother Reuben had built the township's first double log cabin, he set his lot prices at five dollars apiece — and gave some away free to buyers who would build on them right away. The village, soon renamed for its founder, grew a general store, a tavern, a tannery and even a hat-manufacturing shop within its first years, an unusually varied little economy for a township that otherwise stayed agricultural. A post office opened there in 1828 and ran without interruption for 129 years, closing only in 1957 — a long institutional life for a village that never grew past a crossroads.

A patchwork of churches on Pennsylvania and Maryland roots

York Township's early population was a deliberate transplant of Mid-Atlantic communities: the Longstreths came from Pennsylvania, the Pletchers from Virginia, and German-descended families filled out the rest. Bartholomew Longstreth, one of the Pennsylvania Longstreths, built a mill on Jonathan Creek and later put up what the 1886 county history calls 'the second Catholic church erected in this section of Ohio' — a striking detail for a rural Appalachian-foothills township, since Catholic congregations were rare this far from the river towns. Between 1812 and 1831 the township organized United Brethren, Lutheran, Disciple and Catholic congregations in succession, a denominational variety that mirrored the mixed origins of its settlers more closely than most of its neighboring townships.

Photographs

Local history sources: ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Six wells (4 MGD combined) in a sand-and-gravel aquifer in the Hocking River Buried Valley aquifer system, Dover Township, Athens County (2025 CCR). Ohio EPA's May 2012 source water assessment rates the source highly susceptible to contamination (thin clay cover, aquifer less than 20 ft deep). The water here

• Crooksville87% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Mcconnelsville Village7% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.2% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-mainesville2% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Morgan Meigsville - Sr 3761% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Malta Village1% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Morgan Meigsville Rural0% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Shale and injection wells (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

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