Zanesfield

How Zanesfield began

Zanesfield is the smallest incorporated village in Logan County, sitting in south-central Jefferson Township. It grew from Zane's Town, a settlement Isaac Zane and his Wyandot wife Myeerah built on ground her father Chief Tarhe had given them in the 1770s-80s, and it stands almost on top of Wapatomica, the town that served as the Shawnee Nation's political capital before it was burned in 1786. Ebenezer Zane and Alexander Long formally platted the village in 1819, renaming it for Isaac. Its population peaked at 328 in 1860 and stood at 194 at the 2020 census.

Settled c. 1776-1779 (Zane's Town), platted 1819, incorporated 1819, by Ebenezer Zane and Alexander Long.

Where the name comes from

The village is named for Isaac Zane (1753-1816), youngest brother of Ebenezer Zane the elder, founder of Zane's Trace and namesake of Zanesville. Isaac was captured by Wyandot warriors in 1762 at age nine, was adopted and raised among the Wyandot for seventeen years, and around 1777 married Myeerah ('White Crane'), daughter of principal chief Tarhe. Tarhe gave the couple his own village site on the Mad River, which became known as Zane's Town; when Ebenezer Zane and Alexander Long platted the site in 1819 they renamed it Zanesfield in his honor.

Before the town

Zanesfield sits on ground with two distinct layers of Native American history. First, it was Zane's Town, the Wyandot village that Chief Tarhe of the Porcupine clan gave to his son-in-law Isaac Zane, an adopted Wyandot captive, and Zane's wife Myeerah around 1776-1779; Tarhe himself later moved north to Solomon's Town near Huntsville. Second, and separately, Wapatomica stood just below present Zanesfield: it was the political capital of the Shawnee Nation in the 1770s and 1780s, the site of intertribal councils, and a British-allied war base during the Revolution with a fort erected there in 1782. Both Zane's Town and Wapatomica were destroyed in the same October 1786 campaign that burned Mackachack in neighboring Monroe Township: Benjamin Logan's Kentucky militia, in retaliation for Shawnee raids on Kentucky settlements, swept through the Upper Mad River towns and burned Wapatomica along with Mackachack and six other villages. Isaac Zane and Myeerah rebuilt at the same site afterward and lived there the rest of their lives, Isaac Zane continuing to act as a go-between for the Wyandot and the Americans. No mounds or earthworks specific to the village are recorded in the sources consulted.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee.

• Zane's Town (village) — site of present Zanesfield, Jefferson Township, c. 1776-1786, destroyed October 1786, rebuilt after (loganhistory.org)
• Wapatomica (village) — just below (south of) present Zanesfield, Jefferson Township, 1770s-1786, capital of the Shawnee Nation until destroyed October 1786 (loganhistory.org)

Timeline

1. 1762 — Nine-year-old Isaac Zane was captured by Wyandot warriors in what is now West Virginia and adopted into the tribe, chiefly by Tarhe.
2. c. 1777 — Isaac Zane married Myeerah, Chief Tarhe's daughter, in an alliance that was as much political as marital, tying the Wyandot to Zane's family.
3. 1782 — A fort was erected at Wapatomica, just below present Zanesfield, as a British-allied Wyandot/Shawnee war base during the Revolutionary War.
4. October 1786 — General Benjamin Logan's Kentucky militia destroyed Wapatomica and Zane's Town along with Mackachack and six other Upper Mad River towns, in retaliation for Shawnee raids on Kentucky.
5. c. 1795 — Isaac Zane purchased 1,800 acres around the future village site from the federal government.
6. 1802 — Congress granted Zane three additional tracts totaling 1,920 acres in Champaign County in compensation for his service as a treaty guide.
7. 1803 — Isaac Zane was elected one of the first trustees of Jefferson Township.
8. 1805 — Martin Marmon, a Quaker from North Carolina by way of Kentucky, arrived with his brothers to settle Jefferson Township, the first white settlers there after Isaac Zane.
9. 1811 — Isaac Zane built the first residence on the site of present-day Zanesfield.
10. 1816 — Myeerah died in February; Isaac Zane died eight months later that year.
11. 1819 — Ebenezer Zane and Alexander Long formally platted the village and renamed it Zanesfield.
12. c. 1820 — Quaker settler Martin Marmon built the brick Quaker-plan house on County Road 153 near Zanesfield that still stands as the best-preserved Quaker house in the region.
13. c. 1815 — Frontiersman Simon Kenton, who had survived captivity and gauntlet runs through this same country in 1778, bought land near Zanesfield and settled there.
14. 1848 — Earl Sloan, later Zanesfield's most famous son, was born to Andrew and Susan Sloan; at 23 he took his father's horse-liniment formula west and built a marketing fortune, and Ohio's governor visited Zanesfield in 1913 to honor him.
15. 1860 — Zanesfield's population peaked at 328 residents.
16. 1986 — The Martin Marmon House, on County Road 153 in Jefferson Township near Zanesfield, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
17. 2019 — Zanesfield marked its 200th anniversary as a platted village.

Stories

A Wyandot captive founds the smallest village in the county

Isaac Zane was nine years old when Wyandot warriors captured him near his family's home in what is now West Virginia in 1762. Rather than being ransomed quickly, he was adopted and grew up among the Wyandot for seventeen years, chiefly under the principal chief Tarhe, and by adulthood was serving the tribe as an interpreter in treaty negotiations. Around 1777 he married Tarhe's daughter Myeerah, known to settlers as White Crane; the marriage bound the Zane family to the Wyandot leadership as much as it bound two people to each other, and Tarhe gave the couple his own village site on the Mad River, called Zane's Town. Zane and Myeerah spent the following decades working both sides of the frontier before settling permanently on the site with a house built in 1811. In 1819, three years after both had died within eight months of each other, Ebenezer Zane and surveyor Alexander Long formally platted the settlement and named it Zanesfield in Isaac's honor. It remains, at 194 residents in the 2020 census, the smallest incorporated village in Logan County.

The capital that burned twice over

Just below the ground that became Zanesfield stood Wapatomica, the political capital of the Shawnee Nation through much of the 1770s and 1780s and a site of intertribal councils. During the Revolutionary War it doubled as a British-allied war base, with a fort raised there in 1782. In October 1786, General Benjamin Logan led roughly 800 Kentucky militiamen into Logan County in retaliation for Shawnee raids on Kentucky settlements, and in a single sweep burned Wapatomica along with Zane's Town, Mackachack (in what is now neighboring Monroe Township) and five other Upper Mad River towns. Isaac Zane and Myeerah's settlement was destroyed in the same campaign that destroyed the Shawnee capital beside it, yet the couple rebuilt on the same ground and lived out their lives there, a small illustration of how thoroughly intermarried and entangled the Wyandot, Shawnee and American worlds already were in this one valley by the 1780s.

A Quaker house built to last

Martin Marmon was a Quaker from North Carolina who, with his two brothers, moved his family north from Kentucky in 1805, arriving among the first white settlers in Jefferson Township after Isaac Zane himself. The move was typical of Southern Quakers of the period, who left the slaveholding South in numbers for free-soil Ohio. Marmon went on to serve as Jefferson Township treasurer for twenty-five years, Logan County treasurer for four, and county sheriff for five. Around 1820 he built a two-and-a-half-story brick house on what is now County Road 153, a short distance from Zanesfield, in the plain, functional Quaker-plan style with a stone foundation and a distinctive chimney arrangement; it is considered the best-preserved Quaker house of its kind in the region and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · loganhistory.org · loganhistory.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · spectrumnews1.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

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

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