Oxford Township

Oxford Township

Oxford Township was organized in 1810, but there is no record until 1813. The following is a verbatim copy of the first entry: - "At a township meatin held on the 5th of April, 1813, in Oxford township, guernsey county, state of Ohio, at the house of David Whenys, for the purpose of Election the several township officers as follows; Namely Justises of the peas 2, Thomas Hen dci-son, John Kennin; clerk, Samuel Dillon; Trustees, Michael King, William Dillon, Enoch Marsh; supervisors, Enoch Marsh, Henry Cleary, Elijah Bell, William Scroggan, James McCoy; fence Viewers, John and long Tom Henderson; Overseers of the poor, Jacob Gitshell, William Henderson; Treasurer, David Wherry.

" The Supervisors, Trustees, Clerk, Treasurer, fence Viewers and Overseers of the poor Met on the 10th day of april and were severely sworn into there Respective offices a Cording to law.

When Benjamin Borton emigrated to this township from New Jersey in 1804 and settled on the line of the old Wheeling Road, leading from Wheeling to Zanesville, said road having previously been marked out by Colonel Zane, he noticed that pennyroyal, for which this township is particularly noted, being of a spontaneous growth, soon made its appearance upon the newly cleared lands. Mr. Borton, having learned (he art of distilling it in New Jersey, commenced the art here,and his sons, grandsons and great-grandsons have kept it up ever since.

Middletown was laid out in 1827 by Benjamin Masters, and was so named because it was midway between Wheeling and Zanesville. Benjamin Masters as early as 1805 built a horse-miU near where Middletown now stands, and in 1810 built a watermill. About the same time salt-works were erected at Seneca. When Oxford Township was organized there were not enough men in it to fill the offices. It was soon settled b}- soldiers of the War of 1812. The Second Regiment of the War of 1812 was made up in this region, the Second Regiment in the War of 1846 was filled from here, and the Second Regiment in the last war had many from this neighborhood.

Fairview was laid out in 1814. James Gilliland was the original proprietor. In 1845 it was incorporated. The first schoolhouse in the township was built on section 3, in 1814.

John Kinnon and family, 1806; Benjamin GifTee, Sr., 1816; William Morton, Sr.. 1816; William Smith and Joseph M. Morrill, 1818; Joseph Ferrell, 1815; Edward Morton, 1821; Andrew Scott, 1829; Moses Morton, 1825; Benjamin Penn, 1829; William Henderson. Sr., 1806; David Wherry, 1801 (the first settler in the township); Benjamin Borton and Benjamin Masters, 1804; Christian Wine, Ezekiel Vance, Thomas B. Kirkpatrick, John Burnett, Jacob Getchell, John Cranston, William Cochran, Samuel Marlow, James Gilliland, William Orr, James Hall, .John Abies and Philip Rosemond.

Source changes here: from History of Guernsey County, Ohio, by Sarchet, Cyrus P. B. (Cyrus Parkinson Beatty), published 1911; 1,870 words in this source stream.

Oxford Township

Oxford is on the eastern border of Guernsey county, midway north and south. It is five miles from north to south and six from east to west, containing about thirty sections of excellent land. Belmont county is to the east, Millwood township on the south, Wills and Madison on the west and Londonderry township on the north. Fairview, an historic village, is the only place of much importance within the township. Here begins the first section of the old National pike in Guernsey county. It traverses the township through its central portion, passing through six sections of the township, en route to Cambridge. It was one of the original townships in the county and an account is given of its early settlement, etc., by a citizen, Fred L. Rosmond, whose sketch of the township is as follows:

"At the organization of Guernsey county in April, 1810, Oxford was one of the five townships into which the county was originally divided and, of course, was much larger than it now is. As it lay against Belmont county on the east, with only that one county intervening between it and the Ohio river, and as the 'Zane Trace' traversed it from east to west, it profited by the early immigration from the East, which had no other equally good thoroughfare.

"Oxford township was also on the eastern border of the United States military bounty lands, and at the western border of the 'Seven Ranges.' The latter were the first government lands surveyed for sale, and were also the first public lands to which the rectangular system, affording sections one mile square, was applied. The lands in the 'Seven Ranges' were on the market from 1787 onward at the fixed price of two dollars per acre. The sale of them became slow, partially because the price was comparatively high. Lands in the Western Reserve were offered by Connecticut at fifty cents per acre. Lands in the Symmes Purchase in southwestern Ohio were offered at sixty-seven cents per acre. Moreover When, in 1796, the survey of the military bounty lands was authorized, and these were put on the market by those who earned or acquired bounty certificates, the competition with the land in the 'Seven Ranges' became sharper, and one reason appears why immi-

"The Zane Trace was made under contract with the federal government, by Ebenezer Zane, for whom Zanesville is named. It extended from opposite Wheeling to what was then known as Limestone, a point on the Ohio river nearly opposite Maysville, Kentucky. At the outset the chief towns along it were Cambridge, Zanesville, Lancaster and Chillicothe. It was neither a highway, nor what would now be considered a road. The makers of it contented themselves with cutting down the timber and clearing away some of the undergrowth, so that the route would be passable for horsemen ; and this seems to have been all that was expected of them. There was no ferry west from Wheeling until the crossing of Wills creek, where Cambridge now stands, was reached. In a general way Zane followed an Indian trail. The route was an important one, however, because it connected Pennsylvania and the Ohio river at Wheeling with the West and Southwest, and, with the so-called Wilderness Trail, connecting Kentucky with Virginia, formed the two great arteries of communication for that day between the East and the West across the Alteghanies.

"The township organization was effected April 23, 1810. It is a tradition that there were then not enough men in the township, large as it was, to fill the offices. As the number of offices at that time seems to have been nineteen, this is likely a mistake. Perhaps it may be that there were then not enough voters to fill the offices, but there were more than nineteen male persons in that region. Later on the population was added to chiefly by settlers who had served in the war of 181 2, and in the early years the Irish and Scotch-Irish largely preponderated. A roster of the names of the early residents shows this.

"The first settlement in Oxford township was at Fletcher, where the Fletcher Methodist Episcopal church now is. Nothing except this perpetuation of that name, and some faint inscriptions on the stones in the buryingground hard by, remain to testify to its existence. It was on the Zane Trace. Philip Rosemond settled here on a quarter section of land which he bought early in April, 1810, from Noah Linsley for five hundred dollars. To this he added, in 1819, another quarter section which he bought from John Heskett in January. 1819. He kept here for years a tavern, and is said to have been the first postmaster, and to have kept the first postoffice between Wheeling and Zanesville. Nearby were the Wherrys. Ableses, Kennons, Mortons and Plattenburgs.

"In March, 1814, Fairview was laid out by Hugh Gilliland, containing thirty lots, each one-fourth of an acre in area, fronting on the two sides of what is now the National road or Fair street. In December, 1825, Philip Rosemond, John Gibson and John Davenport, joint proprietors, platted an addition containing eleven lots, and in October, 1827, they platted a second addition containing nineteen lots, thus doubling the town in area. The deed records indicate that the best of these lots usually sold for sixty-five dollars.

"By 1828 the National road had been completed through Guernsey county, and from this time onward Fairview greatly prospered for many years, until that great highway was superseded, in a great measure, by the railroad which passed south of it through Barnesville. It was a division point in the stage traffic, did a large merchandising business, possessed several taverns, and, along in the fifties, when what has been described as the "county-seat fever" existed, had an ambition to become the county seat of a new county which was to be called Cumberland and should be made up of the eastern part of Guernsey and the western part of Belmont.

"The township as it now lies is hilly, but fertile, much of the land being strong limestone soil, and the whole being well watered. The great part of the township is underlaid with coal, and some shallow seams are worked for domestic use, though no commercial mine has been attempted, partially for lack of railroad transportation.

"The citizenship of the township has, as a rule, ever been of high order. From the beginning churches and schools have been provided and maintained. Before the public school system was established, about 1825, private, or 'select' schools, where pupils paid for their teaching, were maintained. As early as 1818 there was a stone church about where Fletcher church now is, and there was one at Fairview as early as 1820. These were Reformed Presbyterian churches, but in 1832 the Methodist Episcopal society established itself at Fletcher. A public school was established in the southeastern part of the township in 1832, and in 1839 another was located just southwest of Fairview. The school houses of that day were log cabins, with puncheon floors, slab seats and unglazed windows. At St. Clairsville was an academy, to which children were sent from Oxford township for a better education than the public schools afforded.

"The earliest tax duplicates for this township cannot be found among the public records. In 1834 there were in the entire township, large as it then was (according to the tax duplicates), only ten houses that were separately valued, together with four grist mills valued at four hundred and seventy dollars, six saw mills at five hundred dollars, three distilleries at one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and three tanneries at two hundred and eighty-five dollars.

"In August, 1880, what was called the Pennyroyal Reunion was held close to Fairview, and it was established as an annual event and has been kept up. In the beginning old men still living had been among the pioneers and narrated from their own experience incidents of that early time; but no concerted effort to perpetuate their recollections as a whole was made. The region yields the pennyroyal plant in abundance, and for many years the oil has been distilled in domestic stills, hence the name Pennyroyaldom for Oxford township."

This village is on the east line of Guernsey county, on the southwest quarter of section 2, township 10, range 7, platted by Hugh Gilliland, March 24, 18 1 4. It is the first station point on the famous National pike, as it enters Guernsey county from the east. Many of the old time men, includillustrious politicians, have stopped over night or for their meals at this place in the long-ago years. It has been a postoffice point ever since staging was known in the county. Thirty-five years ago and more the office was kept directly opposite from where it is now kept. It was then in the Gilbreth hotel, on Main street. The office now has an annual receipt of about four hundred and twenty-five dollars. The mail is received here twice a day each way, by stage. Among the latter year postmasters may be named Thomas Bond, Dr. James Holt. W. B. Benson, D. E. Morris, E. E. Bond.

The 1910 municipal officers are: Mayor, O. G. Sheppard; clerk, W. L. Anderson ; treasurer, W. L. Gleaves ; marshal, G. A. Kupfer. The council is made up of these gentlemen : T. K. Peck, T. B. Bratton, John I. Anderson. W. K. Byrd, Fred Johnson and W. H. Griffin.

The city hall, on Main street, has been in use many years. The only protection against the ravages of the fire-fiend is the volunteer companv and a hand-pump service given by the citizens.

Business Interests

The commercial interests of Fairview in 1910 were as follows: The J. W. Frost Cigar Company, that has been in existence about twenty years, and which consumes much of the native tobacco which is produced in quite large quantities in the immediate vicinity. The cigar making industry was first started here by Saltsgaver & Frost.

The coal mining interests are quite extensive and are named in another chapter with other mines in Guernsey county. Among the most important mines in this section are the Brown, Riggle. Loy, Cowgill and Carnes mines.

There is also a good creamery, belonging to the United Dairy Company. Other interests are the general stores of E. E. Bond and W. L. Gleaves ; the groceries of Dillion and Mrs. Benson; Morton Sisters, millinery; livery bams by Doctor Arnold and Charles Ault; T. B. Bratton, stock dealer, and a meat market conducted by J. W. Ault.

Middleton, on the National pike, in Oxford township, was platted on the north half of section 31, township 10. range 7, September 1, 1827, by Benjamin Masters. It has never been a place of much significance, a mere post trading place on the pike, formerly having mail facilities. It now has two general stores, J. W. Long and I. Y. Davis, and one excellent hotel.

Benjamin Masters, just spoken of, had eighteen children. He erected a mill of the horse type and the date of its construction was 1805, near where Middleton now stands. In 1810 he built a water mill.