CHAPTER VI
MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP
p. 437
Manchester was
the name of one of the territorial townships formed at
the organization of Adams County, September, 1797.
It included a part of what is now Tiffin, Oliver, and
Scott; all of Winchester, Wayne and Liberty; and most of
Sprigg Township as now constituted, including the
present township at Manchester. Its northern limit
extended to the Wayne County line north of the site of
the city of Columbus.
In the year 1806, the Board of County Commissioners
reorganized the townships of the county, and Manchester
was subdivided into townships and parts of township
bearing new names, that of Manchester being dropped from
the record.
In 1858 a new township named Manchester was formed from
Sprigg Township including the town of Manchester.
With slight alterations the present village of Manchester
and Manchester Special School District.
Early Settlers.
Under another
chapter in this volume is an account of the first
settlement in Adams County, which was made in what is
now Manchester Township. Nathaniel Massie
and his little band of pioneers, whose names are
recorded in the narrative above mentioned, where the
first settlers. Their cabins were built within the
Stockade which occupied a plot of about three acres, was
cleared by the residents within the Stockade in the
spring of 1791, and the years following down to 1795,
and afforded the grain fields for the little colony.
In the years 1795 and 1796, many families living in
cabins four and five miles back in the woods came to
Manchester to cultivate patches of corn on the island.
A grand-daughter of Michael Roush, the pioneer,
has often related to the writer that her mother, a
daughter of Michael Roush, told her that she and
others of the family used to walk from their home in the
"Dutch Settlement" in Sprigg Township to Manchester
Island to hoe corn the first year they came to Adams
County, which was in 1796. It is said that the
first cabins built in Manchester outside the Stockade,
were those of Nathaniel Massie, Israel Donalson,
Isaac Edgington, Job Denning, Andrew Boyd, Andrew
Ellison, John Ellison, John McGate, John Kyte, Seth
Foster, Joseph Edgington and John Beasley.
These were all in the vicinity of the Stockade; most of
the terrace where the present site of the town is, was
then too swampy for settlement. John
McGate or Megitt," was written in the court
records,
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was the first tavern keeper in Manchester, and
his house was the meeting place for the officials of the
township. (See chapter on Early Taverns and Old
Inns.) In the year 1799 Andrew Boyd opened
the first store in Manchester.
Villages and Postoffices.
Churches.
Lodges.
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Manchester Public Schools
Union School Building,
Manchester
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REMINISCENCES.
The first mill
erected in the county was a little "tub-wheel" built by
Nathaniel Massie on Island Creek about two miles
from Manchester,. Before the completion of this
mill, the settlers at Manchester went to Limestone to
have their grinding done, or used a small hand-mill at
the Stockade. Some of the pioneers pounded their
corn into a coarse meal on a block, sifting the larger
particles out for hominy. The younger members of
the family were kept busy shelling, drying, and
pounding, or sometimes grating on the cob, corn for
mill, as both processes were slow and laborious.
Ellison's Brick "Hoose"
In 1807 John
Ellison built the first brick house in Manchester
down near the river bank where the old St. Charles Hotel
used to stand. It was the wonder and admiration of
all the country round, and Mr. Ellison, recently
from the "Emerald Isle," was so pleased with his new
dwelling that he took his wife, Mary, in a canoe
and paddled over to the Kentucky shore to get the
enchantment that distance lends; and the view was so
satisfactory that he exclaimed: "Mollie, it
looks more like a palace than a hoose!"
The First Steamboat on the Ohio.
The first
steamboat to ply the waters of the Ohio, was the "New
Orleans" built at Pittsburgh, and which came down past
Manchester in December, 1811. The next was the
"Aetna," early in the spring of 1812. Before this
date pirogues and flatboats were "cordelled" on the
water of the Ohio when ascending the stream. It
took four weeks to go by one of these pirogues from
Cincinnati to Pittsburgh. Jacob Myers, who
owned a fleet of four pirogues, advertised in The
Centinel of the Northwest Territory, in 1793,
that he would insure passengers on his boats against
harm from the Indians, as his crafts were armored and
provided with portholes.
Lynching of Old Bill Terry.
On
Saturday morning, November 22, 1856, a negro named
William Terry, committed an outrage on Mrs.
Morrison, of Manchester, whose husband at the time
was absent. Terry was promptly arrested and
lodged in jail at West Union. When Mr. Morrison
returned and learned the fats as to the conduct of the
black fiend, the better citizens of the town decided
that summary punishment out to be inflicted on the
offender, and on Tuesday the 25th, arrangements were
completed to go to West Union to secure Terry to
mete out to him deserved punishment. Citizens to
the number of over one hundred on horseback accompanied
several persons in a wagon to the county seat where
court was in session trying Milligan for the
murder of the Senter family. They broke
down the jail door and secured Terry and returned
to Manchester by 3 o'clock in the afternoon. After
giving the offender a little time to arrange his worldly
affairs, he was taken over to Manchester Island, which
is under the jurisdiction of the State of Kentucky, and
hanged him to a limb of a large sycamore that stood at
the west end near the water's edge next the Ohio shore.
His body was cut down and buried at the foot of the tree
from which he was hanged, but is said the remains were
exhumed by medical students that night.
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