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OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS

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ADAMS COUNTY, OHIO
HISTORY & GENEALOGY
 


 


Source: 
History of Adams County, Ohio
from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time
by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers
West Union, Ohio
Published by E. B. Stivers
1900

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,

Page 438 -
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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