Washington County

Salem was originally a part of Adams, But the following petition was handed in to the Court of Quarter Sessions, part of whose business it was to establish townships:

To the Honorable Court of General Sessions of the Peace for the County of Washington:

Gentlemen: Your petitioners, the inhabitants of Duck Creek, beg your honors to take into consideration the local situation they are in from other settlements, and whereas your honors at your last session in March did at that time form the different settlements into towns, and at the same time put us, the inhabitants of Duck Creek, into an association with the inhabitants of Virgin Bottom, Rainbow, Cattle Creek, and Bear Creek (into one town called by the name of Adams), whose situation is inconvenient for us to associate with as respects a town by reason of the inconvenience of passing the hills and ridges where it is not practicable to make roads to pass from Duck Creek to Muskingum at the same time, our numbers are almost if not quite equal to some of the other towns already laid out by your Honors being in number on Duck Creek thirty-four families and upwards of sixty men capable of bearing arms.

For this and other good motives, your petitioners request your Honors would take the matter into consideration, and make a division in the town of Adams west by a division line between the waters of Duck Creek and Muskingum, and as far south as Shepard's old mills so called, as far as your Honors in theirwisdom shall judge best.

We also would inform that the people on Duck Creek did on the second day of May last, make choice of us, the subscribers, to prefer a petition to your Honors for the above mentioned purposes. Duck Creek. June 3. 1797.

(Signed)

Levi Chapman	James Amlin
John Amlin	Jonathan Amlin
John Amlin, Sr.	Conrad Rightner
Joel Tutlle	Joseph Chapman
John Campbell	Daniel Bradstreet
Jonathan DeLong	Patrick Campbell
Samuel Fulton	Robert Campbell
Samuel Nash	Daniel Campbell
Robert Colewell	Ebenezer Tolman
Seth Tolman	Uriah Wheeler
Benjamin Tolman	Amos Porter
Samuel Amlin	Amos Porter, Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first settler in Salem was probably Amos Porter, who was followed by the Nashes, DeLongs, Tolmans, McCunes, Fultons, Davises. Dains, Perkines and many others, for what is now Salem was comparatively thickly settled in early years. John True kept school in Salem as early as1807.

Elisha Allen erected a sawmill on Duck Creek before 1820 and in that year he built a grist mill at the same spot. These were on the "Lower Ox-Bow." On the "Upper Ox-Bow," S. N. Merriam built steam, saw and grist mills 10 vears later. He also kept one of the first stores open in the township, as did Elisha Allen in his earlier mill. Salem is credited for having one of the earliest temperance societies in the West, if not the earliest. It was organized about 1822 by Ephraim Gould and his brother Dennis, a student at Lane Seminary; a pledge was made and called "teetotal.'' The first postmaster in Salem was Daniel G. Stanley who held office about 1827.

The old Presbyterian Church society was holding meetings by April, 1812. The first session meeting in Salem was in October of that year. Churches were erected in Harrietsville and Bonn. A series of Freewill Baptist services were held as early as 1810. Before 1815 a Methodist Church was organized and a church was built in 1836. A Protestant Methodist Church was erected in 1878. The Mount Ephraim Methodist Church was organized early and buildings erected in 1846 and 1873. The Good Hope Baptist Church was organized in 1835 and two houses of worship have been built—one in 1836 and one in 1851. The Bonn German Methodist Church was organized in 1840. In 1842 a church was erected and replaced in 1871 by a new edifice. Two parsonages have been built, one in 1852 and another in 1874. The Disciple Church at Bonn was organized about 1852; another in Warner was started in 1872. The Universalis! Church in Salem was organized in December, 1859, and a church building was dedicated in 1861. A German Lutheran Church was organized about the same time and a building erected. The Corinth Church was organized in 1863 and in 187O a building was procured. The Baptist Church of Lower Salem was organized in 1877. A building was erected in 1880-81.

Salem village was laid out in 1850 at the end of a plank road from Marietta and the toll house at the end of the road was the first building in the village.

Warner, a station on the C. & M. R. R. was laid out by P. and E. Boye in 1873 and named in honor of Gen. A. J. Warner of Marietta. Bonn, named by the Germans who early came here from the city of the Rhine, was laid out about 1835. The first store was opened here by Rufus Payne about the same year.

Source: History of Marietta and Washington County, by Martin R. Andrews, MA, 1902, Transcribed by C. Anthony