Jefferson and Cass Townships

                      Jefferson Township

The section of Muskingum County now known as Jefferson and Cass Townships was originally home to people of the Shawnee Nation. (The village of Dresden in Jefferson Township would later be founded on the remains of the Shawnee village of Wakatomika.) A military campaign  known as "Lord Dunmore's War" began to displace the native people from the area in 1774; "Mad Anthony" Wayne's victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 completed the forced removal of native peoples from the Ohio Territory, opening the territory to white settlement. The first known white settlers in Jefferson--and Cass--Townships were the Priests from Virginia, James Wilcox, James and Phineas Sprague and Isaac Cordray. Major Jonathan Cass, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, came in 1801 and bought up 4,000 acres along the Muskingum River. Cass hoped his settlement would become the county's seat, but it lost out to the older settlement of Zanesville.

                Cass Township

Jefferson Township was was officially organized in April 1805, when the first election of township officers was held at the home of Henry Northrup. In 1817, the town of Dresden was established by Philadelphians whose families had emigrated from Dresden, Germany. 1833, the area had one church, two flour mills, three sawmills, and six physicians. 

Undoubtedly hoping to grow the Dresden area, Jefferson Township held a special election in 1852 to issue $100,000 (about $360,000 today) in bonds to the Steubenville & Indiana Railway to construct a rail-line through the village. A literal "town and country" argument ensued between the township's farmers, who didn't want assume the tax liability for the bonds,  and the residents of Dresden who did. On September 6, 1853, the disagreement led to the division of Jefferson into two townships, Jefferson (half of which is the village of Dresden) and Cass. The farmers of newly formed Cass Township expected the division would allow them to avoid the taxation resulting from the bonds purchase. It didn't. And to add insult to Jefferson's injury, the railway line ended up being situated one and a half miles north of Dresden, so its residents never saw the hoped-for return on their investment. 

Today, Cass township remains almost completely rural with a population in 2020 of 1,811 people. Its only population areas are a small portion of the village of Dresden, and two unincorporated communities, Adams Mills and Trinway. The tiny township of Jefferson has a population of 1,974, with the majority (1,654) living in Dresden.