Licking Township

 There is no existing record of the exact date of the formation of Licking Township. According to The Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Muskingum County (published by Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1892), the township "was organized before 1806 from the Virginia military land."  Many of the earliest settlers, like Enos Devore and his father John, were Virginians. The above history says the Devores were the first known settlers in what would become Licking Township, arriving in 1801. Among the early settlers were Virginian Quakers, such as the Claypool family. The township was named for the river that runs through it.

A stage coach stop in Irville

If the township's approximate founding date is correct, at least seven years of township records documenting elected officers, jurors, justices of the peace, tax records, etc. have been lost. The earliest known township document is a portion of a tax book dated June 3, 1813. We have to assume that leadership in the township's early years was assumed by large landowners and business operators.

Licking Township's two main "population centers" were the villages  of Irville, platted in 1814, and Nashport, platted in 1827 to be a "port" along the newly opened Ohio Canal. Pleasant Valley, a third population center, was located on the opposite side of the Licking River from Irville and Nashport. With the founding of Irville came the township's first schoolhouse, and a Presbyterian church which was first frame building in the township.  A stagecoach route connecting Columbus and Zanesville ran through the area, and a couple of taverns served tired and thirsty travelers, as well as the locals.

In the 1960s, the construction of Dillon Dam erased Irville, Nashport, and Pleasant Valley, as well as several smaller township communities, off the map. Families were displaced and homes and stores were torn down. Bodies were exhumed from cemeteries and reinterred elsewhere. Some buildings from the original villages were moved to "New" Nashport, the township's only current-day population center. 

A detailed history of the three lost population centers, can be found in Before Dillon: Memories of the Lost Villages of Nashport, Irville, and Pleasant Valley by Rose Ellen Jenkins and Mari McLean. The book is available for purchase at the MCCOGS Market Place http://mccogs.org/sales.html