deanr@ohio.edu
Mudsock was an early pioneer village in Ames township, Athens County, Ohio, that preceded Amesville, the current seat of the township. Amesville was established in 1839. Mudsock is one of the oldest, later abandoned, villages settled by the Ohio Company in the Northwest Territory. It originated from the lower settlement of Ames township, one of the two earliest Ames 'communities'. It was probably later reffered to as "Ames Town" or "Amestown" in early accounts.
This particular village named Mudsock is only one of many known to have existed throughout Ohio and surrounding states. The original name was probably 'mud sock'. The second word -sock - derived from an Old Norse word, "sokkva', meaning 'to cause to sink'. The 'handed-down' explanation of the term provided the writer by recent residents of several 'Mudsock/Mudsoc' villages and which appears in several newspaper accounts cites characteristic village streets that were so muddy at times as to be nearly impassable. Randy McNutt wrote an article for Ohio Magazine in 1964 titled Mudsock, We Hardly Knew You - Ohio's Essential Podunk. You can download a copy here. (click here)
In recent years Dennis E. Powell of the Athen News became a weekly contributer via his column he titled The View from Mudsock Heights, after discovering my Mudsock Villiage description while researching Amesville prior to purchasing property and moving there.
Mudsock was located approximately .5 mile west of Amesville along the banks of Federal Creek. It was located along the earliest mail route that ran from Zanesville to Cincinnati through Marietta, Ames Town, Athens, and Chillicothe. The community began on the farm of Captain Silas Dean, who first appeared in the records of Washington County when he purchased land in 1796 and later in a 1800 census of Middletown, an early name for Athens.
The village would have been on either side of current State Route 550 just west of the Amesville Cemetery, whose current name on U.S. Geological Survey Map of Amesville remains Mudsock Cemetery. In the picture above a building in current Amesville is visible as the white speck in the distance beyond the left bend in the road. The cemetery is on the high ground in the trees beyond the telephone pole on the left.
It is really unclear as to when
the name Mudsock [or Mud Sock] was used in reference this
early village. It seems to have evolved in an area called the 'lower
settlement'. As early as 1789, members of the Ohio Company petitioned
the young U.S. Congress to name a township in the new territory in
honor of Fisher
Ames, a prominent
legislature and orator who served for both of George
Washington's terms and was extremely influential in gaining approval
for the sale of Ohio lands to the Ohio Company. It is said that Ames
is the only township in Ohio officially named by an act of Congress.
Early historical accounts refer to an Ames Town that existed in the
township in the early 1800s prior to Amesville. Descriptions of
the earliest buildings and activities attributed to Ames Town
and Mudsock have much in common. There is no official document that
would indicate that Mudsock was ever the official name of this area.
The
earliest residents of Ames township were the families of Lt. George
Ewing, Capt. Benjamin Brown, and Ephriam
Cutler. The first
two were revolutionary war officers awarded
'donation
tracts' near the
Muskingum River; the latter was the son of Manasseh
Cutler, an
organizer, and important leader and shareholder/speculator of the
Ohio Company and Associates. These three arrived in Ohio's first
settlement at Marietta or its second outpost at Waterford twenty
miles upstream on the Muskingum River between 1793-1797. When
the native American threat was quelled in Ohio by the Greenville
Treaty in 1795, these pioneer families came through the wilderness to
Ames and built log homes approximately 3 miles north of current
Amesville on either side of current State Route 329. These earliest
families were soon joined by others in the same area, later called
the upper settlement. Others arriving later in Ames township
settled in what was to b called the lower settlement west of current
Amesville along the mail route running between Athens and Marietta -
current Route 550. This was the area where Mudsock would evolve.
Early accounts tell of a log school here, the second in the township,
built in 1804 on Silas Dean's farm near the entrance of the current
Mudsock Cemetery. The first brick building in Ames township was built
in this area by a John Brown. A stage coach station and public
house was operated here by Brown. It is said that the Mudsock/
Amesville Cemetery was originally the Brown's family cemetery - that
John's first wife, Polly, was the first to be buried there in
1810.
The current village of Amesville was named by William Graham in 1838 to honor Fisher Ames (Athens Bicentennial Commission). The village laid out in blocks in 1839 by local resident Hiram Cable approximately half a mile east of Mudsock along the east bank of the Hyde's Branch of Federal Creek; this is near where it merges with the main Dodge branch downstream from Mudsock. There are reports that there was strong sentiment to name the town 'Cutler', to honor Ephriam Cutler, but that he discouraged it. Early activity and commerce here are described by Harriet C. Brown in Grandmother Brown's One Hundred Years, the biography of Maria Foster Brown. After marriage to Daniel Brown, Maria and her new husband moved from Athens to early Amesville and ran the general store from 1845-1856 before moving on further west to Illinois. More recently, several authors tell in Unto These Hills: The Bicentennial Heritage History of early settlers, their daily activities, and kinds of businesses and institutions present.
There is only anecdotal
information describing the rise and decline of Mudsock. Evidence of
its nature, residents, and daily activity comes from the writings of
Richard Dean, Clifford Glazier, Harry Henry, Nelle and Wyatt
McDaniel, Alyce Sayre, Birchie Thompson, and Nellie Woolley in
Unto these
Hills: Writings of the 1976
Bicentennial Committee. Information is also
available from various speeches of Clyde Gibson and Mary Grosvenor,
now on file at the Athens County Genealogical Library. Other
valuable sources were The 1833 Ohio Gazette,
an 1833 travelogue of Ohio; records of the
establishment of the first Presbyterian Church at Mudsock; Nathan
Dean Jr's 1837 will and estate records, and four volumes of 1837
daily transactions journals of Loring B. Glazier, Mudsock store owner
and first "Ames Town" postmaster. There is significant amount of
confusion between Mudsock and early Amesville, e.g., most accounts
say that the first postoffice was established in Amesville in 1821.
This is quite unlikely. Amesville didn't exist until 1837. Loring B.
Glazier was certainly the first postmaster and it is unlikely that he
would operate a store and postoffice in different locations.
Pre-Mudsock 1798 |
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Mudsock - the Community |
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Mudsock - the Demise |
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Other Communities Named Mudsock |
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Terms: Coonskin, Ames, Amesville, Athens County, Silas Dean, Nathan Dean, Richard Dean, Northwest Territory, Ohio Company, Marietta, Ephriam Cutler, Rufus Putnam, Mudsock, Thomas Ewing, Benjamin Brown, Revolutionary War, Western Library Association, Presbyterian Church, early postoffice, tourism, Silas Bingham