By Colleen Nelson
It seems that the words that historian Andrew H Waychoff saved from 1917 have come true: “The prospects for the future are that Clinton and Rogersville will ere unite – indications at present pointing that way owing to the new enterprises opening, both commercial and educational, and the amount of building that is going on.”
Rogersville has done a good job keeping up with the times since its namesake John Rogers, postmaster of Clinton, bought a flourmill on Ten Mile Creek and made a name for himself for “improving the turbine.” As the frontier settled down and became America, hotels, stores and smithies began springing up along the road to serve those who travelled this shortest route from Wheeling to Waynesburg. The original town of Clinton, once part of the Rogers family farm, sat on the high ground above the creek. It had been surveyed in 1796 and was determined to be the geographic center of the new County of Greene. The town was named after Governor George Clinton of New York, who laid the foundation for the common school system and 48 lots were surveyed in the high hopes that this acreage would become the county seat. A bidding war ensued between Clinton and the already established town of Jefferson as to which would have that honor. Legislative decree said that the seat must be within five miles of the center and Jefferson was too far east. But those in that more settled end of the county were in no mood to ride an extra five miles just to hit a geographic mark. Voters split the difference and 500 acres were bought and surveyed around Fort Jackson. Lots went up for sale, a log courthouse was hastily built and Waynesburg was in business.
Tiny Clinton, with its 48 lots and nine dwellings, kept its chin up and continued to grow, offering what was needed to travellers and farm families as the wilderness got settled. Pioneer settler James Pipes opened the first store and one house in downtown Clinton became a hotel where mail was delivered and election votes were cast. Levi Shaw opened a hat shop in 1824 that was known for its silk stovepipe Abe Lincoln hats, which were all the rage. John Rogers “started the first post office in Clinton” but resigned in 1826 to buy Henry Craig’s flourmill on Ten Mile Creek. Businesses and houses gradually spread down to where the mill waters ran and in time Rogersville became its own town. The field in Clinton that once dreamed of having a courthouse became a fairground ringed with sugar maple trees and apple orchards. If you slow down as you pass the Center Township Fire Hall and look beyond the homes across the road you can see the monumental sugar maple tree in Kevin Wilson’s yard that is said to mark the center of the county.
“When my kids were in third grade they were pretty excited about that tree! They wrote papers and I’ve been interviewed a couple of times about it,” Kevin tells me as I get him to stand beside it to show its size. Sugar maple trees can live for 250 years or more and this one is beginning to show its age. “When winds come through it sheds branches – big branches!” Kevin says, pointing to the circular scars in the trunk that soars above us. Looking down at the massive roots, I’d say this old tree is still keeping a tight grip on life.
I’m out and about today with retired county recorder of deeds Tom Headlee – we’re here to see what remains of the past in these two old towns. Sawmill Road takes us to the maple tree, then through Clinton and the last house standing from the original settlement – the historic Ferguson house, now nicely clad in yellow siding with a fancy metal balcony above the front porch – before winding down to the creek to the Headlee family’s retired saw mill.
I remember driving here to get boards when I first moved to West Greene in the 1970s. Tom remembers helping his dad set up the mill in 1960 after the sawmill they built in Delphene was struck by lightning and burned the summer before.
Now the long wooden building is returning to nature, as are most of the old structures along the sycamore studded creek bank that is home to one of the largest heron rookeries in the area, behind Rogersville Community Bank.
Yesterday’s Rogersville took the 19th century in stride – it had a wool mill, two flour mills, a carriage shop and the streets were lined with hotels and stores – even a tiny barbershop turned candy store that is still standing beside the funeral home. The town baseball team played at Throckmorton’s mill and made the news when they lost to Waynesburg 61-24 in 1886. The town got its own telephone company in 1889 and gas lines in 1895 but never got the railroad line that the powers that be promised year after year as the decades after the Civil War brought even more dreams of prosperity.
Today’s Rogersville has the kind of anchor businesses that make it a destination for the West Greene community, including the bank, two churches, three stores if you count the tires and soft drinks at Buzz Walters’ Take Down Shop, Gloria’s Ceramics where local art is sold, a barber shop, Kesterson Funeral Home and Cornerstone Care Clinic next door to the Rogersville post office.
A few days later I stop by Buzz Walters’ Take Down Shop because I know he has a wonderful collection of sports memorabilia and local history covering the walls and filling countless scrapbooks. There on the wall is a photo of the Center Township High School that shut its doors when the new high school was built on Hargus Creek in 1959. And tucked between paintings of covered bridges and photographs of West Greene athletes, is a great shot of John Roger’s old mill.
Gene Rush’s home sits on the high bank where the mill once ground grain for local farm families and Gene has the millstone planted next to his flagpole.
And somewhere back in the day Waychoff tells us with a twinkle in his historic eye, there was a distillery in Rogersville that produced some killer apple jack, thanks to the Catlin apples that many farmers planted in their orchards with every intention of making something besides pie and apple butter.
Waychoff’ shares with posterity the obviously oft told tale of “the effects of the products of the Rogersville distillery, especially of Taylor’s applejack” on Bill Galloway. During one of his “sprees in Rogersville he picked up a cat and held it over a hot fire.” When the cat struggled, it was “dropped into the fire and burned severely. This angered some women present, so much so that they threw him into the same fire and he was severely burned about the hands and wrists. Some say he quit drinking for years after this, some say he drank in Rogersville no more and was even afraid to come to town for fear of those women….”
Something tells me that when prohibition ended in the 1930s and voters decided whether or not to sell liquor in their townships it was the daughters of those women who made sure Center Township stayed dry!
