Haunted Tuscarawas County

By Debra Robinson

Tuscarawas County's history stretches back to the pioneer era. Some history, however, refuses to remain in the past. Towns and sites founded in the 1700s and 1800s, like Zoar, Schoenbrunn and Dennison Depot, abound with legends and spectral encounters. Helpful haunts reside at the Little Theatre and Dover Public Library. The sad specter of poor axe-murdered Mary Seneff rises from the Red Hill bridge over little Sugarcreek. And Newcomerstown's young post boy, William Cartmill, still tries to deliver his mail. Author Debra Robinson delves into the area's ghost tales and the history behind them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781625857347

Debra Robinson

Debra Robinson has been excited about God in her life for several years, and He has led her to share her blessings. She has volunteered her time in the prison ministry for six years as a grader. Robinson loves sharing the gospel with the prisoners, telling them how much God loves them. Debra attended the University of Nebraska, and she became employed by Northwestern Bell Telephone Company as an Information Specialist. She retired from there after working 43 years. Debra resides in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband, Dennis, and they have three daughters and five grandchildren.

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INTRODUCTION

Are you afraid of ghosts? You’re not? That’s good, as they’re all around us. When you live with history, you live with ghosts. Tuscarawas County has a lot of both. There are the spirits of violently murdered victims, the former occupants of many of our stately homes and even the sad specters of those who were first to live on this land—the pioneers and Native Americans. Age is no gauge of hauntings either—a new home is as capable of harboring a spirit as an old estate. Unfinished business, death at a young age or strong emotions seem to be common denominators in haunted sites at both new and old buildings.

Most spirits are harmless; they go about their business doing whatever it was they used to do, unaware of the living in their midst. Some replay their former actions over and over like a tape loop, as though stamped into the fabric of time itself. Some seem aware of the living—they try to get our attention and communicate things we may not be able to understand. And some are family—the long-dead relatives of current inhabitants who dwelled in the grand homes built more than a century and a half earlier. Sometimes the more recently deceased come back, too, maybe just to keep an eye on us.

Long before March 1808, when Tuscarawas County officially became the twenty-seventh county recognized in the state of Ohio, the area was home to several significant Indian villages, as well as the first Protestant settlement in Ohio, Schoenbrunn. Moravian missionaries settled here with the intent to spread the gospel to the savage red man. Many locals have seen the spirits of those eighteenth-century missionaries, as well as the ghosts of innocent victims massacred by American militia in an infamous local tragedy. As if that weren’t enough, this county can also claim a Revolutionary War fort where Indian ambushes and starvation created a few more spirits tied to that area.

Tuscarawas County map, circa 1938. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection.

A few years later, a small settlement of religious separatists formed Zoar village and tried their best to live apart from worldly influence. Their early experiment in communal living was brought down—some say by the evil of the very outsiders they tried so hard to avoid. Zoar is now one of the most haunted towns in the county.

There are so many haunted sites in Tuscarawas County that it would be impossible to fill just one slim volume. This book will tell a portion of them, some of the more infamous stories as well as a few you may not have heard before. From Zoar in the northern section of Tuscarawas County to Newcomerstown in the south, Sugar Creek in the west, Dennison in the east and all points between, the spirits remain here. They carry out their business as usual, and whether or not they notice the living, they will be here long after we are gone. Who knows…some of us may decide to join them.

So sit back, relax if you can and read all about the ghosts of Tuscarawas County.

TUSCARAWAS COUNTY’S MOST HAUNTED

ZOAR

Tuscarawas County in northeast Ohio is full of folklore and hauntings, but one small village tops the list. The quaint little village of Zoar is an 1800s jewel woven into the tapestry of northern Tuscarawas County. It also seems to have some of the most dramatic and interesting hauntings anywhere.

Founded in 1817 by nearly two hundred German separatists and their leader, Joseph Bimeler, Zoar was named after the biblical town from the book of Genesis where Lot escaped from Sodom. Joseph Bimeler brought his group to the United States to escape persecution in their own country. The separatists were pacifists, so they would not fight in wars. They had different beliefs, such as not observing any holidays or formal religious traditions like marriage or baptism. A couple simply appeared before witnesses to be married; there was no ceremony or celebration afterward.

In an effort to clarify their beliefs and stop persecution while still in Germany, the separatists published and circulated them prior to 1816:

We believe and confess the Trinity of God, in the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost;

The fall of Adam and of all mankind, and with the loss thereby of the likeness of God in them;

The return through Christ to God, our proper and lawful Father;

The Holy Scriptures as the rule of our lives, and the touchstone of truth and falsehood. All our other principles derive from these, and govern our conduct in the religious, spiritual, and natural life.

All ceremonies are banished from among us, and are declared to be useless and injurious, and this is the chief cause of our separation.

We render to no mortal honors due only to God, such as to uncover the head or bend the knee and the like. We address everyone as thee and thou.

We separate ourselves from all ecclesiastical constitutions and ties, because the life of a Christian never requires sectarianism, while set forms create sectarian division.

Our marriages are contracted by mutual consent before witnesses. They are then notified to the civil authorities; therefore, entirely without priestly union or ceremony.

All intercourses of the sexes, except what is necessary to continue the species, we hold to be sinful and contrary to the command of God; entire abstinence or complete chastity is still better.

We cannot send our children into the schools of Babylon because they oppose our principles. Lacking in morality and religion, the village schools breed crowds of idlers who, given good opportunity in their meetings, teach their fellow students wickedness and debauchery.

We cannot serve the state as soldiers because a Christian cannot murder his enemy, much less his friend.

We recognize the temporal authority as necessary to maintain order, to protect the good and honest and punish the wrongdoers; no one can prove us to be unfaithful to the state (Germany) but rather the contrary.

These therefore are the principles which for 10 years have brought upon us many and varied persecutions. We have indeed called out loudly for justice but our situation has been little bettered, because our powerful enemies still possess those decrees which were issued against us, and by means of which they have deprived many families of their property and liberty because of the hatred and envy they bear toward us. No one can imagine the nature of the situation in which the Separatist is placed. How can a man who has for his goal merely the salvation of his soul…be so cruelly misunderstood, so barbarously handled, and this his only crime—that he has followed the dictates of his conscience; We can testify before God and conscience that our purposes were never other than these; to forsake the godless life of the world, to fulfill faithfully our duties toward God and man, to live in an inner circle of love and friendship, and in doing so, find compensation for the tribulations of the pilgrim life.

This effort to clarify their tenets did not help them as they had hoped, and the result was their immigration to America.

Zoar was not originally organized as a commune when they got to Ohio. After the residents had a difficult time surviving harsh conditions in the early years of 1818–19, they formed the Society of Separatists of Zoar on April 19, 1819. It became one of the most successful communes in American history.

The idea behind the organization of a commune was that each person donates his or her property to the community, and in exchange for labor, the Society of Separatists would provide for his or her needs. This worked very well, and the Society became almost totally self-sufficient. Villagers labored at agriculture and in flour mills, two iron foundries, a tin shop, a hotel and several stores. There was also a cooper, a wagon maker and those who created textiles. There was a nursery, men’s and women’s dorms—the husbands and wives lived separately for a time—and children’s quarters. The Zoarites gave numbers to twenty-six of their houses to make it easier to mark the food and milk pails for distribution to their members. Some buildings, like the bakery, did not get a number.

A Zoar street in 1905. Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection.

In 1822, they began eight years of celibacy out of concern for their population growing too rapidly. Children between ages three and fourteen lived apart from their families in nurseries so their parents could work in the occupations and industries in town. Children attended school and were also expected to do chores and help work in various capacities in the community; everyone was expected to pitch in for the good of the whole.

The community became quite prosperous, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Ohio and Erie Canal crossed over Zoar property. The Society contracted to build a seven-mile stretch of the canal in 1825 for $21,000 and later owned several canalboats. This brought traffic into Zoar and customers for their goods as well. When the canal work was completed in 1828, the payment allowed the Zoarites to settle their land debt.

Any surplus beyond the community’s needs was sold by the Society to the outside world. But while the residents stayed isolated, they were also