The First Pioneers of Ross County is a lineage society established to honor and preserve the memory of those early settlers who arrived in Ross County, Ohio, prior to 1821. Membership is open to descendants who can demonstrate a direct line of ancestry to one or more individuals who lived in the county during that formative period.
Membership in the First Pioneers of Ross County requires thorough genealogical documentation and is administered through the Ross County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Information about applications and qualifying ancestors can be found on their official page.
Nathaniel Bunnell
My own connection to the First Pioneers is through Nathaniel Bunnell (1778–1850), a New Jersey native who settled in the region with his family in the early 1800s.
Nathaniel was born in Scotch Plains, Union County, New Jersey, the son of Stephen Bunnell (1731–1813) and Mariah Daniels (1733–1812). He migrated to the Northwest Territory following patterns of post-Revolutionary settlement, part of a broader movement that helped establish permanent communities across southern Ohio. By 1805, Nathaniel appears on the tax rolls for Ross County, and he he moved, with other family members, to White County, Indiana, where he died in 1850.
His son, Barzilla Bunnell (1807–1891), born in Ross County, would go on to represent the next generation of Ohio-born Bunnells and is himself my qualifying ancestor for First Families of Ohio. The continuity of residence from the early territorial period through statehood and beyond makes the Bunnell line a representative example of Ohio’s settler legacy, one that links the colonial mid-Atlantic to the western frontier of the early republic.
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