Nathaniel Mitchell "The Ax Man" Young

Nathan Young was the first permanent settler in Knox County.

A. B. Norton, in his "History of Knox County Ohio 1862," page 9, says: "The first white settler north of Mt. Vernon was Nathaniel M. Young, from Pennsylvania, who in 1803, built a cabin on the south fork of the Vernon river, three miles west of Fredericktown. In the winter of 1805-6, Mr. Young, James Lewis and Hames Bryant caught 41 wolves in steel traps and pens. After many years of solitary residence on the beautiful Ko-Ko-sing, the solitude of Andrew Craig, the first white man to locate within the present boundaries Knox County, is broken by the entrance of a lone Jerseyman who penetrates some ten miles farther into the wilderness. This follower of the trade of Vulcan, Mr. Young, soon gets ready to blow and to strike, and sets about supplying the sons of the forest the first axes they had ever seen. Mr. Young carried the sobriquet of "Axe-man" given him by the Indians, for many years. The old axe-maker is followed by some of his relatives and friends who start what has been ever since known as the Jersey Settlement in Ohio." Fredericktown, originally Kerr's Mill, was platted in 1807. (Reference 319)