In 1801 Salem township comprised all the northwest corner of the county. On the south its boundaries were approximately the south boundary of the present Jefferson township extended through to about the location of Sharon. In the list of taxables of 1801, those in Salem included William Budd and Benjamin Bentley, the pioneers of Sharon, from which it is evident that the old Salem township reached south this far. In 1802 Salem township was divided, the south half being named Pymatuning.

The original Pymatuning township included all the territory in the present township of that name and also the north half of Hickory [now City of Hermitage], and Jefferson and Delaware townships.

William Fell came to this township in 1796 and soon afterward located his family here. His brother was Nathan Fell, also one of the earliest settlers in this township. He and other members of the family came from Westmoreland county, and their descendants are numbered in the active citizenship of the twentieth as they were among the industrious pioneers of the nineteenth century.

The honor of first settlement in this township probably belongs to Jacob Loutzenhizer, who built a saw and grist mill on Pymatuning creek in 1798. Several years later he sold the mill and moved to the junction of the little and big Shenango rivers and became one of the notable pioneers of Greenville.

Robert McCord also came in 1798, locating about two miles east of Transfer, where he taught a school in 1814, the first record of education in the township. Andrew Chestnut was a relative of this schoolmaster and came to the township at the same time. Both families furnished soldiers to the war of 1812.

A veteran of the Revolution who is frequently mentioned was Godfrey Carnes, whose settlement in the township began in 1801. His descendants still live on land secured by him when he came to the county.

The mills first established by Jacob Loutzenhizer and later transferred to Adam Haun were the site of a village community long known as Haun’s Mills, but now Orangeville, a village which is for the most part in Ohio.

Twentieth Century History of Mercer County, 1909, pages 169-170