Andersonville, OH

Andersonville is a Ross County census-designated place with 778 residents in the 2020 census. It lies in the rural road network of Union Township, with Andersonville Road and county addresses carrying the name beyond the small settlement itself. The place is a useful example of how an Ohio community can retain an older town story after its canal-era commercial role has passed. Andersonville’s earlier map was connected to the Ohio and Erie Canal, where the community served as a port town. The canal connection gives the present-day roadside community a distinctly nineteenth-century frame.

Before it was Andersonville, the place was Lewisville, laid out in 1851 by Mahlon Anderson. A post office using the Andersonville name opened in 1873 and operated until 1901. Those two names remain the key to the local history: Lewisville records the original plan, while Andersonville reflects the family name that stayed on the map. Today the CDP is best understood through that layered geography—canal-era transportation, a nineteenth-century town plat, and rural Ross County roads leading toward Chillicothe.