By: Stan Jordan
This house was built in 1844 and was logs 16 X 20 ft with one door and two windows. Over the years it has been resided, re-reroofed and an addition put on. I will tell you what I know and what I have read about it.
It is on Canal Street, west off South Main, the second place on the right, but now that is just an empty lot.
In 1844 it was downtown Antwerp, just a little place to the left was a tavern and a store, just one block east was the bridge over the canal. Mr. Curtis built a trading post right there on that corner. It was once the post office.
By now the canal was done and Six Mile Creek was being turned into a reservoir. Also at this time, the pike from Hicksville to the Maumee, 6 ¼ mile, was being done…totally straight, regardless of stumps.
All of this is from a diary Mr. Lincoln kept. He was a doctor, a Fire and a Brimstone Preacher. I don’t know about his later years, but much later his daughter, who lived out in California, sent us these pages of his diary.
He was building this cabin in November of 1844. He took his time off went to, what is now Payne, and got married to a girl who came from Connecticut about 7 years before, Harriet Wentsworth.
That was Harrison Twp and at that time, it only had 5 families. They settled down in their new house and the doctor was busy around town. On April 16th, 1864 their first child was born in this house, Thomas Wentsworth Lincoln, a boy of 7 ¾ pounds.
His journal was only available through January of 1847.
I assume he kept on in doctoring in this area for a few years.
It looks to me like those people just lived a common life around the canal for years. Some people moved in and the town grew a little.
The people who started the factories didn’t come till 1865 after the Civil War. When the news got out about all the good timber here, the canal was very busy until about 19 or so.
Dr. John Lincoln was born in 1813 up in New England and arrived in Paulding County around 1840. He served as clerk of courts and as a postmaster at Antwerp. He and his wife, Harriet, had six children, some of them died early in life. The first son, Thomas Wentworth Lincoln, served in the Civil War in the Ohio National Guard. He died later in 1921 and is buried in Antwerp.
A daughter lived to be over 90 years old out in California. Thomas graduated from Oberlin in 1875 and died in 1921.
See ya!
