By: Jane Nice, Paulding County Bicentennial Committee
Part of a series
PAULDING – When Paulding was established as a county in 1820, transportation in northwest Ohio was dismal. Natural waterways allowed for boat travel, but movement over land was nearly impossible. Muck and mire ruled under the canopy of trees that formed the Great Black Swamp, and horses struggled to progress through the mud as their narrow legs sank with each step.
For that reason, northwest Ohio was the last area of the state to be settled, and the canal system, more than anything else, made it happen.
In order to understand the canal system, one has to slow down. Way down. The planning and funding for the man-made waterway slogged through the Ohio legislature. A quarter of a century passed between when the canal system of transportation was introduced in the state legislature in 1818 until the first boats passed through Paulding County in 1843.
Surveys of potential canal routes in the 1820s were slowed by illness and death among the corps of topographical engineers, who fell victim to the diseases of the forest covered valleys.
Once the routes were established, the arduous construction began. Men dug the canals with shovels, pickaxes and wheelbarrows. Oxen were used to drive large wooden scoops of dirt to hollow out the earth to the desired depth and width of the canal bed.
Crews of immigrants – mostly from Ireland, Germany and France – had to be organized, managed and paid. So many immigrants came to northern Paulding County from Ireland that Emerald Township was named for the association with Emerald Isle’s vales of green.
During canal construction, delivery of building supplies and provisions for the laborers was slow and difficult by means of pirogues, which are small and narrow boats, on rivers and streams, adding to the expense of the project.
Disease ran rampant among the canal workers. The canals were sometimes called “The Irish Cemetery” because legend estimated that one Irishman died for every mile of canal built.
In Paulding County, timber on the canal courses had to be cleared first. In fact, the last leg of the Miami & Erie Canal to be completed was between St. Mary’s in Mercer County and Junction in northeast Paulding County, where one half or more of the route was through an unbroken forest where no trace of civilization existed.
Stone was quarried from a farm one-half mile east of Junction to construct many of the nearby aqueducts and culverts along the canals. Many of the locks were made from wood.
Paulding County, which is arguably the only county entirely within the Great Black Swamp, had more miles of canal to build than any other in Ohio, because two canals were constructed within its borders – the Wabash & Erie from the west, and the Miami & Erie from the south.
Counting the portion of the Miami & Erie Canal that was lost to Defiance County when it was formed in 1845, nearly 40 miles of canal were built within Paulding County’s borders.
The village of Junction was named for the fact that it was where the two canals met, and it became an important hub of activity on the canal route.
Up to 50 canal boats carrying people, goods and mail could be found docked in Junction at one time. The village bustled with businesses and people in the heyday of canal transportation, and was one of the largest and most important communities in the region.
According to the Ohio state auditor’s “Detailed Statement of the Receipts and Disbursements of the Public Money at the State Treasury during the Fiscal Years 1854 and 1855,” Junction toll collector James G. Haley collected more tolls in 1854 than any other port, not only on the Miami & Erie Canal, but on any other canal in the state of Ohio.
Tolls totaling $71,759.86 – over $2 million in today’s money – were collected at Junction that year, while only Cincinnati and Toledo came near that figure. Much of what was exported from Paulding County was timber, of course, and the tolls were calculated by the weight of the freight.
Next: Paulding County towns on the Miami & Erie Canal.
More information on the bicentennial can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PauldingCounty200.
