by Terry K. Woods
This time I have gone back to describing one of the canal “characters” I have known. When I was getting into the canal history area, I found that quite a few of great people had been there before me. And fortunately, most of them were more than gracious in their help and guidance of a brash new-comer.
Here is the story of R. Max Gard. A really great and interesting fellow.
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Ronald Max Gard was an established figure in Columbiana County long before I moved into the county in August of 1966. Max (he didn’t like the name Ronald) was a County Commissioner, author of the weekly newspaper column “The Roamin Gard” , co-author of the 1952 book, The Sandy and Beaver Canal, and the proprietor of the Sandy & Beaver Antique Shop located along the northern berm of the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) five miles west Of Lisbon. The fact that he “wore” all those hats simultaneously just goes to demonstrate his flexibility.
I undoubtedly had read his book early on. Even in the 1960s Max’s ’Bible’ on the Sandy & Beaver was sold out and copies were hard to find. Fortunately the Salem Library was just a few blocks from our apartment (one half of the ground floor of a stately two-story brick house painted a bilious green). And that is where I got Max’s book. It was probably the first canal history book that I read cover to cover.
I was surprised to realize a few years back, that the formatting of my first (and probably subsequent) canal history books follows Max’s The Sandy and Beaver Canal rather closely. My adherence to depicting canal and river features as on the right or left bank follows Max’s lead as well.
I don’t remember exactly when or where Max and I first met. It was probably in his shop. I may have just walked in one summer day and introduced myself. Max was always expansively cordial as only a man well-established as an expert in a subject can be to a brash, rank amateur.
I made several visits to Max’s Antique Shop. On one occasion, again being a bit brash, I asked him why he had concentrated on the Sandy & Beaver Canal when there were no existing maps of the route or even an accurate accounting of the number or location of the structures. Max’s eyes twinkled a bit when he answered, “Because of the mystery. You have to be a bit of a detective, a bit of an archaeologist, Damn bull-headed and fairly lucky to discover a story that doesn’t yet exist.” “You’d better be careful,” he added “that you don’t get ‘hooked’ too, trying to discover the complete story of the Sandy & Beaver.” Well. Max probably had the last laugh. I have researched most of the existing canals of north-eastern Ohio and north-western Pennsylvania, but I can truly say that the Sandy & Beaver has “hooked” me.
Max did his research and wrote his book before some of the current research tools were discovered. There is now a “listing” of the canal structures that was found in an 1854 copy of the Lisbon paper describing the parcels of the canal as they were auctioned off in March of that year. That listing varies considerably with Max’s listing, particularly of the western end of the eastern division and the western division.
Several canal-historians of some note spent the last few years of their lives trying to prove Max wrong in his numbering of the existing locks. I remember once one of these historians addressed a group of college students we were guiding along the route of the canal for a Kent State Geography Class. When he stated he would soon be able to prove certain locks mentioned in Max’s book had the wrong number, one of the student asked, “if you know that a lock exists and you know where it is located, who cares what number it is”. Well, of course the student was correct, though a compete numbering system can tell us what locks are still extant and which are gone.
To Max’s credit there were at least three numbering systems to this canal; the one Engineer Gill used up until the 1837 shut-down, the one Engineer Roberts used for his altered route after the start-up in 1845, and the one prepared by lawyers and real-estate auctioneers in 1854 for the sell-off. Max tried to adhere to Robert’s numbering system.
Max wasn’t far off in his numbering of eastern division locks, though the western division shows the route was greatly altered even after Robert’s initial listing. It is somewhat apparent that the Guide to the western division in Max’s book was written some 20 to 30 years before the book was. Max admitted to me many years after we first met that much of the fieldwork on the western division had been done by an unnamed party.
Max always had the conviction that a man who waits until all the “T’s” are crossed and all the “I’s” dotted never published anything. “I try to be as historically accurate as possible,” Max often said, “and if someone proves me wrong later, more power to him.” More historians should have that credo. You have to have a place to start. With the Sandy & Beaver, there is no better place to start than Max’s sixty-plus year old book.
Like all the great old-timer canal buffs, Max was a bit of a character. His closeness with a dollar was legend, though he was very generous in his personal dealings with people. He often shared his knowledge with others. When I wanted to explore the Big Tunnel Hill in the 1980s, and Max no longer did much hiking, he convinced two knowledgeable men from Hanoverton, the Kibbler Brothers, to lead a stranger over that hill and show him things he would never had found on his own.
Once when I had my father with me on a visit to Max’s shop, Dad kept looking at the enormous prices on various objects and remarking, “we threw something like this out as junk 50 years ago”. I don’t think Dad heard Max mumble each time, “thank you sir”. Max used to pay local kids pennies to gather pretty stones. Max would then polish them in a home-built tumbler and sell them at his typically elevated prices.
Another example of Max’s generosity was his annual hike that was held in May. Bill Vodrey may have inaugurated them, but Max continued the hikes up until his death in the late 1990s. Max would invite everybody to come to Fredericktown, “with your lunch in you”, then ferry busloads of hikers to Sprucevale, some three miles to the west. Each bus-load would then be directed to hike the well-marked trail along the canal route back to Fredericktowni. Once there the parched hikers would find wash-tubs of cold soda and water waiting. All of this was, of course, free-of-charge.
And Max had his idiosyncrasies, Once, on a pre-air-conditioning hot, sultry July afternoon, I found Max inside his shop with a roaring fire going in the fireplace just behind him in his easy chair. When I questioned the situation, Max explained the scientific fact that the hot air rising rapidly up the flue of his chimney would draw a cooling breeze across the room. He may have been right.
Whatever all who knew him miss Max Gard. I certainly do.
i The hike only was adjacent to the canal for a bit over a mile before the canal entered slackwater through Lock No 44 above Dam No. 14, crossed the Creek and followed along it’s right bank past Fredericktown to Lock No 50 (LOST LOCK). The hikers continued down the left bank of the Creek into Fredericktown.