Ed Note- The ACS has been gifted some of Terry’s files, including some of his hand written research notes, slides and books. One of the items was about 50 slides of the Nimishillen and Sandy, or the N&S. I didn’t know much about this never completed canal, but as Terry lived in Canton, he certainly did. So I knew I would find a Canal Comments about it in my Terry Woods file. I have added some of his images where I can identify his captions with what can be seen on the ground. So all the photos and maps are my addition to Terry’s column, and any mistakes in their captions are mine.
———————————————————-
Here was Terry’s email introduction to his article;
At a recent canal buff’s breakfast in Massillon, Jim G**** commented that a member (I believe) of the McKinley Children’s Museum will be giving a talk in early May on the Nimishillen & Sandy Canal. That was a proposed canal and slack-water navigation from about present Walnut Street and 6th St. N.W. in Canton to the Sandy & Beaver east of Sandyville.
The canal construction was begun in 1835 and stopped due to the economic Panic of 1837. When times were better around 1845, the Canton canal promoters had reset their sights on the resurrected Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad project.
I have done a great deal of research on the N & S project and have debunked some of the local history of it. I also can’t remember the name of the Canton businessman who was on the Canal Commissioners in 1836. I may have to dig out my N & S Research box. Jim’s mention of the new talk made me get out some of my research. Here, again, is the history, as brief as it is, on the Nimishillen & Sandy Canal.
THE NIMISHILLEN & SANDY CANALi
Canton Ohio, the Stark County Seat, has been the undisputed industrial, population, and political leader of the area since it was founded in 1805. In December 1826, however, eight miles west of Canton, a new town called Massillon was founded on the banks of the recently approved Ohio Canal and, for a time, threatened to replace Canton as the county’s most prosperous and influential community.
Canton’s merchants wanted to get in on some of that booming canal trade, so in the early 1830s, after a proposed eight-mile long horse drawn railroad to the canal at Massillon from Canton had been dismissed as an impossible engineering feat, the Nimishillen & Sandy Navigation Company was formed. A charter was issued in 1831 authorizing the Company to build a branch canal and/or slack-water navigation from Canton to some point on the Ohio Canal at or near Bolivar. A Mr. Fields made the original survey for the N & S.
It was planned to route the canal south from the village of Canton for a mile or so till the Forks of the Nimishillen were reached, then down the valley of that creek for eleven miles to the Big Sandy, then down its valley for seven miles to Bolivar and the Ohio Canal. When the route of the Sandy & Beaver Canal was finalized, the Canton group altered their plans and decided to tap into the S. & B. just above the junction of the Nimishillen and Big Sandy Creeks.
Work was begun on the Sandy & Beaver Canal in November, 1834 and the first meeting of the infant Nimishillen & Sandy Navigation Company was held on December 25, 1834, where the directors were appointed. A slate of officers was elected on the 27th and Joshua Malin, a man with canal engineering experience in the east and a resident engineer on the Sandy & Beaver project, was hired as Chief Engineer. He had the first division of four-and-a-half miles located by January 30, 1835. Two reservoir sites were located just north of Canton. Malin was confident that either of these reservoirs would be sufficient to supply the canal with water until it reached the Forks.
Contracts for the first ten sections were let by May 15, 1835 and the southern-most five sections by June 20, 1836. Oddly enough, there is no record of the central division of five-and-a-half miles (11 sections) ever being let for contract. There is some indication, though, that a slack-water navigation had been constructed and was operating between Congress Furnace (North Industry) and a forge in (East) Sparta during the 1820s up until about 1833.
Initially, considerable work was accomplished on all the contracted sections of the Nimishillen and Sandy Canal. A local canal contractor, Cyrus Prentus, with a gigantic plow and a number of teams of oxen on call managed, at an official earth turning ceremony in Canton, to cut a channel down the east side of Walnut street through town “large enough to float a small boat”.
The navigation company was quite optimistic about its future. Statements were made early in 1835 pledging that the company would complete its canal to Bolivar even if the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company did not. In October, 1835, meetings were held in Ravenna about extending the N. & S. Canal north to connect with the P. & O. Canal, thus shortening the distance from Bolivar to the east by twelve to fifteen miles.
When the N & S. Canal company was organized late in 1834, its directors fully expected the canal to be finished and operating within two years. By the fall of 1836, however, the outlook was not nearly so bright. The Sandy & Beaver Canal Company was out of money and about to suspend operations. To make matters worse, a combination of cholera and lack of funds caused the P. O. Canal Company to shut down during the last quarter of 1836. With both the P. & O. and S. & B. canals maybe gone for good and their own canal not yet finished, Canton lost hope of being on a shortcut to the east. At best, Canton would be thirty water miles from Massillon and the Ohio Canal, an almost insurmountable handicap.
One of the canal company’s directors (???????) got himself appointed to the Ohio Canal Commissioners and lobbied to have the State take over the N & S Canal. That proposal was presented to the legislature for approval; and passed before that body twice before being defeated during its third (and final) reading in 1836.
The Panic of 1837 undoubtedly put a stop to the efforts of the Nimishillen & Sandy Navigation Company, but just how much was accomplished before the final shutdown isn’t precisely known. It is believed that the canal was finished, or nearly so, from its northern terminus to the forks of the Nimishillen. Neither of the reservoirs appear to have been built, though, as that section was never even filled with water. If an earlier, improved waterway existed between the North Industry works and the Sparta Forge, it would have been abandoned around 1833, when both the iron works were closed.
Efforts by the canal company in the early 1840s to find a route for the N & S north to connect with the P & O Canal failed when surveys were unable to provide a feasible water route from Canton to the north.
Sections 8, 9 & 10 of the N & S were refurbished and used as the race to the Browning, or Goodwill Mill in North Industry for some 25 years. And evidence remains of the canal channel being excavated from just below Sparta south, though any intersection with the Sandy & Beaver was covered by the new and higher railroad embankment constructed in 1935.
Some historians believe that the Star Mill (at Raynoldsville), south of Canton, used the old Nimishillen & Sandy Canal channel as a race, but an official map of the county dated, 1837, shows a separate channel for the mill race on the east side of the creek and the canal channel on the west. These same historians also believe that the mill in East Sparta used the bed of the old N & S Canal as a mill race, but that has not yet been confirmed. Again, the 1837 Stark County map shows the canal on the left bank of the creek past the site of East Sparta.
In Canton, the ditch down Walnut Street remained open for years and East Tuscarawas Street was still crossing it on a “temporary” type bridge as late as 1884 or 85. Finally, the canal in Canton was filled in, the mills in North Industry and East Sparta burned or were torn down and the Nimishillen & Sandy Canal was forgotten. Except for a very few of us.
i An earlier, shorter, version of this article appeared in The Sandy Valley PRESS-NEWS, July 03, 1975.
Terry’s Canal Data page on the N&S can be found here.
The late Terry Woods and Ted Casper and other past members of the Canal Society of Ohio including myself have often brainstormed over this abandoned Nimilsla and Sandy Canal effort. Have walked some areas in 2016, but little remains to tell there was once an effort to build a navigable waterway in Canton. The hope to eventually connect northward to the P&O Canal was apparently doomed because of inadequate water supply requirements and the topography not being favorable. Another once touted possible canal was the “Chippewa Canal” which would have been a branch from the Ohio and Erie at the village of Clinton in southern Summit County westward. Some old newspapers I uncovered had brief articles might indicate that some workers did start excavation, but seemingly the effort was futile and abandoned.. Did a HUD flood study for Clinton and the Tuscarawas River in 1978 , and in the 1960s the Corps of Engineers did some straightening of the lower Chippewa channel, which had more impact on 100 and 500 year flooding events than did the Tuscarawas River.