Editors Note- I tried to find this article online and was not successful. So I don’t know if it was broken up into so many paragraphs or if that was Terry’s work. Anyhow, this is how he send it. It is quite a long article for a newspaper and makes me wonder if it was spread out over multiple days. There are a few words missing at the beginning of one paragraph.
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Terry’s Introduction- A couple of weeks ago, Tim Botos of the Canton repository had a three article event on Transportation in Stark County. He concentrated on three transportation routes, the Ohio Canal, the Lincoln Highway, and Route I-77. That made me think of a 1941 Repository article I ran across several years ago while compiling listings of the Massillon Museum’s clipping file. This 1941 article described the benefits to the county and area brought about by the county’s canals and railroads – and how local business benefited from modern transportation. Oddly enough, roads were not mentioned.
So I’ve copied that very good 1941 article for today’s CANAL COMMENTS column, only adding some footnotes to insert an historical fact over an historical legend here and there.
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THE CANTON REPOSITORY: March 31, 1940, with footnotes by T.K. Woods, Feb. 2011.
Canals came to Ohio – to Stark County – and with them an exciting era. The Legislature on February 4, 1825 authorized the Ohio & Erie system, by way of the Tuscarawas, Muskingum, and Scioto Rivers from Cleveland to Portsmouth, and the Maumee-Miami system on the western side of the state, each connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River.i
It was a great day, July 4, 1825, when Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York turned the first shovel of earth at Licking Summit. With pomp and ceremony, Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio and other dignitaries turned other shovels full, Governor Clinton toured much of the state to stimulate interest in the building of branch canals. He envisioned the entire Ohio system as a gigantic feeder for his own Grand Canal, running through New York State, a transportation system traversing all the inland states from New York to the Mississippi.
There was feverish speculation in land adjacent to the line of the canal. The economic and social effects were rapidly visible. After twenty years of quiet development, largely limited to the county’s boundary, shut in by nearly impassible roads to an economy self contained, the thrifty, industrious, steady, German-speaking farmers of Stark County and their English-speaking neighbors suddenly found the outside world knocking at their side door.
Thousands of men were needed for labor and much of it was performed by farmers living in the vicinity. Dreams of new towns seized the imagination. Canton men bought land and laid out Bolivar, naming it for the South American hero of the time. Here the canal was to cross the Tuscarawas River by an aqueduct. James W. Lathrop and William Christmas of Canton established Canal Fulton in the northwest corner of the county.ii
In the winter of 1825-26, Captain James Duncan, retired shipmaster from Portsmouth, N.H., owner of most of the township’s site land, established Massillon. His scholarly wife, a niece of Charles Hammond, early editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, suggested the name in honor of Jean Baptiste de-Masssillon, celebrated Roman Catholic French bishop of the days of Louis XIV. Contracts for canal work in the vicinity of Massillon were awarded at Captain Duncan’s house January 18, 1826. (Kendall, the hamlet that preceded it, is now the fourth ward of Massillon; named for Kirky-in-Kendal, ancient English town celebrated in history.)
Akron, the Greek word meaning The Heights, rose in bustling fashion from a collection of shanties where the canal laborers lodged at the top of a spectacular and picturesque descent which locks and sluices would lower the waterway from the Portage Lakes to the Cuyahoga Valley.
An advertisement in the Repository stimulated interest in the residential and business prospects of Massillon: “The proprietors are now laying out and offer for sale lots in the new town of Massillon, situated on the Ohio Canal at the intersection of the great road leading from Pittsburgh westward through New Lisbon, Canton, Wooster, and Mansfield . “It occupies both banks of the canal, having a large and commodious basin near the center of town, with a large number of warehouse lots laid out adjoining so as to render it peculiarly convenient for commercial business. The prices of the lots and terms of payment may be known by applying to Alfred Kelly, acting canal commissioner, James Duncan, one of the proprietors who resides in the town; or John Saxton, agent for the proprietors in Canton.”
Simultaneous with the Ohio development, Pennsylvania built canals and there was much competition for labor. Alfred Kelly advertised in the Repository that from $10.00 to $13 a month would be paid – 30 to 34 cents a day – with plain board and shanty lodging. Some contractors, in addition, assured their workmen a daily jigger of whiskey.iii
Canal traffic opened between Akron and Cleveland July 4, 1827. Exactly two years after the project began, a boat dropped down the Akron locks and, at 3 miles an hour, its speed hardly suggested the revolutionary effects the canal was to produce in Ohio and Stark County within a few years.
In August, 1828, the canal was open for traffic from Akron to Massillon. Stark County had its outlet to Lake Erie! Farmers responded instantly with grain for shipment. Bezaleel Wells and others shipped the wool and cloth which they milled at Steubinville overland to Massillon, up the canal to Cleveland, across Lake Erie, through the Grand Canal and the Hudson River to New York City, up the Atlantic to Boston and down the Atlantic to Philadelphia and Baltimore. It was faster and cheaper than the old wagon route over the mountains eastward.
The people of Columbiana county incorporated the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company, financed by the sale of stock as a private enterprise, surveyed its route from the junction of Beaver creek and the Ohio river, up through New Lisbon and across to Minerva and Bolivar, there to join with the Ohio & Erie. It was a distance of 73 miles and called for the construction of several tunnels, the largest at a summit just east of Hanover.iv It was confronted with protracted delays in financing, organization and engineering.
By the end of the year (1829) the (Ohio) canal was open to Dover and by July 10, 1830, it had reached Newark. The tide of commerce shot upward, the cash value of wheat doubling.
Lotteries flourished: the Dismal Swamp Lottery, the Union Canal Lottery of Philadelphia, the Pokomoke Lottery of Wilmington, and the Grand Consolidated Lottery of Pittsburgh. All of them sought chance-taking customers in these parts; their advertising was compelling, with dollar signs and strings of figures running through it.
Carroll county in 1832 was created out of townships taken from Stark, Columbiana, Jefferson and Tuscarawas counties.
Complete from one end to the other, the canal in 1833 transported freight and passengers from Cleveland to Portsmouth – from Lake Erie to the Ohio river and over these water courses to New York City and to New Orleans. Simultaneously, the Miami canal was open from Dayton to Cincinnati and the Welland canal on the Canadian side connected Lake Erie and New Orleans.
The new town – Massillon, as differentiated from Kendall – had 100 houses and population of 500.
Elderkin Potter, New Lisbon Lawyer, broke the first ground for the Sandy & Beaver Nov. 24, 1834, addressing great throngs of people, setting forth in glowing terms the rosy future for New Lisbon and Columbiana County.
Concerned over the growing importance of Massillon, misguided in their zeal to off-set Massillon’s advantage, a group of Canton citizens subscribed to stock in the Nimishillen & Sandy Slackwater Navigation Company – a fancy title for what they thought would be a feeder canal from Canton to the Sandy & Beaver, thence to the Ohio & Erie and out to the oceans. Pomp and ceremony accompanied the breaking of ground on lower Walnut Street. Speculation in real estate ensued, casting the buyers into despair when the little Nimishillen creek quickly demonstrated that its water supply was far too inadequate to float boats of size. The project, of course, was abandoned and a miner local panic occurred.v
Massillon grew and so did Canton, both in population and prosperity. Because Massillon’s movement had the excitement of a “boom”, local pessimists overlooked the gradual benefits backwashing to Canton. By comparison they saw Canton retrogressing. The country had a population of 26,556, doubled in ten years.
The canal boomed wheat to $1.00, corn to 37 cents, rye to 56 cents, oats to 28 cents, butter to 14 cents, clover seed to $5.00, whiskey to 31 ½ cents a gallon, tallow to 10 cents a pound. The tax value of town lots totaled $96,556, a gain 65% over 1827. Eighty-nine merchants were in business in Canton. Pleasure carriages ranged the streets where none existed ten years before.
Massillon thrived as “the Wheat City.” The, canal, a busy thoroughfare, reflected the lusty, picturesque period. There was talk of railroads, but it dampened not a whit the ardor of canal enthusiasts, yet it held much hope for communities remote from the waterways.
A charter granted by the legislature March 14, 1836, to the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, projected to run through Columbiana county and cut northward through a corner of Stark county, lay dormant.
The panic of 1837 struck the east and its repercussions were promptly felt in Ohio. Construction of the Sandy & Beaver canal prosecuted with vigor in despite many obstacles, came to a standstill. The price of wheat and other farm produce dropped. Business in general took a tailspin. In many ways, however, the canals served to cushion the effects of this depression. They brought settlers to all parts of the state, put them on farms and put them in towns and cities, kept the money in circulation, brought venture capital into industrial enterprise.
The legislature created Summit county, with Akron and contiguous territory shaping into size by reason of the canal, and to create it Stark county lost two townships in the readjustment.
Massillon’s growing importance brought on talk of transferring the Stark county seat from Canton. That is to say, there was such talk in the vicinity of Massillon; there was successful resistance in Canton and eastward in the county.
After nine years, The Cleland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company took one more step toward development of its line, in 1845 amending its dormant Ohio charter in preparation for construction work in Columbiana county and in the eastern angle of Stark county.
Determined to offset the canal, to get under way a paralleling railroad line, which would provide transportation all year in competition with water transportation which was icebound in winter, groups of citizens in Canton and Akron met in Akron January 21, 1845. Samuel Lahm served as chairman and Thomas Goodman as secretary. All attending were enthusiastic and anxious. Their reports raised high hopes and on January 24, 1845, the Repository issued a letter-size single-sheet Extra Edition, printing verbatim the proceedings of the meeting and urging accomplishment of its objective.
Never for a moment fading out, the project languished to await a more propitious time.
The first boat, under command of Captain Dunn, moved triumphantly from the Ohio river into Little Beaver and up through the Fredericktown locks of the Sandy & Beaver canal to New Lisbon, where it was hailed with calibration and rejoicing Mathias Hester laid out town lots at Freedom and in 1848 David G. Hester received appointment to postmaster. His first mail contained one newspaper – a copy of the Ohio repository – and one letter.
The State Legislature passed an Act incorporating the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad Company, giving it the right to lay track from Mansfield eastward by way of Wooster, Massillon and Canton to a point on the east line of the state within Columbiana county, there to connect with trackage through Indiana to Chicago.
The tracks of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh and of the Ohio & Pennsylvania were to cross at Freedom.
The shadow of futility fell upon the builders of the Sandy & Beaver canal, but they kept doggedly at their work. After four years of digging, with hand labor for lack of mechanical devices, burrowing the Big Tunnel as an 18-foot tube, 80 feet below the surface of the hill, the middle section from New Lisbon to Minerva was incomplete.
A boat was forced through from New Lisbon to Hanover to hold the canal charter.vi Approaching West Fork creek, east of Hanover, it went aground. Seven yoke of oxen and many willing hands lifted it over the barrier into deeper water. Then, traversing the Big Tunnel, a huge stone rolled down in front of the boat. Again struggling men released the craft and it pulled through to anchor at Hanover January 6, 1848, “on schedule”.
Something more than railroads was faintly visible as a forecast of prosperity for Canton. Just outside Greentown, a machinist-farmer, Cornellius Aultman in 1848 made patterns and experimentally made five Hussey reapers from designs laying dormant in the hands of their Baltimore originator. They were the first machines of the kind made in Ohio, with exception of two or three turned out at Martins Ferry the previous year.
Michael Dillman, a progressive and prosperous farmer living nearby, across the line in Summit County, used one of Aultman’s machines and with so much satisfaction that he bought a partnership with Aultman. The next year, 1849, the two went to Plainfield, Illinois, put up a small shop and went into limited production of reapers
Stark county subscribed $75,000 worth of stock in the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad Company and work was begun at many places along its right-of-way between Crestline and Pittsburgh.
Cornellius Aultman, after the close of the harvest season in 1850, sold his interest in the reaper factory at Plainfield, Ill., and returned to Greentown. Several months prior, the Baltimore designer, Mr. Hussey, agreed with Mr. Aultman and his associates that $15 for each machine would be paid as a royalty on his invention.
The tempo of industry quickened for Canton in 1851. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad line was completed and trains were running. The little neighborhood where the C. & P. tracks crossed those of the Ohio & Pennsylvania, known previously as Freedom, now bore the name of Alliance, conferred upon it by General Robinson, an official of the company at Pittsburgh – a name he symbolized as a wedding of the rails.
Ephraim Ball and Cornellius Aultman in 1851 formed Ball, Aultman & Co., made twelve Hussey reapers and six threshing machines at Greentown and sold them in the vicinity. The location of a plant near the Ohio & Pennsylvania railroad appealed to them as advantageous for shipping of their machines to the wheat country of the west. After the harvest, they bought land adjacent to the tracks and moved to Canton.
It was the dawn of a bright new day for Canton, though not at the moment distinguishable. Mr. Ball, Mr. Aultman, Lewis Miller, Jacob Miller and George Cook pooled their financial resources, $4,500 in all, paid for their three lots alongside the railroad line and built a two-story brick factory, housing a wood shop, finishing shop and molding shop.
While not yet a large employer of labor, Ball, Aultman, & Co. built 25 Hussey reapers in 1852 and worked out the details of the Ohio Mower. Encountering conflict of patents with inventor Haines at Pekin, Ill., they came to mutual agreement on manufacture and sale.
The Iron Horse came to Canton in 1853. The Ohio & Pennsylvania line opened for travel from Pittsburgh to Crestline April 11.
Overshadowed by parallel railroad lines, the eastern section of the Sandy & Beaver canal went into disuse; the middle division was too difficult and too incomplete to use; the western section from Hanover to Bolivar was left for the state to take over.vii
Ball, Aultman & Co. began in 1855 a season of expanded production, but a fire on the night of May 5 destroyed most of their plant. Though handicapped, they produced 12 Hussey reapers in time for the harvest and rebuilt the plant.
Almost primitive up to 1830 and with only meager mechanical development up to 1850, agriculture went through a swift transition concurrent with the early period of Aultman activity. Up to 1830 the farmer produced chiefly for himself and family. With the advantage of machinery, he raised crops largely to sell.
(Missing bit here.) …system under the competition of railroads, but it continued to be a busy and beneficial thoroughfare, reaching into regions yet untouched by rails.
The Ohio & Pennsylvania railroad opened its line through from Pittsburgh to Chicago early in 1856 and on August the three divisions comprising it – the Pennsylvania division, the Ohio division and the Indiana division – were consolidated and the name changed to the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Company. Stark County, by this time, owned $105,000 worth of its stock, selling the stock subsequently for $127,000 to redeem the bonds by which the county had raised money for its investment.
Bell, Aultman & Co. weathered a miner panic of 1857 to become stronger and busier than ever, in this year producing 1,000 agricultural machines, demonstrating the superiority of its reapers, threshers and mowers in competitive tests in various parts of the country. Its most significant victory, in a great field demonstration at Syracuse N.Y. brought widespread favor for the Aultman machines.
C. Russell & Co. went into production of a reaper, called the Peerless, at Massillon, in competition with Aultman.
The Aultman plant in 1863 was busier than ever; farm machinery stood in demand, so that greater crops might be planted and harvested for the people at home and for the army in the field. Cornelius Aultman and his associates were prevailed upon by enterprising Akron men to establish a branch factory there.
The Aultman Company increased its capital stock to $450,000, and at a later date to $1,000,000 for the Canton plant only, setting up a separate capital structure for the Akron plant.
The Pittsburgh, Ft Wayne & Chicago railroad was sold under foreclosure at Cleveland. It was leased subsequently for 999 years dating from July 1, 1869 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and its parent, the Pennsylvania Company.
Dormant since 1845, the project for a railway line between Cleveland and Canton was revived and a charter obtained for the Akron & Canton Railway (The Valley Railway), but delay again confronted its development.
The Valley Railway set its capital at $3,000,000 and in 1871 went forward with plans to extend a line from Cleveland, by way of Akron to Canton and on through Tuscarawas and Carroll counties to Bowerstown in Harrison county, where it might tap the coal fields and connect with the Panhandle Railway.
Influential citizens of Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Wheeling and other towns along the projected route of the Valley Railway met in January 1872 at Akron. James A. Saxton of Canton presided. The Cleveland representatives pledged toward its financing $500,000, Akron $150,000 and Canton $150,000. Subscription books were opened at each of the cities and Canton was first to announce her quota had been raised. Akron reported the same success soon thereafter and, in due course, Cleveland subscribed $508,000. Saxton and George Cook of Canton along with five other men, were elected directors April 24.
David L. King of Akron, in 1875 president of the projected Valley Railroad from Cleveland to Canton, balked in his efforts to get it financed in this country, went to England. He was about to conclude the sale of bonds to English Capitalists when the House of Commons discredited American railroad securities on the basis of the Jay Cooke & Co. failure and other depression fears. Mr. King was forced to return empty handed, but he did not give up.
Work on the Valley Railroad, after all its financial vicissitudes, was well started in 1878. President King spiked the first rail at Akron Oct. 26 and from that moment the laying of track went forward with vigor, south to Canton and north to Cleveland.
Late in the year Canton became the beneficiary of another and equally important railroad project, the Connotton Valley Railway. It was developed by wealthy owners of coal property in the neighborhood of Dellroy, namely C.G. Patterson of Boston, N.A,. Smith of New York, G.L. Ingersoll of Cleveland, C.C. Shober of Carrolton and others.
They conceived it as a narrow gauge (3 feet) line of track, adequate and well operated for the transportation of coal, other freight and passengers, from a junction with the Panhandle at Bowerstown on the south, through Canton north to Fairport on Lake Erie and on to Cleveland.
They bought at court sale the little Ohio & Toledo line, laid between Carrollton and Minerva, which in 1878 was in financial difficulties. They extended it to Dellroy in 1879 and pushed toward Canton.
The Valley Railroad was completed from Cleveland to Canton in the winter of 1879-80 and the first train came through from the northern terminus January 28, 1880. Regular train service began February 2.
Soon thereafter, the Connotton Valley Railway came up from Oneida and Carrollton to Canton, then work completed with a rush in May 1880. At the same time construction was pushed to Bowerstown. It was a memorable occasion when on May 15 an excursion train came on the excellent narrow gauge line, bringing 500 enthusiasts from Carrollton, Dellroy and other points; the engine, two baggage cars, two passengers and four flat cars bedecked and crowded.
The Repository began its story of the event: “Energy begets success.” It was a compliment to the backers of the line, who with their own money, asking no loans, selling no bonds, calling only for free right-of-way in each community, built it.
The company placed a similar “special” train at the disposal of leading Canton citizens May 17 and they traversed the line to Carrollton, marveling at the Robertsville tunnel and Montgomery “cut”.
Regular passenger service began a schedule of two trains daily in each direction May 18, 1880. The company went forward with construction of the two northern branches, through Middlebranch, Hartville, Congress Lake, Suffield, Magadore, Brimfield, Kent, Twinsburgh and Bedford into Cleveland – and at an angle out of Kent toward Fairport, where coal from the Connotton Valley fields might be shipped to Canada, Milwaukee, St.Paul, Chicago and west.
i The Act referred to authorized the Ohio Canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth and the Miami Canal from Cincinnati to Dayton (later extended to Lake Erie). The Miami Canal was extended in two sections and completed to the Lake in 1847. A Legislative Act passed in 1849 changed the name of those three sections to the Miami & Erie Canal. That same Act changed the name of the Ohio Canal to the Ohio & Erie Canal though few people of the canal era ever called the Ohio Canal by any other name.
ii The initial name of the town was Fulton, the Canal prefix being added in 1830. When Fulton was established in 1826, Stark County included an additional township, Franklin, to the north. This was ‘lost’ in 1840 when Summit County was formed.
iii There is some evidence that not all contractors provided a standard four gills of whiskey a day even at the beginning of canal construction. Apparently, the practice of providing whiskey at all was stopped by all, or most, contractors within a year, not on moral grounds, but because the practice was too expensive for contractors to continue
iv The Sandy & Beaver Canal contained two tunnels, both on the summit level between Guilford and Hanoverton.
v When a project to link Canton with the canal at Massillon via an eight mile long horse-drawn railway was declared an engineering impossibility due to the steep grades between the two towns, and a waterway north was blocked by unfavorable terrain, the group of influential Canton businessmen turned their sights onto a waterway, south. In 1831, the State Legislature was approached to authorize an examination of the Nimishillen and Sandy creeks from “the forks” south of Canton to the Ohio canal near Bolivar with the object of improving those streams with slackwater dams and short stretches of canal. The examination was approved, and a Mr. Fields did the survey work. A Charter was given by the State to form the Nimishillen and Sandy Navigation Company that next year (1832). Stock subscriptions were slow until the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company broke ground in 1834. The Nimishillen and Sandy project was altered to tie into the former canal near Sandyville and the Nimishillen and Sandy Navigation Company stockholders met formally on December 25, 1834 to elect officers, and directors and appoint an engineer for their project. The sites for two reservoirs northwest of 6th St and Walnut N.W. were to supply the canal with water until the forks of the Nimishillen were reached. Ground was broken in 1836 and contracts let for both ends of the approximately 12 miles of canal and slackwater. The nation’s financial ‘bubble’ burst in the spring of 1837 and work on the Nimishillen and Sandy canal was suspended. By the late 1840s when the country’s economy had improved enough for the Sandy & Beaver project to be revived, Canton’s businessmen were focusing their hopes on the fledgling Pennsylvania and Ohio railroad and the Nimishillen and Sandy project was not revived. .
vi There was never any danger the canal company would lose it’s charter if the January deadline was not met. One of the principal investors had pledged $50,000 with the stipulation that the canal be finished by that date.
vii In actuality, the entire length of the Sandy & Beaver canal was operational beginning with the boating season of 1850 and carried a respectable amount of traffic. The canal company was under-funded, however, and when a dam on one of the reservoirs on the summit failed in the spring of 1852 causing local flood damage and losing support of the local communities, it became impossible for the canal company to survive. The entire line was auctioned off in sections approximately ½ mile long in March of 1854. A group from Sandyville obtained the western-most six miles of canal, refurbished it, and ‘sold’ it to the state for $1.00. The state took ownership of that section in December 1856 and ran it as a water and cargo feeder to the Ohio Canal at Bolivar until the Sandy & Beaver aqueduct across the Tuscarawas River collapsed in 1883.