Tag: Ohio canal

Cleveland Center – Canal Comments

By Terry K Woods

As the Ohio Canal neared completion from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, many in the small village of Cleveland, Ohio began to believe that their village was strategically placed on the shore of the Great Lake between the junction of the Erie and Ohio Canals that it was destined to become an important world trade center. One man who had that belief, and attempted to make it a reality, was James S. Clarke, a former Sheriff of Cuyahoga County and, in the decade of the 1830s, one of the biggest real estate speculators in the area. In 1831, James Clarke, Richard Hilliard (a wealthy dry goods merchant), and Edmond Clark (a prominent banker) formed a partnership and purchased 50 acres of land just south of Cleveland’s village limits.

The acreage constituted the southern portion of a peninsula bordered on three sides by the Cuyahoga River and located just south of the river’s first great bend. This land was then known as Case’s Point, but is currently that part of the Cleveland Flats known as Ox Bow Bend. The three-man-partnership platted a development on their acreage and called it CLEVELAND CENTRE.i This paper village featured streets named after foreign countries – Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia, all radiating from a hub called Gravity Place. This, the promoters decided, was an appropriate name for a future center of world trade and business. Cleveland Centre was ideally located just south of the new Ohio Canal basin (Merwin’s) where canal boats and lake vessels interchanged cargo.

Land lots in the new development initially sold well, and soon a small village had sprouted there. Commission houses, warehouses, and docks were built along the western side of the village primarily on Merwin Street. A residential neighborhood formed on the eastern side of the village along Columbus Street (now Columbus Avenue), the main thoroughfare running north and south through the Centre. Clark gave the area a boost in 1835 when he financed the construction of the first bridge across the Cuyahoga River in the Cleveland area – the Columbus Street Bridge

In 1836 the area received another boost. Clarke and others sponsored an additional new development named Wileyville. This new village was on land directly across the river from Cleveland Centre. The two villages were connected by the new Columbus Street bridge. The initial prosperity of the area was so great that it attracted Cleveland’s attention and that city annexed Cleveland Centre in 1835.

Then the nationwide Financial Panic of 1837 struck and all early chances of the Cleveland Centre district becoming a center of world trade collapsed along with the nation’s economy.

During the nation’s economic doldrums that lasted for more than seven years, many working class immigrants moved from building the canals to being out of work from Cleveland’s industry. Also during this period (1838) the first Roman Catholic Church in the Cleveland area, St. Marys, was constructed in the Centre to cater to the many them Irish-Catholic local residents. Incidentally, it was also during this period that James S. Clarke found himself financially ruined.

The nation’s economy finally righted itself in the mid-to-late 1840s and the canal trade began booming again, however, severe flooding of the Cuyahoga in 1847 slowed the Centre’s rebirth. Then with the beginning of the 1850s another specter loomed over the horizon of Cleveland Centre.

Attracted to this area of Cleveland by the industry and commercial district built near the canal/lake interconnection, railroads began entering the area in a big way during the mid-1850s.

The Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad entered the Centre first. In 1851 the railroad purchased 12 acres on the south side of the Centre – taking up almost one quarter of the original development. The C. C. & C. RR constructed an engine roundhouse and other service and yard facilities on that land.

In the immediate years that followed, many of the area’s new industries and manufacturing facilities were constructed to be near the railroad. Often the construction of these industrial complexes necessitated that portions of the streets that radiated from Gravity Place be vacated. Over the years much of the beauty and symmetry of the Centre was lost. The residential neighborhood on the east side of the development also suffered disruption from the invasion of the railroads and industry.

The canal’s terminus, including the commodious Merwin’s Basin was transferred from state to city control and leased to the Connoton Valley Railroad during the mid 1870s. A new canal terminus, weigh lock, and outlet lock into the Cuyahoga River were built some three miles south. Those facilities were operational by the beginning of the 1878 boating season and the original terminus closed.

The old Cleveland Centre drifted toward no longer being a desirable place for a residential area and many moved away. With the loss of the majority of its parishioners, the Catholic Church, now known locally as St. Mary’s of the Flats, closed its doors in 1880. Even the name of Cleveland Centre faded from the memory of Clevelanders and by the late nineteenth Century, the area was known, city wide, only as The Flats.

When Cleveland and the entire area of northeastern Ohio experienced a devastating loss of industry in the mid-Twentieth Century, that Cleveland area known as The Flats and the remains of Cleveland Centre languished, too. That entire area became known nationally only for its closed factories, and businesses and empty warehouses.

That area of Cleveland experienced a brief rebirth as an entertainment and recreational center during the late 1970s and through the ‘80s, but most of the portion that once contained the Centre was too far south to reap much of the economic benefit. And even that small upbeat in the local economy soon faded.

Recently however, with the dawning of the twenty-first century, a number of acres in the southern part of The Flats, that area that contained the Centre, and was formerly owned by the C., C. & C . RR and its successors, was obtained by the City and re-purposed for recreational purposes. Parts of the old Cleveland Centre development are now home to facilities as the Commodore’s Club Marina, and the Cleveland Rowing Foundation. Then Cleveland Metro-Parks initiated their Rivergate Park which featured a riverside restaurant called Merwin’s.

With the Cleveland Centre area becoming a trendy destination once again, proposals (we hesitate to call them plans) have been made to have historical markers placed in the area commemorating the historical existence of Cleveland Centre, and that the original radial streets and hub at Gravity Place be marked and lighted so that people, both on the ground and in the air could see, remember, and commemorate this early attempt to build an international trade center on Ohio’s north shore. Along with James C. Clarke’s spirit, we can do little more than hope.

(Note that this article was first written a few years back and as the links show, much development has taken place in this area.)

iA portion of the information for this column came from Cleveland Historical.

Canal Comments – Canal Characters I Have Known; R. Max Gard

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.

Canal Comments # 107

Terry K. Woods

June 14, 2016

LOCKING THROUGH:

I believe you can tell from the length and content of my columns that my time of writing long, extensively researched pieces is over. In the famous words of Jim Baluchi in the movie “CONTINENTAL DIVIDE”, I prefer writing a column over a book because the column is short. Still, I have a file of data that, if I live long enough, and get a tremendous surge of AMBITION may result in a book on Canal Operation. In the meantime, lets delve into the contents of that file and come up with some information on the operation of “Locking Through” on the Ohio Canal.

I’ve been able to collect very few accounts of actual boatmen performing the Locking Through task and their descriptions vary somewhat, but let’s take a read and see if we can come up with any conclusions. First, an excerpt from a letter written by James Dillow Robinson to Terry K. Woods, July 16, 1971.

Dear Terry:

., and now I’ll try to explain and answer your questions of the command “Headway”.

Q. Who gave the command, “HEADWAY?”

A. The steersman.

Q. Were the mules unhitched while ‘locking through’?

A. From the boat. Towline released from the boat.

Q. Was boat snubbed to posts while in lock?

A. Lines were released from post after boat came to a stop. No lines attached to a boat while locking up or down.

“Headway” meant that the boat had momentum enough to make the lock and the teamster could ease up on towing so as to give slack to the towline so it could be released from the deadeye on the boat. After releasing line, mules resumed their speed to the lock.

“The command “Headway” meant to quit towing and was given at each lock whether going up or down stream. The command “Headway” was given when a boat came within about 400’ of a lock.

“To give the word “headway”, the steersman had to consider how fast the boat was being towed, how much draught. And also the current of the raceway if close to a lock. Too much headway could mean a broken snubbing line or a post pulled from the ground. I’ve never heard of either happening, but, if it did, it would mean the boat would crash against the apron or miter sill or the upper gates would be damaged, assuming the headway was right and the boat responded to the rudder.”

Another snippet of how boatmen locked through comes from Page 162 of Pearl Robert Nye’s unpublished manuscript about a fictional trip he and his family took from Cleveland to Portsmouth in 1888. Pearl’s father died in 1885 and an older Pearl, living in a rooming house in Akron in 1939, began writing this tale of what such a trip might have been like had his father lived. The story is fictional, but the details and technical facts of the canal appear to be accurate. In this excerpt, Pearl describes their passage through Lock 19 in Summit County on the Ohio Canal at Black Dog Crossing. This is the point where, now, Memorial Parkway crosses the site of the canal’s buried channel.

Locking through Lock 19 – Black Dog Crossing NYE 162

“The towline was unhooked from the (wippletree) team and cleared under the bridge, around gate (towpath side) and lower snubbing post, hooked to team, “straightened up” – and on. Soon it was over upper snubbing post and paddle stems thus making “all clear”.

“Soon the word “HO!” was given (or signal – as the water roar often made it hard to hear) and the team was stopped. The forward way “snubbed” (stopped), gates shut (closed). (I am using canal language or tongue), the boat was pulled back (by the “swell” of water) to “rest on the lower gates and (touch) keep close against them until the boat rises above the “breast of the lock” – so as not to gather too much water into the rear cabin from the flow through the “paddles”.”

Yet another description of Locking Through comes from a taped interview I conducted in March of 1970 with Mrs. Silvia Klingler in Akron Ohio. Mrs. Klingler was 76 when I interviewed her and she estimated she was 10 or 11 when this particular story happened, the last year the canal boat KATHRINE, named after her Mother, actually worked carrying coal north from the mines in Tuscarawas County.

She related to me that, early in March of 1904 or 1905, Her Step-Dad and her Mother’s Brother started their two boats early, Her Step-Dad then had gotten into a fight with the Uncle’s “Roust-About” under the Barges Street Bridge in Akron before that first trip had really gotten started. Her Step-Dad was a big man and a great fighter. That may be why his opponent “cheated” by biting a thumb. Silvia never told me who won the fight, but her Step Dad got “Blood Poisoning from the bite and, after getting both boat loads of coal at Schilling’s Coal Bank in Elizabethtown, he took to his bed and left the running of the two boats to Silvia, her mother and one helper, a Mr.’ Burns. They ran the two boats back to Akron’s paper mill. Apparently the aftermath of the big fight greatly depleted both crews. Silvia then described the difficulty of Locking Through two boats with a three-person crew, “When we come tg a lock ya had ta lock up or down. Goin ta Akron ya had ta lock up. Ya had ta fill the lock with water. An it, it’s a pretty good half hour, ta take a boat through, because ya have ta, cross the lock gates, back and forth, shut the gates on one side and go back on the other. Ya have ta start up the team. Then ya have ta stop the team. Then ya have ta go back and see if the boat’s all right ————– start up again, n’ by that time the team was getten restless. They didn’t wanna start up. Then, they’d start up, Then they’d wanna run. So ya had ta hold back or they’d break the towline. – So it was a job ta get a boat through a lock.

“And comen back with just the three of us and two boats, one of us would have ta tie up one boat while we worked the other so the boat we weren’t worken on wouldn’t drift backwards – just the way the canal run.” So there we have three instances of Locking Through, though I’ll admit that Silvia’s example was probably unique.

You’ll notice that none of the examples describe beyond getting the boat into the lock. Which might mean that leaving a lock was pretty routine. Also you’ll also notice that each example was for going up stream. That may have been more difficult, because of the slight, but existent backward current in the canal. Since Pearl’s account was of a trip from Cleveland to Portsmouth, I wonder why he described an upward course through Lock 19. I think I want to assume that during normal operation, the team stopped towing when entering a lock at a command, but I’m not sure the team was unhitched while the boat was passing through the lock. Dillow’s State Boat was practically the only craft on the canal when he boated. Pearl had a unique situation in passing the towline around bridge supports. Pearl unhitched the mules at the team. Dillow unhitched the line from the boat. I don’t believe a working boatman with a minimal crew would have wanted to take the time to get the towline back up on the boat at each lock.

What are your thoughts on this? And have any of you heard of other descriptions of Locking Through?