Sandy and Beaver Canal Archives - The American Canal Society

Canal Comments-The Saga at Sandyville, Part 1 – by Terry K. Woods

Terry’s introduction.

The ‘doings’ of the Lessees, those 21 or 23 men who “administered” to the canals from June of 1861 into December of 1878 has always been a bit nebulous. And just where was the demarcation line between the duties of the State Board of Public Works and the Lessees? They both had Board Members and they both had Resident Engineers. These next two columns on the Saga at Sandyville will do nothing to clear things up. You will see, perhaps, that even those ‘on the scene’ were absolutely confused.

In the meantime, now that Spring is here, it is time to get out along the canal routes and find those artifacts and structures that you always felt, “the next time I get out in the field I’ll find it”. Lock 29 on the western division of the S. & B., is featured in the next two columns. That site I’ve found, and lost and found, and, . . .but you get the idea.

SAGA AT SANDYVILLE

James Kelly of Cuyahoga County, had been a prolific contractor on the Sandy & Beaver Canal on all three of its divisions. Then, after the collapse of the Cold Run Reservoir embankment in early 1852, he was hired by the canal company for the unenviable job of “trouble-shooter,” to pay off the ever increasing number of creditors with the ever decreasing amount of incoming funds.

By mid-1853, it had become obvious that no miracle concerning the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company was forthcoming. All the surplus real-estate with any value had already been sold. All that remained was the canal right-away itself and a few unencumbered water rights. Kelly had done what he could by spreading the smaller and smaller amounts of cash that canal tolls brought in from time to time to squelch the screams of the more voracious creditors.

Kelly had probably taken on, and completed, more contracts in building the canal than anyone else. More than half of his payments had been in “company bonds.” Kelly, in his current position was well aware that the canal company was going under and decided that if he wanted anything from the collapse he had better get it quickly.

Therefore, in early 1853, James Kelly initiated a law suit against the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company for his back wages. An avalanche of claims followed and the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company declared bankruptcy on June 28, 1853. On March 6, 1854, at a master commissioner’s sale in New Lisbon, that portion of the Sandy & Beaver Canal within the State of Ohio was divided into 82 Parcels and auctioned off.

As payment for his suit against the company, Kelly asked for, and was awarded, parcels 80, 81 and 82 of the Sandy & Beaver Canal. This line ran from two rods above lock 29 in Sandyville to the junction with the Ohio & Erie Canal in Bolivar, which was approximately six miles in lenght. The deed for this land and water-rights was transferred to Kelly on March 7, 1856.

Sandyville had prospered during its brief encounter with the active Sandy & Beaver Canal. The grist mill at the southern edge of town powered by the canal was a receiver and shipper on the canal, as were several coal mines that had sprung up in the area. A group of local citizens set about to get their link to the outside world reattached. A man by the name of William Nelson appears to have been the spokesman for the group. Shortly after Kelly had received his deed, or perhaps even before, Nelson had contacted the State’s Board of Public Works to ascertain if they had any interest in obtaining that six miles of the S & B as a “feeder” to the Ohio Canal. Their only stipulation was that the State maintain the waterway so it could carry traffic into and out of Sandyville. Kelly sold his S. & B. canal lands and water-rights to the group from Sandyville for $5,000 on August 2, 1856.

The 1912 Topo map. The Ohio and Erie can be seen running through Bolivar.

The Board of Public Works had the waterway examined and surveyed. They reported that the wooden aqueduct across the Tuscarawas River leading to the junction with the Ohio Canal at Bolivar, and the lock at the head of the long slackwater pool below Sandyville, were both in poor condition. In addition, the canal banks had been cut in several places by local residents wishing to regain access to their lands cut off by the canal. After some deliberation, the Board agreed to take over the canal if the banks were first repaired. On December 29, 1856, for the sum of $1.00, the western-most six miles of the Sandy & Beaver Canal became a feeder to and part of the Ohio & Erie Canal.

The final description of the portion of the S & B that became part of the State’s canal system, however, only included that portion from below Lock 29 in Sandyville to Bolivar. That was a small shortening of a bit over 2 rods, but it placed the Sandyville terminus approximately a quarter of a mile below the warehouses in the village. Either that discrepancy went unnoticed or the actual foreshortening didn’t seem that important at the time.

There was some business on that portion of the canal after the turnover. The Public Works report for 1859 stated that up until August of that year the Sandy & Beaver feeder had carried 33,000 bushels of wheat, 41,000 feet of lumber, and 3,213 tons of coal out of the village and 278 barrels of salt, lime and fish and 91,400 feet of lumber into it. The shortened boating season was the result of a collapse of a portion of the wooden aqueduct at Bolivar. A statement from a boatman’s diary in 1863 indicates that at least one trip was made into Sandyville that year.

So Sandyville was connected to the outside world via the Sandy & Beaver Feeder. BUT, in 1868 the following resolution was offered in the Ohio State Congress, . . . . .

“H.R. No. 111: Whereas the citizens of Sandyville and vicinity petitioned the Ohio Legislature authorizing the State of Ohio to adopt, as part of the public works, that portion of the Sandy & Beaver Canal which lies between Bolivar and Sandyville as a navigable feeder to the Ohio Canal; and whereas an Act was passed the 9th. Of April, 1856, adopting it on condition that the owners of said canal should put that part of the canal in good repair, and whereas, in pursuance of the inducement held out by such Legislative Act, and the construction put on it by the people of Sandyville and vicinity, they, for the purpose of having communication with the Ohio Canal, expended $7,000 in buying the right of way, paying (wages?) and putting said feeder in good repair; and whereas, afterwards the Board of Public Works, in their resolution of acceptance, only accepted that portion of the canal between Bolivar and the lock at the head of the slackwater pool, and so construed the law so as not to include the said lock and, whereas, by reason of such constriction the work is entirely valueless to the people of Sandyville and vicinity, as they have no connection with the Ohio Canal and derive no benefit from the expenditure of said money, therefore, “Resolved” – That the committee on Public Works be and is hereby Instructed to inquire into the justice and validity of said claim, and report to the House by Bill or otherwise”.

Such a Bill was rendered by the House during the 1869/70 Session to repair Sandyville Lock just above the Sandy & Beaver feeder and make it passable for canal boats. The Bill also authorized an amount of ‘up to’ $3,000 for the repair of the lock.

The group of Sandyville citizens that had bought that canal section from Kelly and handed it over to the State 14 years before, legally, still owned that section containing the lock that the State had not accepted. The canal above the lock belonged to owners of the Sandyille grist mill. They should have been a part of the current group agitating to repair the lock. Subsequent events, however, proved that wasn’t true. So what came next is an extremely convoluted, though interesting, story – and the subject of a future column.

i Maretta College, Special Collection, transcribed by George S. Hackett, December 05, 2003.

Sandy and Beaver Notes from Vodrey and Gard

Elsewhere on this site you will find a post about selling some recently discovered books; The Sandy and Beaver Canal, written by William H. Vodrey and Max Gard. Along with the books came a small folder with some notes the men had gathered as they researched the canal. It is a mix of hotel reservation notes, some lock locations and a listing of canal boats and their masters. For those researching the canal, this might have clues to potential research locations.

These are all in pdf files, so you will need to click on the link. Each file has anywhere from 2 to 5 pages.

001- Miscellaneous notes

002- Paper mill history

003- Mills and Locks

004 – Location of locks

005- An 1806 article from Browne’s Western Calendar about Columbiana County

006- An article about Sprucevale

007- The Sunlit Road by Tom T. Jones

008- A 1948 letter from M. Rubiena Ikirt with a listing of boats and the masters, circa 1847- 1848

009- A listing of boats and masters, circa 1849-1852

010- A 1948 hotel reservation, notes for a talk about the Rebecca Furnace, and a 1946 announcement for the Salem Hobby Show.

Canal Comments- The Big Ditch; An Outlet To The Seven Seas, by Terry K. Woods

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 6^th 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.

Sandy and Beaver Canal Book

After I posted the articles about Max Gard, and the Sandy and Beaver maps, I was contacted by Max’s grandson who said that he had a few copies of The Sandy and Beaver Canal book in his garage, and asked if he could send them to me.

This book was written by R. Max Gard, J.C. Hassler, and William H. Vodrey, Jr., in the 1950s and is the best work on the canal. The trio hiked and studied the canal and carefully drafted a large map that they included with the book. The original map was in two halves, each about 24 by 36 inches, and was printed on a lightweight paper that could be folded and placed in a pocket in the back of the book. Luckily, I have one of these books in the ACS archives as part of the Barber Collection and it had the maps. I had the maps scanned and have them up on the map page.

The book is available as a free download on hathi trust if you like your books as digital files.

The 18 books that came in the mail are softcover reprints of the original with the pocket in the rear, but no maps. So I had them reprinted on 11 by 17 paper, and they are very readable. So if you wish to add this book to your library, you can purchase a copy for $23.00 (20.00 plus 3 for S&H). Just send us an email at americancanals@gmail.com, and we will get one out to you.

The Welker Feed Mill – Canal Comments

By Terry K Woods

Today’s column is of a mill once operated by water from a section of the Sandy & Beaver Canal in Tuscarawas County. It was written from a taped interview in 1975 with the one time owner of the mill in Sandyville. (1)

Now Sandyville, in itself, is a very interesting place. When the Bolivar Dam was erected in the mid 1930s this town was literally moved to higher ground. As a result, it is very difficult (spelled IMPOSSIBLE) to locate much of the canal or any artifacts in this area.

The foundation to the mill can be found and a a bit of that part of the canal that was used as the mill race until 1935 but very little else. There was a lock (No 29) in or near the town. It was rebuilt by the Lessees in 1872, but I have not been able to confidently determine its location.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past 40 years scouring the area for that lock location. Last March I spent a portion of three days down there. As I say, I’m not sure I know the exact location, though I thought I found it once in 1985.

THE WELKER FEED MILL ON THE SANDY & BEAVER CANAL

Our mill was located near the bend in the Big Sandy Creek just to the southeast of the old center of the village of Sandyville. One cornerstone of the mill bore the date 1836. That was also the year in which the Sandy & Beaver Canal was being built across the northern portion of Tuscarawas County.

The canal crossed Nimishillen Creek in a slack-water pool a half-mile east of the mill. Even after boats stopped using the canal, the dam across the Nimishillen provided a steady water supply to run the mill and the guard lock on the west bank of the creek acted as head gates to the mill race. The mill race consisted of a half-mile of the Sandy & Beaver Canal bed and a channel of a 100 yards or so that had been dug at right angles to the canal. The mill sat between the canal and the Big Sandy and our tail race flowed right into that creek.

I don’t know who built the mill originally. I think a man named Rolland or Voelum owned it at one time. There was also a McKinney mixed up in it somewhere. The way we got it was that my grandfather had gone in on a fellow’s note and had to make it good when that fellow defaulted. The only way my grandad could get anything out of that deal was to take over the mill. That was in 1893. My dad, Theodore “Dory” Welker, moved into the mill in 1894. It wasn’t running then and he had an awful time making it go.

He hired professional millers because he wasn’t one himself. Finally, around 1900, there was an old guy by the name of Charlie Seibert. He came to our place looking for a job and my dad took him in. He was a miller personified and knew all about the milling business. He just kind of made his home with us for the next 25 years. Occasionally some big company would have trouble with their mill and Old Charlie would leave us for a while until it straightened out, but he always came back to our place. He kept that old mill running “like an Ingersoll”.

Dad originally called the mill the “Sandy Valley Roller Mill,” but it was known mostly as the Welker Feed Mill. I spent all of my boyhood along the canal and must have skated a million miles between our mill and the dam and back. The Canton cut-off (otherwise known as the Nimishillen &Sandy Canal) joined the Sandy & Beaver Canal along our section. They joined at right angles to each other. You could plainly see the towpath and that the channel was intended to be a canal, though I don’t know if it ever held water. I did a lot of trapping for skunk and the like in that cut-off when I was a boy.

I joined Dad in running the mill in 1918. Sometime between 1920 and 1925 we rebuilt the dam and guard lock. We replaced the original wood and rubble dam with one of concrete 154-feet-long. The eastern end of the new dam rested on the original stone abutments of canal days, but the western end rested on the earthen embankment of the creek. The western stone abutment from canal days lies 50 yards or so west of the concrete dam. At the time we installed a concrete head gate at the lock. The original wooden gates were still fairly intact. The lock chamber had been lined with wood and most of the planking was still in pretty good shape.

During the Depression, we ran the mill from 6:00 in the morning until midnight and never took in a dollar! Everything was done by barter and the only way we could tell our profit was to see how big a pile of wheat we had.

I was never too interested in the history of the canal when I was a boy, but I do remember the “Old Timers” telling about the old canal warehouses. I believe there were two that stood along each bank of the canal near the center of the old town near where our mill race left the main canal. They both burned down in 1898 and some say the fires were deliberately set to get rid of them.

When I was a young man, the B. & O. had a spur running from the Sandyville Station into Magnolia. A train went to Magnolia maybe two or three times a week to take groceries, pick up milk, and distribute the few passengers who wanted to go from one town to another. That train consisted of an engine and one car that carried passengers in one end and luggage and freight in the other. You could see a lot of the old canal from that train, maybe you still could, because those bottoms up there are really in no man’s land.

The State built the Bolivar Dam on the Big Sandy in 1936 and the old village and mill were moved to higher ground. That part of the mill that had been built out over the water was torn down and the rest moved to its present location in the northwest corner formed by the B. & O. Railroad and Route #183. The B. & O. tracks were also moved to higher ground and now cross the plain on a high earthen fill. That embankment now covers the junction of the Sandy & Beaver Canal and the Canton cut-off but you can still see faint traces of the cut-off as it comes out from under the railroad embankment and heads north.

Shortly after the mill was closed someone, probably disgruntled farmers, dynamited the dam – blew the whole center out of it. You can still find the ends of the dam as well as both original stone abutments and what remains of the guard lock. The foundation of the mill is still there at the end of the race. In 1933 we had built a new penstock and, in the winter, when there is not much foliage, it should be easy to find.

The mill had two turbine wheels; one rated at 43 h.p. and the other at 36 h.p. Both ratings were with nine feet of water. When we closed the mill we pulled both wheels out and sold one to Mr. Wilson whose mill is still up along the Ohio Canal in Cuyahoga County. He wanted the other wheel but when we went down there one day we found someone had broken the wheel up with sledges and hauled the chunks of cast iron over the mill race and away. The Depression was still going pretty strong and they probably wanted what money that wheel would bring for scrap.

My son Bob, came into the business in 1947 after serving in the Army. Dad died in1950 and Bob and I continued in the feed business until the Fall of 1972 when the warehouse was sold to the Morrison Brothers.

(1) As told to Terry Woods (on tape) during a hike in the area in the early spring of 1975.

Canal Comments – Lock 54 on the Sandy and Beaver Canal

By Terry K Woods, with guest author Denver L. Walton^ⁱ

I’ve resurrected the tale of a hike our old friend Denver Walton and his oldest son Terry, took in 1975 in some very rugged country along the eastern division of the Sandy & Beaver Canal in western Pennsylvania.

My oldest son Bob and I did some similar hiking along a different part of that canal in 1979. It certainly beats the rather tame hiking I’ve been doing lately along the bike trails here id Stark County, but that is fun, too.

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Both the best and worst hiking in the upper Ohio country can be found in the valley of Little Beaver creek, shared by Beaver County, Pennsylvania and Columbiana County, Ohio. The trails are unmatched for scenic beauty, a variety of plants and wildlife, and unique historical discoveries.

With the recent renewal of interest in the Beaver Division Canal, it seems appropriate to take a look at one of the other canals of Beaver County. While the Sandy & Beaver Canal is usually considered an Ohio canal, its eastern terminus, three locks, and one dam were located in Pennsylvania.

The canal was built by private financing and was intended to provide a connecting route between Pennsylvania’s and Ohio’s canal systems. The route would pass through New Lisbon, Ohio, an influential early Ohio community that had been by-passed by the State’s canal system.

The idea and route were feasible, but a country-wide financial panic and problems in drilling what became the canal’s memorable features – two tunnels – delayed the opening of the entire canal until the season of 1850. Competition from the P & O canal and local railroads, plus the loss of a reservoir on the summit, spelled bankruptcy for the fledgling waterway in 1853. Portions of the eastern and western divisions carried limited traffic for up to several more decades, though most historians now agree that the through canal only operated for two or three years. One popular legend states that only one boat ever traveled the entire length of the canal and that had to be virtually carried over dry spots in order to maintain the company’s charter!

Legends about the Sandy & Beaver Canal are many, but one fact is true. Over 180 years ago, a massive effort was undertaken to build and complete this waterway and evidence of that effort exists today.

It is most fortunate that “progress” has bypassed the Beaver Creek gorge, for we now have a delightful historic and scenic area to explore. The remains of many old canal locks are scattered through the valley, some remarkably intact, many in ruins. Each, though, is a treasure to hikers and amateur archeologists.

Below Fredericktown, Ohio, where the North Fork of the Little Beaver joins the combined waters of the Middle and West Forks, the gorge deepens. Hiking becomes more difficult and the Locksites less accessible. Before the Little Beaver empties its waters into the Ohio River it crosses the Ohio/Pennsylvania Line several times. As a result, three of the 57 locks on the canal’s Eastern Division were in Pennsylvania. It is these three locks that we are concerned with at present.

Lock 54 is located in the most inaccessible part of the gorge and thus had not tempted me in twenty years of canal-chasing. This spring (1975), however, I was determined to find it. After studying the topographic maps of the area, my son, Terry, and I decided to strike out overland instead of following the creek from the nearest bridge up-stream or down-stream from the lock. We felt that hiking through open fields over the ridge would be easier than along the creek through the gorge.

We secured permission from the local landowner, Frank Fisher, to park near his barn and walk over his fields. When we discussed our plans with Mr. Fisher, however, he suggested we detour down a near-by hollow to the Creek rather than try to hike over “Fisher’s Point”.

Once we reached the valley floor, we followed the creek downstream on an old trail that teased more than it helped. High water prevented us from following the Creek too closely. Eventually, and not unexpectedly, we came upon Lock 53., a massive stone structure shining in the waning sunlight.

Below Lock 53, the canal left the creek and followed a separate channel which, in flood times, frames a large island. This area of the Creek is known as Island Run, site of Ohio’s early oil producing area. The State Line crosses the island’s mid-section, thus the creek and canal pass into Pennsylvania at this point.

The Creek rounded its far bend and wound closer back toward the canal channel. Then, suddenly, the walls of Lock 54 appeared in the shadows ahead. We studied the lock structure and surroundings. We then realized how good Mr. Fisher’s advice to follow the creek had been, for the gorge wall above the lock proved to be a vertical cliff!

We took a half-dozen pictures, rested a bit, then moved on downstream, hoping to find an easier route back to the highway. Our hopes were rewarded. We ran across an old railroad grade and followed it for a mile or so to a point of easy egress from the gorge.

We later learned from a Sandy & Beaver Canal Buff in east Liverpool, that the railroad had been built to haul coal from Island Run coal mines to the plant that generated electricity for a local traction line.

Just below Lock 54 the creek had curved back into Ohio. On an earlier weekend, my wife Genie and I had hiked in along the old public road to see Lock 56, a complex structure several hundred feet long, with an entry gate at the upper end and the actual lock below, adjacent to the stone pier of the first covered bridge in Ohio and the first crossing of the lower part of Little Beaver Creek.

Further down-stream, the creek crosses the State Line for the last time, placing the two remaining locks of the canal in Beaver County. Another covered bridge had crossed the creek, precisely at the State Line, and residents still refer to it as the “Beaver County Bridge”. Both piers remain. The west pier in a trio of previous bridges here can be seen from the present Highway 68 Highway Bridge. Lock 56 (now gone) was located just above the east pier where the coal tipple is located at the end of the railroad line from Negley.

Lock 57 was located at the west end of Liberty Street in Glasgow. A depression marks the location of the canal channel, but no trace of the lock remains. Below the lock, the canal entered the Ohio River through stone walls. These are no longer visible, but there’s a big pile of cut, dressed stone lying on the river bank.

This is the eastern-most point of the Sandy & Beaver Canal.

i This article, in a somewhat longer form, appeared in the Spring 1975 issue of the Beaver County (Pennsylvania) Newsletter.

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 Fredericktown^ⁱ. 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.

The Gard and Vodrey Sandy and Beaver Canal maps

I found these two maps in the back pocket of the wonderfully researched and written, “The Sandy and Beaver Canal” by Ronald Max Gard and William H. Vodrey, Jr. The book was published by the East Liverpool Historical Society, East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1952. There was a reprint in 1972, and as far as I can see, no one has new copies for sale. The book can be found in some libraries and on the various book sellers, although finding a copy with the maps will cost you a good bit. I also found an old link to a CD copy of the book, but it was dead.

If you have an interest in the canal, chapter 20 is titled; Guide to the Canal, and it is a structure by structure guide for the 90 locks and 30 dams along the 73 mile-long canal. However, the authors caution that their map is a reconstruction based on a couple period maps and that they were not able to “reconcile” a few locks.

Terry Woods, who was a friend of both men, and served as the president of the Canal Society of Ohio and of this organization, sent along this note;

In the intervening years (since the publication of the book) a great deal of additional information has surfaced. So, while the book is terrific and I encourage everyone interested in the nation’s canal era to read it if available, the guide is not that accurate. The middle division is great. I always thought the Eastern division was accurate, though I’ve just been engaged in a series of e-mail sessions with a couple of historians who, through intense efforts in field work and electronic map looking, are attempting to correct some errors in Max’s Eastern Division guide. Max had some serious errors in the guide of the Western Division. I did some intense field work in the early 90s and published a typewritten guide to the western division around the turn of the century. However, more work needs to be done on it.

After reading through Terry’s guide, I must say it is a remarkable bit of field investigation. However, he welcomes any corrections or other comments. I have been using it to update the canal sites map.