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Canal Facts &
Excursion | N.B. & the Miami-Erie Canal | Thompson House “Fun on the Old
Canal” – Ralph May | Bicentennial Canal Marker - 2003 |
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New Bremen & The Miami-Erie CanaL The removal of
the Native Americans by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville opened Ohio to
Europeans who sought opportunity and relief from the political unrest at
home. Ohio became a State in 1803 and the Northwest Territory began to
attract many settlers. Word spread quickly throughout Europe that land
was available in the New World’s Great Black Swamp. The northern
Germans knew their expertise to build canals and drain swampland would make
the area the richest farmland they could imagine and they came to America in droves.
Before the Europeans arrived on the North American continent, Native peoples
had established trade routes and hunting traditions in northwest Ohio. The Auglaize
Trail, which roughly parallels our present day Rt. 66, began as an Indian
trading path. The Indians recognized the significance of the water flow
and used the land between the Miami River in Piqua and the St. Marys River in
St. Marys as a portage between the waterways. The trappers, traders,
and soldiers were also dependent on this passage to journey through the
Northwest Territory. The new State
of Ohio soon realized the need for a better transportation system. A
feasibility study was completed during 1822-1823 to find the best routes for
a canal system. One of the sites selected for the Miami-Erie Canal was
that oft-used portage across the divide along the old Auglaize Trail and near
the site of the future New Bremen. Twelve
thousand years ago, during Ohio’s last ice age, a glacier covered about two
thirds of present-day Ohio. As the ice melted and the weight of the
glacier carved new topography, a continental divide occurred just south of
New Bremen. All water to the north of what we know as “Amsterdam Road”
in New Bremen flows north to Lake Erie, and from there to the St. Lawrence
River. The water to the south of the
divide finds the Ohio River, eventually making its way to the Gulf of Mexico
via the Mississippi River. In New Bremen,
at Lock One the elevation is 516’ feet above the Ohio at Cincinnati and the
elevation from Lake Erie in Toledo is 374’. The Loramie Summit is a
tract of land 21 miles long from Lockington to New Bremen, the
northernmost point. In modern day New Bremen, the gentle slope is
barely noticeable, but the canal engineers faced a daunting task of designing
and constructing a series of locks and feeder lakes to regulate the level of
the water sufficiently to raise and lower the boats to travel the
canal. In 1828,
Congress granted Ohio 500,000 acres of unsold Federal lands to help finance
the northward expansion of the Miami-Erie Canal. The Ohio legislature
was convinced that the proposed canal was a worthwhile expense, and would
improve the economy for the entire state by providing a viable means of
transporting goods. The Bremen
Society, composed of men who founded St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in
1833, employed scouts to select a site for what was to become New
Bremen. Departing from Cincinnati, and searching throughout Ohio and
Indiana before making their selection, they “discovered” an ideal location.
Located at the edge of the fertile Black Swamp District on an existing trail
and partially cleared by Native Americans from long ago encampments, the site
of modern New Bremen must have stood out as being particularly desirable. The Society
was aware of the plan to locate the Miami-Erie Canal along this trail, which
would place the new town about midway between the major ports of Cincinnati
and Toledo. The strategic location persuaded the Bremen Society to
purchase eighty acres of Congress lands at the cost of one dollar per
acre. The plat of Bremen was recorded on June 11, 1833. Construction
of the canal began in 1825 and was completed through New Bremen in
1845. The immigrants from Germany, Ireland and France labored to
construct the engineering marvel of the time. The project
included 250 miles of canal and its reservoirs, Lake Loramie and Grand
Lake St. Marys. Hard work and
hand tools were used to dig this “miracle ditch” and defied all critics by
overcoming the obstacles of the terrain with a complicated system of locks
and feeder lakes. Trees were felled, stumps pulled, and men moved the earth
without the aid of modern machinery. Horses were scarce, so the dirt
was hauled by men pushing wheelbarrows. The canal connected Toledo at Lake Erie
to Cincinnati at the Ohio River and shortened the trip from the five weeks
needed to travel over land through discouraging woods and swamps to a quick
five days on a canal boat. The men who
dug the canal worked from sunrise to sunset for about 30 cents a day. They
worked in miserable conditions and in water that was infested with snakes,
mosquitoes and sewage. Consequently, many became ill with malarial
fever and died. The dead were buried on the towpath side of the canal
and it was referred to as “The Longest Cemetery”. Some of the
subcontractors believed that whiskey neutralized the effects of the diseases
and offered their workers a jigger of whiskey at sundown. The boss who
offered the most whiskey always had the most workers. Canal
engineers used a series of 105 locks to raise and lower the boats through the
canal to accommodate the rise and fall of the land. The locks were
typically smaller than the main channel of the canal and measured 90 feet
long, 15 feet wide and 12 to 20 feet deep. Large wooden
gates were built to hold the water. A boat would enter the lock through
a wooden gate. The gate would close behind the boat. A wicket, or
opening in the front gate, would open and allow the water to raise or lower
to equalize it with the water at the next level. The front gate would
then be opened and allow the boat to move forward to the next lock. The dimensions
of the canal were standard, with a depth of four feet and a width of 40
feet. The sides of the canal sloped inward from the banks with a bottom
width of 26 feet. The base of the waterway was trampled by people and
animals to compact the soil to make it hold water. Canal boats
were designed specifically to travel on the canal. The boats were 70 to
80 feet in length and 14 feet wide to negotiate the waterways. There
were four types of boats on the canal. The freight boat carried bulk
freight such as coal or crops. The packet boat carried people
only. A cargo and passenger boat carried goods in the center of the
boat and people at each end. A state boat was a fancy passenger boat
and was reserved for dignitaries. The boats traveled about 5 miles per
hour and were usually powered by three mules in tandem tethered by a single
towline. The crew of each
boat consisted of a captain, a steersman who handled the rudder, a bowsman,
who assisted the lockmaster at the locks, and a mule driver or muleskinner to
motivate the mules on the towpath to pull the boats. This waterway
supplied jobs while it was being built, and brought prosperity to the area by
encouraging businesses and by giving townfolk and farmers an economic way to
transport their goods to market. Mills, lumber companies, ice
companies and breweries rapidly appeared, eager to ship their wares. Hotels,
rooming houses and saloons were built to accommodate the influx of an
estimated 400 canal boats traveling up and down the canal. By 1850,
there were five hotels in New Bremen - the Lehmkuhl,
Meyer, Wilhelmy, Minkner, and the Lanfersieck House. There were ten
saloons and six dance halls. The 1850
census lists a variety of occupations including brick mason, butcher, clerk,
wooden-shoe maker, boat captain, teacher, miller and physician.
Businesses included ten cooperages, six shoemaker shops, six blacksmith
shops, a carriage shop, pork packing houses and six canal boats employing six
men each. There were 302 farmers. The cost for
shipping goods from Cincinnati to Toledo on the canal was twelve dollars per
ton. New Bremen became a burgeoning town exporting the hogs
slaughtered and shipped from five plants in New Bremen and a sixth plant in
Lock Two (St. Paris). The canal
brought prosperity to New Bremen and nearby communities and allowed the
settlers to pay off land debts quickly and invest in the future. The original
plat of Bremen in 1833 became New Bremen in 1835 to differentiate it from the
town of Bremen in Fairfield County. New Bremen
consisted of six communities prior to 1876, with all six communities along
the canal. In 1837, the town of Amsterdam appeared just south of New
Bremen, but a cholera outbreak along the canal in 1849 devastated the small
community. Mohrmansville appeared in 1838, just north of New Bremen,
platted next to the canal. The opening of
the canal in 1845 brought a surge of business and settlers to New Bremen and
divided the town. Ober Bremen was platted in 1853 on the east side of
the canal and was made up of people from all over Germany, while the original
town site remained on the west side with its Hannover roots. Ober
Bremen soon became the business center and maintained a separate school, fire
department, town hall and mayor until the union of the two towns in
1876. Even after the combining, reference was made to “Frogtown”
individuals living east of the canal and “Cheesequarters” folks living
west of the canal. Vogelsangtown was platted in 1856 and was
located west of the canal and Ober Bremen. It was annexed to New Bremen
in 1865. Lock Two, first known as “New Paris”, appeared in 1859 but was
never officially platted. The small town had a sawmill, gristmill,
warehouse, pork packing plant and a grocery and general store. The
architecture of early New Bremen was influenced by the needs of the
canal. Braced frame houses with brick or mud and straw lining and small
brick houses of 1½ stories were built
near the canal. Two-story buildings of brick or frame were built as
warehouses. All of these
buildings reflected the architecture of Northern Germany and supplied the
space and service needed for a growing town. Because of the solid
construction and upkeep, many of these buildings are still in use
today. The railroad came to the area in the late 1850s and proved
to be the beginning of the end of the canal era. Ironically, the canal
was used to carry the iron needed to construct the rail lines. Although
transportation by rail was more expensive, the speed of shipping made it more
cost-efficient to use. The railroads were not affected by weather which
allowed them to be used daily, while the canal often froze during the winter.
In the early
1900s, with the railroads dominating the area’s transportation system, the
Ohio Legislature debated whether to improve or abandon the canal. It was
decided to try to revive canal boating by rebuilding many of the original
wooden locks. When the canal
was built, timber was a readily available resource and hastened the opening
of the waterway. Sixty years later, the aging wooden locks were
replaced with concrete. Lock One in New Bremen was rebuilt during the
summer of 1910. This rebuilding effort did increase the use of the
canal for a few years, especially for pleasure boats. The flood of
1913 destroyed many key canal locks and aqueducts, and the cost of repairs
would have far exceeded the revenues the canal could generate.
Consequently, during the next years, the canal became a political white
elephant. There were many debates about the future of the heavily
damaged waterway. The section of the canal from Fort Loramie to Lock
Two north of New Bremen was dredged and two dams constructed in a 1934-35
project. In New Bremen, the Lock One gates were removed and guard rails installed. The canal was stocked with fish and 200 elm trees were planted by a New Bremen citizens’ committee. Other projects, such as the more recent restoration of the towpath for walkers and bicyclers, have led to a rebirth of the canal as a recreation area. In addition to recreation, The Miami-Erie Canal has such historical significance, it has become an important link to our cultural heritage. |
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Canal Facts &
Excursion | N.B. & the Miami-Erie Canal | Thompson House “Fun on the Old
Canal” – Ralph May | Bicentennial Canal Marker - 2003 |