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Achieve anything?

Dick Swain Singing: To try, try, try, try, try not for lying.

What's the point?

Lines is on the music line.

Whoa!

Back up the news back I don't I never show on that brilliant show saying on the old Ohio Canal.

Voices: With the opening of the Erie Canal between Lake Erie.

And the Hudson River Canal.

Fever spread.

Virtually the entire eastern half of the United States is connected up by the mid 1840s with this highway system that was really water for the canal.

Dick Swain Singing: Tramp time.

Not on my watch.

The plai horse lines on the music line.

Well, back cuts the mules like I did.

I never thought I'm gonna bring it.

Just ain't there on the Ohio Canal.

Now, shipped on board at Portsmouth Town with Captain Billy, or the first thing ever.

He rode on board the barrel of black Rockport.

All the way to Cleveland.

Befriended the poor old me.

He got better on the rest of the boat.

Can we have it all for?

Now, just outside, I pass along.

We struck the pole that gave the boat a hell of a chance to get big William Field: Transportation It's the lifeblood of any city.

The Anthony Wayne Trail is a main artery into and out of Toledo.

This route was a major factor in the early development of the city, but not as we know it today.

John Jaeger: This is the old Miami Erie Canal.

It operated from the early 1840s up until about 1910.

You could go from Toledo to Defiance, and then from Defiance to Cincinnati on the Miami Erie Canal, also at defiance, at a place called junction.

You could switch and get on the Wabash and Erie Canal and go from there down the Wabash River, through Fort Wayne and down to the Ohio River.

It took from Toledo to Cincinnati about five days and four nights to get there.

Top speed was about four miles an hour, and it cost $9.

This is the towpath where mules would tow the heavily loaded canal boats up and down the waterway.

A portion of this towpath is preserved by the Metro Park District and you can walk from Providence Metro Park at Grand Rapids to Waterville and Farnsworth Metropark, and walk along the same path where the mules walked.

William Field After the American Revolution, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other leaders recognized that of the interior o the country was to be developed.

Settlers would need a way to get their goods to market.

They were confident that canals were the answer.

Fred Folger: Well right prior to the War of 1812, the nation was beginning, of course, to experience this westward movement.

Kentucky and Tennessee had joined the Union, and Ohio had become a state.

In 1803.

And during this time period in Ohio's early development, the rivers were the most important highways and routes of transportation.

We really had very little far as land travel was concerned.

William Field: An 181 construction began on New York's Erie Canal, and Ohioans bega plans for any laboratory system that would make markets around the world accessible from their extremely fertile farmland.

The routes were laid out along the major rivers that had been used for commerce, on a smaller scale by Indians and pioneers.

Construction began in 1825.

Two years later, short sections of the canals opened to traffic, but it was nine year before the 309 miles of the Ohio and Erie was complete from Lake Erie at Cleveland to the Ohio River at Portsmouth.

That same year, 1834, the Miami and Erie was opened between Dayton and the Ohio River at Cincinnati.

It was another nine years before the Wabash and Erie was open from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Lake Erie.

At Toledo.

Construction was essentially completed by 1845, with a number of feeder canal and a section joining the Miami and the Wabash.

It was the most expansive system in the country, with over 1000 mile of navigable water and 451 locks raising and lowering boats a they moved across the landscape.

Fred Folger: So the canals really in Ohio got their great impetus from the Erie Canal of New York State.

David Glick: And of course, it i the Great Lakes that made New.

York City what it is.

When the Erie Canal was opened New York City was the third or.

Fourth largest.

Port in the East Coast.

And after the Erie Canal opened and New York City.

Became number one, has remained that way.

Fred Folger: With the success of the Erie Canal, they refer to this as the fact that many states caught canal fever, and I'm sure you could prett much say Ohio Court Canal fever.

A little harder than any other state.

Boat Captain: Welcome aboard, I'm the captain.

But today I'm going to give a brief history of the canal for a few minutes.

Here.

This is called the Ohio Erie Canal.

And this is an actual part of the old canal that's been restored.

The canal used to be 309 miles long.

William Field: Even today, there are operating boats at three locations the General Harrison at Pequot, the Saint Helena, two at Canal Fulton, and the Monticello two by Rascal Village.

Kid: I feel like a lot.

Frank Trevorrow: The speed limit was definitely four miles an hou to keep from charging the banks.

One of the, great problems they had was with muskrats digging holes in the banks, and and, they dig a hole through the bank.

The water would rush out and they'd have a break in the canal so that they had these work boats all along the canal constantly filling up muskrat holes.

They had a boat that was a grass cutter, had a blade attached to the boat and pull along.

They cut the grass.

William Field: It's easy to get carried away with nostalgi on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the 19th century the long distance traveler often had a much different reaction, especially if he was a cultured gentleman from Europe.

Reader: Nor was the sight of this canal boat in which we were to spend 3 or 4 days by any means a cheerful one, as it involves some uneasy speculation concerning the disposal of the passengers at night, and opened a wide field of inquiry, touching the other domestic arrangements of the establishment, which was sufficiently disconcerting.

I found, suspended on either side of the cabin three long tiers of hanging bookshelves.

I decried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket.

Then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be arranged edgewise on these shelves to morning.

And yet there was much in this mode of traveling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and looked back upon with great pleasure.

Even th running up of van necked at 5:00 in the morning, from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck, the fast, brisk walk upon the towpath, when every vein and artery seemed to tingle with health.

The lazy motion of the boa when one lay idly on the deck, looking through rather than at the deep blue sky.

William Field: Before long the railroads would be rushing passengers pas the pleasures of canal travel, but canal boats could stil carry large cargo efficiently, and many remained in operatio until the Great Flood of 1913.

They were with us long enoug to effect a unique and colorful.

Lifestyle .

Dick Swain Singing:...pleasure trips on the Great Lakes.

Trip on a canal boat, you take the cable where the top bands of five dogs knock the flies.

They play tag with the cook on the dock.

Dick Swain: Could say something about the man.

That I learned a lot of these songs from.

His name was captain Pearl Lyon.

He was born on a canal boat in Chillicothe.

He in 1876 died in Akron in 1957.

He stayed on the canal until the canal closed down in 1913.

And thereafter went around the country recording for the Library of Congress and Ohio State University and, tried to preserve the lore and songs of the canals, and he wrote a number of songs himself.

Voice of Interviewer: Tell something a little something about your family on the canal.

How many of them were.

Pearl Lyon: Well they were a large town, the way, you know, it's 11 boys and seven girls.

And I'm the 15th youngster.

The ninth boy.

And we had one great old time swimming, falling overboard.

And as you might expec from a large family and music.

And so more or less unti our home, we all had good time.

Oh, days of heaven here on eart I never will forget the world.

But give to me the old canal.

Dick Swain Singing:And wherever we want to.

We could go on our home sweet home, you know balmy days all New York.

And, My dear friend was 40ft from buying the bank piano that the world would let go by.

Frank Trevorrow: Some of the crews were quite rough, and others were very well established families.

Frequently there were children.

The captain and his family were recorded in the stern of the boat.

Some of them had a cabin in the center, which was a stabl and the crew's quarters forward Dick Swain Singing: ... morning.

But I'm where are we?

One day we took on our own feet on the in those balmy days.

On the open, Frank Trevorrow: Now, this is what.

This you call mud brook.

Mud port base, mud port basin, which was just a natural wide spot.

Yeah, originally, wasn't it a swamp?

This is a place where the boats could turn around and they all night here when it's crowded on the canal.

Did they cut ice here?

Yeah, they had some ice houses.

They would.

Yeah.

That was another, place function of the canal was to provide them with ice, that all of these wide spots were served in the winter as ice ponds.

Yeah.

I did a lot of ic skating here.

And, they used to.

Have Sunday night bonfire and ice skating and.

Dick Swain Singing:Oh, look, we had that idea of every one of you when it France over during the day.

I'm up.

And you young, young, young man a better life would never come.

Another do what they will do now.

I will stay with the old canal.

Oh, what fun we are left.

I guess everyone move between France I to learn to do.

Damn.

Oh!

Dick Swain What happened when there was a, When when boats were waiting to go through a lock?

Boat Worker: That was a different story.

Locks were first come, first serve.

And if you weren't the first one there, you'd have to wait your turn.

The problem was canal boat captains weren't very gentlemen like.

And they kind of wouldn't be courteous at all.

They'd say that they were there first, whether they were or not.

Dick Swain: They even hired special, special people.

There was one gu who was came down from New York.

His name was the Buffalo Bully.

I remember reading about, when the boats were just empty and the crews would just fight it out, and the ones that weren't in the canal got on their boat and went on farther on and just throw them in, skin them alive hang the carcass on the fence.

Don't stop or not, no matter what expense.

Found them on the back till they lay over.

Catch that boat.

Catch a guy, say she's pretty fast, but faster.

We can go all the men if they want.

They over.

Go get that boat for the whole cre cruise with you ain't got that.

Won't get that boat.

I say.

Fred Folger: Today when we drive along the highway along the river between Florida, Ohio and Independence State Park, and we look at the canal, it looks just like a, sort of a forgotten, muddy ditch of sort.

And perhaps one doesn't get too excited over its historical importance.

But yet you have to stop and realize there was a tremendous amount of effort which had to be undertaken to construct that canal.

It was more than just digging a big ditch in the ground, because in digging the canal, you had to have a rate of descent in that canal so that it would provide a flow of water so that the locks would function in the canal, because the lock all were gravity flow operated.

And of course, this was all done with wheelbarrows and pickaxes and shovels.

They didn't have any of the modern type, large earthmoving machines that we have today.

Dick Swain Most of the laborers on the, on the canals were people that were hired locally.

They'd sort of contract out the job, but then there'd be people that moved along.

Lots of Irish and German immigrants.

There's a song by an Irish immigrant.

Part of it goes, when I came to that wonderful empire, it filled me with great surprise for to see a full thousand brave heroes, like, never opened my eyes.

We were all marching up in good order.

They were.

Father.

Now unto us all, sir.

I wish my myself from that moment.

That would be working up on the canal.

Ted Ligibel: There are hundreds.

Of graves.

All along the canals.

Both.

Marked and unmarked.

Workers died from smallpox, typhoid, cholera.

But the big killer was malaria, then referred to as the ague, the shakes, and locally as mommy fever.

In the beginning, workers were paid $0.30 a day and five jiggers of whiskey.

It was thought that the whiskey would help ward off the ague, but as the deaths mounted, they realized it was doing more harm than good.

Local temperance societie were formed, and their success led to the area's first labor strikes.

Contractor found it increasingly difficult even as wages rose to $26 a month to keep workers on the job especially in the summer months when the death toll was the highest.

Fred Folger: Also on the locks and in places, culverts and aqueducts had to be constructed because whenever the canal would reach a natural stream, you see, they had to bridge that natural stream.

And this really makes one have a much deeper respect for these canal workers.

When you see what this project really entailed, because the stone had to be cut, it had to be hauled tremendous distances with teams of oxen and carts.

And so it really was a tremendous undertaking.

John Jaeger: This is lock number nine in the Miami Erie Canal.

These massive stones here were quarried in the Marblehead Peninsula an brought to this site by barge.

When they were put in place, they were cut by stonemasons and faced off smooth, so that the canal boats coming into the lock wouldn't rub against the wall.

The entire lock itself was abou 90ft long and about 16ft wide.

Across the bottom underneath the earth.

Here was, oak timbers, and the entire stone structure was laid on those timbers.

In addition, there were oak plankin that were laid down lengthwise.

And that's so when the canal boats would come into the loc and find a low water situation, they'd be scraping against wood instead of stone.

The lock gates were set in place here and at a hinge point on either side and they always opened upstream so that if there were flooding conditions, they would keep the gates closed and keep the lock from being damaged.

If we take a look up here, we can see Ludwig Mill, which utilizes water power from the canal system to operate the milling machinery.

This mill began in the 1820s, and was moved from the site over so that they could build the canal.

Isaac Ludwig was the third miller to operate the mill, and he was a canal boat builder, so he was very closely tied to the canal system.

William Field: Efficient transportation and water power for industria growth was worth fighting for.

Fred Folger: The coming of the canal definitely sparked rivalries.

A good example of this rivalry was up river at what we know as Grand Rapids, Ohio, today.

John Jaeger: At that time, the residents of Gillett, which is now Grand Rapids across the river, had a great fear that they would lose out on commerce and the trad from the canal system at night.

There were problems.

The dam was blown up and the state eventually sent in.

Militiamen posted sentries at either end of the dam and finall the wooden dam was constructed.

Fred Folger: And finally to, really compromise with the people of Guilford, the state did agree to build a small canal which would bring water fro behind the dam through the town of Grand Rapids to provid a flow of water for their mills.

Ted Ligibel: And I suppose it's an irony of history that that Providence no longer exists, and Grand Rapids is a flourishing community.

Yet today.

William Field: The biggest prize of all lay at the end of the canal, where cargo would be transferred for lake shipment.

Beginning in 1817, speculators plotted 11 towns within the 15 miles from Marmee to Lake Erie.

They all had the drea of founding the great port city here where Swan Creek meets them on the river, seemed to have a distinct advantage.

There was an unusually deep channel.

It ran right next to the shore.

Summit Street was on a high bluff, so it was an easy matter to get off the top and fill in the marshland along the riverbank.

Once Water Street was filled in, a long row of docks would allow boats to tie up right next to large lake steamers.

Sailing ships, or warehouses.

Originally, there were two towns here this July and Port Lawrence.

Fred Folger: Vistula and Port Lawrence still were not what you'd call great financial successes.

Both of these villages failed to attract a great deal of commerce from the lake.

The early leaders of these communities were rather downhearted to see many of the vessels from Lake Erie go right on past, heading upriver from Maumee, Perrysburg, while the two communities realized that if they were going to survive, they'd better forget their competitive spirit and their rivalry, and they'd better join together.

The name Toledo begins to appear as early as 1833.

William Field: Toledoans were confident that they were in a positio to become the great metropolis of the West.

But there was one very serious problem Ohio's constitution said that its northern border was on a line from the southern tip of Lake Michigan to the north.

Keep up mommy Bay!

But the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 clearly stated that the border was on a line due east from the tip of Lake Michigan, which left Mommy and Ohio but put Toledo in Michigan.

Fred Folger Michigan law was enforced here.

Michigan taxes were paid to Monroe County.

All property purchases were recorded in Monroe, Michigan, the county seat of Monroe County.

And as a result, no one really gave this too much thought until it was announced that the Ohio Legislature was going to be extending the Wabash and Erie Canal projec from Indiana to the Miami River.

Now, that caused great alarm among these early pioneers here in the Toledo area, because they realized the stat of Ohio was certainly not going to construct the canal at their expense and have that canal end in Michigan to benefit a Michigan community.

Ted Ligibel: Ohio is by thi time, in the late 1830s, a state and has representative in the United States Congress.

Michigan is still a territory, and it ended up, a battle of state with Representatives and Congress versus a territory without any representation.

And in the end, the, the whole issue was settled by the president of the United State and the United States Congress.

That strip was awarded to Ohio.

And we have the current boundary that exists today between Ohio and Michigan.

As a consolation prize, so to speak.

Michigan was awarded the Upper Peninsula.

William Field: Canal Construction moved forward, and on January 7th, 1837, Toledo was proud to incorporate as a city in Ohio, but the speculators needed patience.

It would be another six years before the first boat arrived from Indiana on the Wabash and Erie, and nine years before the Miami and Erie was complete all the way to Cincinnati.

But it was worth the wait.

Toledo the economy boome and the surrounding wilderness, as if by magic, transformed into well-manicured farms.

Ohio's population grew from 600,000 before the canal to nearly 2 million by 1850.

Over 2000 boats transported goods and passengers throughout the state.

Ted Ligibel: So that before the Civil War, you have a fairly good sized town with a goodly number of buildings, surrounding that, that downtown section and a very large high school, for example, which is on the grounds of the current, Toledo Lucas County Public Library downtown, a huge, massive building.

It gives you some indication of, the kind of population that Toledo had at the time.

It really did enjoy a boom.

As a result of the canal.

The Ohio canals were built a little late.

David Glick: The railroads came almost as.

Soon as the canals.

And, of course the railroads had the advantages that they could operate the year round.

The canals had to close, three, four months, a year.

Fred Folger: The Ohio canals, which were state financed and maintained, were never a financial success at all for the state government.

But the canals did provide a tremendous opportunity for development and growth within the state of Ohio.

Many town were developed along the routes.

These canals, some of them are nothing more than ghost towns today.

And of course, some communities developed into large cities along these canals.

And I think in terms of Akron, Dayton, for instance, the Civil War pressed the canals very heavily, into use, as, of course, di the railroads and the Civil War.

The demands of that war period in transporting men and materials, supplies really proved the worth of the railroads once and for al over the canal type of travel.

And so it was.

But the canals were sort of on the downgrade as we move toward the latter 19th century.

Man Singing: One to make money even driving the finding.

But the goes on on hold on the railway by steam.

May the devil the fellow who thought this plan.

It'll ruin.

I was quoting him for that.

Not really mine.

It's more of a shoreline.

Wherever it passes.

And it thinks of us.

For some of them, financing.

The last actual canal travel in this area would have been in 1913.

We had the worst flooding, in the 20th century here.

And much of the Midwest and stretches of the canals were literally washed right out.

And the state of Ohio decided not to go to the expense of repair.

And then little by little, sections of the canal were drained and filled in, graded.

And then in the 1930s, one of the New Deal projects in our Toledo area was to create the Anthony Wayne Trail.

Along this right of way.

William Field The canals never actually paid for themselves as promoters had promised, but their contributions to the development of the stat made the investment worthwhile.

The framework of Ohio's transportation network lie on the ruins of the old canal, and the emphasis they gave t Toledo as an important port city lives on.

Man Singing: So.

Holland.

Napoleon.

Oh.

Thank goodness.

Like or even your shirttail and straighten your back.

Whatever you do, be sure.

Don't forget that the new gent, the one that is on deck.

Forget it, forget it.

I never will try.

Those were great days of living.

You never cared that I was not going to heaven.

So carefree and saying a horse, ocean sailor all ever remain.

Oh, those were fine times with no equal, had they?

Whatever the weather, we'd run night and day by.

On the world.

On the ditch I would run for no other life as such.

Oceans of fun.

So holding the line and taking the slack.

Even your shir sailing straight on your back.

Or whatever you do, be sure.

Don't forget that you gently when the coast is on that.

Announcer: Th presentation of Toledo stories is made possible in part by KeyBank, celebrating the strength of our region's history and supporting the promise of its future.

KeyBank achieve anything.