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Named for John Paulding, a Revolutionary War soldier whose capture of a British spy implicated Benedict Arnold in treason, Paulding County was formed in 1820 from the last remaining unorganized area of Ohio. Sparsely settled, it remained under the jurisdiction of Wood County until 1824 and then Williams County until 1839. Paulding’s first county seat was established at New Rochester in 1839, then moved to Charloe in 1841. Neither village exists today. Centrally-located Paulding Center became the county seat in 1851, and a courthouse was built the following year. The present courthouse, built during the region’s timber boom of the late 19th century, was designed by architect Edward Oscar Fallis and patterned after his Lenawee County courthouse in Adrian, Michigan. The four-faced Romanesque style building was completed in 1888 at a cost of $40,000. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
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In 1912, the president of the Public Library Association in Paulding requested funding from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to build a library in Paulding. At first the Carnegie Corporation of New York refused, stating that it only provided funding to communities with larger populations, but when the Library Association said it would serve the entire county, which had a larger population, the request was granted. As a result Paulding became the site for the first “county” Carnegie library in the United States, built for a total cost of $40,000. Carnegie provided funding for 2,811 libraries, of which 1,946 were built in the United States. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the Paulding County Carnegie Library continues to service the needs of all citizens of Paulding County.
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The completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal on July 4, 1843 brought many new settlers into this region. The Wabash and Erie Canal connected with the Miami and Erie Canal at Junction. Antwerp, ideally located on the Maumee River, was seen as a perfect place in which to establish a town. That same year surveyors W. Wilshire Riley and Samuel Rice platted what would become Antwerp. Naming rights belonged to Riley and storeowner Horatio N. Curtis, who wanting a name not duplicated anywhere else in the country, named it after Antwerp, Belgium. Early pioneers subdued the massive forests that once formed the “Black Swamp” and built a thriving city. Antwerp was incorporated in 1863. (continued on other side)
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On this site, the Miami and Erie Canal, that came north from Cincinnati and the Ohio River, intersected with the Wabash and Erie Canal that came from Fort Wayne and Evansville, Indiana. From this point, which became the town of Junction, the canals proceeded as one to Defiance, Toledo, and Lake Erie. From the 1830s to the 1870s, the canals played a key role in the settling of Paulding County, an area that was once a part of the Great Black Swamp. They held the promise of easier and quicker passenger transportation and commodity shipping and Junction became a landmark for fugitive slaves escaping to Canada. Once a thriving and growing community, the village of Junction became a forgotten historical note with the passing of the canal era and the coming of the railroads. Today, the Buckeye Trail and North County Trail follow the canal path through Paulding County.
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Here in 1887, frustrated locals destroyed the Six Mile Reservoir when legal efforts to close it failed. Years after any boat ran on the Wabash & Erie Canal, its water source, the 2,000-acre reservoir, became a stagnant, uncultivable breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos. Legislative attempts to abandon the canal and reservoir failed because manufacturers in Defiance used the waterway to float logs downstream. On the night of April 25, 1887, 200 men calling themselves “The Dynamiters” carried a banner that read, “No Compromise! The Reservoir Must Go!” and converged here, overpowered citizen guards, gouged the banks of the reservoir, dynamited the bulkhead and lock, and burned down the lockkeeper’s house. The next day, Governor Joseph B. Foraker denounced the acts of the “mob of lawless and rioting men.” (Continued on other side)
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