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Levi Beebe built in 1836 this structure then known as the Commercial Building housing stores, bank, and post office. During the canal era, the building was a stagecoach stop and social center for Maumee, the Lucas County seat until 1853. Later the inn was called the Neely House, Schiely House, the Bismark, Seurin Hotel Langley Inn, and, after 1940, The Old Plantation.
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On November 12, 1852, the riverboat “Buckeye Belle” exploded at this site. Twenty-four people died and a dozen were injured in the worst steamboat disaster on the Muskingum River. An eyewitness described the scene: “The bank of the canal was covered with dead and mutilated bodies and fragments of the boat and cargo.” Boiler explosions were a hazard of steamboat travel. The safety record on the Muskingum River was good. There are only two other recorded riverboat explosions on the Muskingum River. The “Newark” blew-up in 1847 at Rokeby, killing four, and the “L.C. McCormick” exploded in 1879 south of Beverly, killing one.
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McConnelsville and Malta are two towns that prospered because of the locks and dams built on the Muskingum River from 1836 to 1841. Settlers came to both towns in 1817. In the 1820s and 1830s, flatboats carried grain, lumber, and livestock down the river. The locks and dams made the Muskingum navigable to steamboats, and both towns grew rapidly. Malta was the home of the Brown-Manly Plow Company, a leading maker of farm equipment in the 1800s. Brown-Manly depended on steamboats to bring in raw materials and to take products to markets. Mills at McConnelsville ground grain and shipped flour north to the Ohio Canal and to the east coast, and south to the Ohio River and the Mississippi trade.
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The founder of Ravenna Township in 1799, Benjamin Tappan Jr. led a distinguished life of public service. An aggressive force in local politics, he served in the Ohio Senate from 1803 to 1805, as judge of the fifth circuit court of common pleas from 1816 to 1823, and as federal district judge from 1826 to 1833. Tappan served as aide-de-camp to Major General Elijah Wadsworth following the surrender of Detroit in the War of 1812, provisioning and arming local militia units defending the northwestern frontier against a possible British invasion. (continued on other side)
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To the right is the route taken by the U.S. Legion under Major General Anthony Wayne as it marched across what would become Van Wert County. The army of 2,800 men camped west of this marker near the present cemetery on the night of August 4, 1794. Wayne’s orders were to subdue Native American tribes and his destination was a major village at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers (now Defiance). Finding it abandoned, Wayne marched down the Maumee River and was attacked by a force of Indians on August 20. Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers ended the Indian Wars of the 1790s. The Treaty of Greene Ville, signed by Wayne and the representatives of twelve tribes, opened much of Ohio to American settlement. Side one includes a map on the right hand side of the marker showing the route of Wayne’s army through the eastern third of Van Wert County.
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At Middletown, Ohio, on July 21, 1825, ground was first broken for the Miami-Erie Canal, which eventually linked Cincinnati and Toledo. The canal created much change in the region, including increased population and commercial, political, and industrial growth. Products grown and manufactured in this previously isolated area now had access to world markets. Prosperity reigned until the 1860s when railroad competition caused a slow decline in canal transportation. The canal was officially closed on November 2, 1929, again, as it had started, in Middletown. The canal bed was converted into a modern highway, known as Verity Parkway, which runs parallel to this park.
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General William Henry Harrison ordered the construction of Fort Winchester at the beginning of October 1812 and it was completed October 15. The fort served as a forward observation post and supply depot for the American army during the War of 1812. Until Fort Meigs was completed in 1813, Fort Winchester was the front line against the British and their Indian allies. During the siege of Fort Meigs, Fort Winchester was a rendezvous point for the troops of General Green Clay and those of Colonel William Dudley. Fort Winchester outlined the shape of a parallelogram, measuring 600 by 300 feet in size. Blockhouses anchored the four corners of the fort and within its stockade were storehouses and a hospital.
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On this site the Ohio & Erie Canal flowed south and down-level under the Market Street Bridge. Nearby Pawpaw Creek and the canal culturally divided the Swiss settlers to the west in Basil and the Virginia pioneers to the east in New Market (Baltimore by 1833). In March 1825, the “Twin Cities” were “dedicated” one day apart and energized a feud that often erupted at the bridge where “the boys of one village entered the other at their peril and where the worst of the intervillage fights were held.” The rivalry stretched well into the twentieth century and was arguably terminated with an uneasy consolidation of the two towns in 1947.
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