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Construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal, beginning in Cleveland and running south to Portsmouth, began in 1825. As a means to pay for debts on the community’s 5,500 acres of Tuscarawas County land, members of the Society of Separatists of Zoar contracted to construct this portion of the canal. They received $21,000 for this work, which was completed in 1827. Surplus goods were transported on Society owned and operated canal boats to outside markets via the Ohio and Erie Canal, which also brought manufactured items into Zoar. (continued on other side)
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The Bridgeport Iron Bridge, often called the Streng Road Iron Bridge, was built in 1914. It replaced a wooden covered bridge built in 1869 by Reuben L. Partridge (1823-1900) and Isaac J. Grummons (1828-1921), which was damaged by the flood of 1913. The 200′ steel superstructure uses a pin-connected Pratt Through truss design and was constructed by the Central Concrete & Construction Company, Canton, Ohio, at a cost of $8,987. The original substructure abutments were constructed by John A. Maugans (1861-1933) for $3,248, but have since been replaced. In 1992 and 1993, the bridge was renovated under the leadership of County Engineer Steve A. Stolte and Assistant Engineer Jeff Stauch.
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In 1862, less than a mile upriver from this marker, the John Lithoberry Shipyard in Cincinnati constructed the Sultana, a 260-foot, wooden steam transport. At the end of the Civil War, the U.S. Government contracted the Sultana to transport recently freed Federal prisoners north from Confederate stockades. During the night of April 27, 1865, while carrying over 2,300 Union soldiers – over six times its capacity of 376 passengers – a steam boiler aboard the Sultana exploded. The ship erupted in a massive fireball and sank in the cold, flood-swollen Mississippi River ten miles north of Memphis, Tennessee. Over 1,700 individuals died – some 200 more than those lost aboard the Titanic in 1912 – in what remains the worst maritime disaster in American history. Of the total casualties, Ohio lost the most of any state, with 791 dead. Indiana lost 491 persons, with Kentucky suffering 194 dead. It is estimated that, of the Ohio casualties, over fifty were Cincinnatians.
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The Euclid Avenue United Brethren Church, later the Mount Enon Missionary Baptist Church, was erected at Third & Euclid Street in Dayton. Milton Wright, a bishop of the church, was present at the laying of the cornerstone on May 28, 1911. Bishop and Mrs. Susan (Koerner) Wright were the parents of Orville and Wilbur Wright and their siblings Reuchlin, Lorin and Katherine. The church’s congregation included Orville and Katherine Wright and other notable Daytonians such as local historian and former pastor Dr. Augustus W. Drury, food distributor and potato chip maker Daniel Mikesell and Prof. Josiah P. Landis of the Bonebrake Theological Seminary. The church playedd a role in offering aid during the disasterous flood of 1913.
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Butler County was created on March 24, 1803, about three weeks after Ohio became a state. Hamilton won the competition for the county seat, thanks to Israel Ludlow, Hamilton’s founder. Ludlow’s donation of the public square secured the county seat. The first Butler County trial court met in July 1803 in a tavern before moving to a two-story military building located at what had been Fort Hamilton (1791-1796). The county built the first courthouse on this public square in 1810. The two-story stone building contained a jail on the first floor and a courtroom on the upper level. A new brick two-story courthouse was built on this square in 1817 at a cost of $10,000. A four-sided clock was added to the top of the building in 1837. (continued on other side)
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The Mustill house and store are survivors of Akron’s canal era and date to the 1840s. Joseph and Sarah Mustill moved their family from England to Akron in 1833 and owned the store and Greek Revival house at Lock 15 on the Ohio & Erie Canal. Three generations of Mustills lived and worked the grocery business at Lock 15, first Joseph and Sarah, then their son Fred with his wife Emma, and their children Maria, Frederick, Edwin and Franklin. A popular place to buy or barter goods, the store served canallers, farmers, craftsmen, and neighbors for many years.
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In 1833, Archibald Smith (1803-83) began to build a sawmill a short distance east of here where a tributary enters Blacklick Creek. His work was soon destroyed, he wrote, by a “rise of water known as the great Fourth of July Flood.” Undaunted, he completed the mill the next year and used it to saw lumber from trees felled as he cleared land for cultivation. Archibald’s son, Dr. Isaac Newton Smith, described his father’s mill as the first on Blacklick Creek. Dr. Smith recalled four mills on Blacklick and one each on Sugar Run and Rocky Fork Creeks. These mills, he noted, received some of the best oak, butternut, chestnut, and walnut timber in the area. (Continued on other side)
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This section of the Miami and Erie Canal, constructed from 1833-1837, was vital to this region’s commerce and development. It allowed for farmers and businesses to get their goods to larger markets at a lower cost and faster speed than by hauling overland. Passengers could also travel across the area by canal boat. John Clark saw the location of the Lock 15, situated in Monroe Township at the junction of the Milton-Carlisle Pike (Main Street), as an opportunity and in 1840, platted the new town of Tippecanoe City (now Tipp City). Many types of commerce and trade grew up around the canal including boarding houses, saloons, a tannery, and a mill. Some of the original buildings still stand, such as a mill to the west of Lock 15, John Clark’s home at the southeast corner of Main and First streets, and the hotel at the northeast corner of Main and Second streets.
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