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You are standing on the famous portage, carrying-place between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers. The two streams and the portage across the watershed formed an early route between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. First the Indians, then French and English traders and trappers, and finally American settlers and travelers carried their canoes and packs across this narrow strip of land in passing, by way of the rivers, between northern and southern Ohio. The portage was a part of the defined boundaries in the treaties with the Indians made at Fort McIntosh (1785), Fort Harmar (1789), and Green Ville (1795). Use of the portage was discontinued in 1827 when the Ohio and Erie Canal was built along the old trail. Today, modern Akron streets–Portage Path and Manchester Road–follow the approximate route of the original portage.
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Colonel William Crawford, a lifelong friend of George Washington, was born in Virginia in 1722. He was married twice, first to Ann Stewart and later to Hannah Vance. In 1755, he served with Colonel Edward Braddock in the French and Indian war. In 1767, he moved to “Stewart’s Crossing,” Pennsylvania, near the Youghiogheny River. During the Revolutionary War he raised a company of men, commanded the 5th and 7th Regiments, fought in battles in Long Island, Trenton, and Princeton, and built forts along the western frontier. In 1782, he led the Sandusky Campaign into the Ohio country and was subsequently captured by Delaware Indians after the battle of “Battle Island.” On June 11, 1782, he was tortured and killed near the Tymochtee Creek near this marker. A monument dedicated to his memory is located about a quarter mile north of here. Counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania are named for Colonel Crawford.
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Seven-year-old Jonathan Alder was captured by a Native American war party in Virginia in 1782 and taken to a Mingo village north of the Mad River in Ohio where he was adopted by an Indian family. He remained with the Indians until after the 1795 Treaty of Greenville ended the Indian Wars in the Ohio Country. As white settlers entered the region, Alder frequently served as an interpreter. In 1805, he journeyed to Virginia and was reunited with his original family. He returned to Ohio with his new wife, Mary Blont, and built a cabin on Big Darby Creek. His cabin is now at the Madison County Historical Society Museum in London. Alder is buried in Foster Chapel Cemetery.
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The first War of 1812 battle on Ohio soil was fought here when about 60 exhausted citizen soldiers were ambushed by about 130 Indians on September 29. Twenty men held the Indians at bay from a cabin while the main body escaped by boat to Cedar Point. Two days later the defenders were rescued. Forty Indians including several chiefs and 8 Americans were killed in the skirmish, neither a victory nor a defeat for either side.
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Here, on April 10, 1779 during the Revolutionary War, David Zeisberger founded one of the five Delaware Christian missions to occupy the Tuscarawas Valley between May 3, 1772 and September 8, 1781. Living at the Lichtenau mission near the Delaware capital of Goschachgunk (presently Coshocton, Ohio), Zeisberger feared that the Delaware nation was about to break their neutrality and join the British led Indians. Accordingly, he decided to disperse his Christian congregation and move his converts thirty-five miles up river to a place of safety in this large alluvial plain adjacent to the Tuscarawas River.
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Lt. Col. Henry Bouquet with 1500 British regulars and American militia penetrated the Ohio wilderness to crush Chief Pontiac’s Indian conspiracy. Here at the forks of the Muskingum River during October and November, Bouquet subdued the Delawares, Senecas, and Shawnee without firing a shot, secured the freedom of every colonial captive, and obtained promises of peace–a feat unequaled in colonial American history.
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Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins of Virginia, with 350 Confederate cavalrymen, crossed the Ohio River near this point on September 3, 1862, and advanced to Racine. After occupying the town for a few hours and after seizing a dozen horses, the troops re-crossed the river at Wolf’s Bar. This was the first invasion of Ohio soil by Confederate troops during the Civil War.
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Sounds of boat horns and brawling packet crews resounded for many years at this lock and 142 others on the Ohio and Erie Canal. The canal was a 308-mile water toll road built between 1825 and 1832 from Lake Erie at Cleveland to the Ohio River at Portsmouth. The early growth of Akron and Massillon was due to the canal. Railroads caused its decline and the flood of 1913 destroyed its usefulness.
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