This week’s Frontier Friday feature. Please check back for a new one friday!
- Forging a Frontier | 1. Gateways of the Wilderness: The Strategic Portages of the St. Mary’s and Auglaize
Long before canals or roads, portages shaped the future of Mercer and Auglaize counties. This article traces how short land routes between rivers—especially the Loramie Portage—defined trade, war, and settlement. Drawing from Knapp’s 1873 History of the Maumee Valley, it shows how geography guided forts, treaties, and canal routes, forming the backbone of Northwestern Ohio’s early development.
Exploring Ohio’s Mercer and Auglaize Counties’ Long-Forgotten Stories
THIS MONTH’S FEATURED DIGITAL EXHIBIT
A Beacon Forged in Strife, Built in Faith: The Story of Maria Stein’s 1891 St. John Church
On May 29, 2025, fire gutted Maria Stein’s 1891 St. John Church, erasing a familiar spire and unsettling a parish whose history is etched into its brick and woodwork. Yet that lost structure already stood as a monument to resilience. Raised by German-Catholic settlers who cleared forest, endured cholera, weathered a bitter “Parish Revolt,” and still resolved to build a sanctuary worthy of their faith. This article follows that arc: from the humble log chapel of 1837, through the hard-won 1887 decision to start anew, to Adolphus Druiding’s Romanesque design and the jubilant 1891 dedication that closed old wounds. Revisiting this journey reveals more than architectural detail; it introduces a community that has faced crisis before and answered with unity. Their past offers a compass as St. John the Baptist Parish now contemplates how to rise from ashes once again.
“Time, patience and perseverance, joined with indomitable pluck and industry, have wrought wonders.”
– History of Mercer County, Ohio (1907)
This place wasn’t built overnight.
It was shaped by effort, season after season, generation after generation.
Their history is our foundation, but the next chapter is ours to write.
Explore the Digital Historical Reference Collections
Discover the Grand Lake Regional History Center and explore curated collections of books, photographs, maps, and documents that reflect the history of Mercer and Auglaize Counties. Whether you’re looking to uncover local stories or simply curious about the past, our digital historical collection offers a window into the rich heritage of our community.
Select a collection below to begin exploring today.
Rooted in Place: The Story of the Grand Lake Region
The Grand Lake region is more than a map of towns and roads. It is a connected landscape shaped by water, work, and generations of people who built their lives here. The Grand Lake Regional Historical Center exists to honor that shared story, grounded in the communities of Mercer and Auglaize Counties and the places that surround them.
This region includes cities, villages, and crossroads that hold both memory and momentum. In Celina, industry and lake life grew side by side. In St. Marys, the past still lingers in canal paths and quiet downtown storefronts. Fort Recovery holds the memory of battles that helped shape a nation. Maria Stein is known for its deep Catholic roots and the Shrine of the Holy Relics, while New Bremen, Minster, and New Knoxville reflect generations of German heritage, faith, and craftsmanship.
Coldwater, St. Henry, and Chickasaw carry strong agricultural traditions, where family farms and small businesses continue to define the pace of life. Rockford, once known as Shane’s Crossing, and Mendon, originally called Guilford, trace their roots to early frontier days. Montezuma and the surrounding shoreline speak to the long reach of Grand Lake itself, once built to feed the Miami and Erie Canal, now central to recreation, ecology, and regional identity.
Beyond these towns are the township roads, church halls, rural schools, and quiet cemeteries that hold the details of daily life. From Wapakoneta to Burkettsville, from Spencerville to Osgood, the region’s history is not just something to look at. It is something still lived.
This is a place of strong roots and steady hands. Its history belongs to everyone who has called it home.
“This unpretending book is a record of but narrow interest and of purely local events… to rescue from total oblivion some matters that seem worthy of narrating.”
– History of Auglaize County, Ohio (1880)
Nearly 150 years later, we’re still doing the same work.
Preserving local stories. Holding onto what might otherwise be lost.
Because the details that shape a place disappear if no one thinks they’re worth saving.