Tag: Pioneer History
Before the canal, Auglaize County’s trade crawled by river. The Miami & Erie Canal changed everything—linking towns like St. Mary’s and New Bremen to national markets, fueling mills, factories, and breweries, and transforming isolated settlements into industrial hubs.
From makeshift courtrooms to $5 tax contracts, Mercer and Auglaize counties built civil government from the ground up. This article traces the counties’ earliest officials, records, and courts—showing how law and order took root in Ohio’s former Indian lands.
In 1843, Mercer County settlers rose up against the State of Ohio, cutting the Miami & Erie Canal reservoir to reclaim flooded farms. This dramatic act of defiance—now known as the Reservoir War—reveals how frontier justice collided with state power in early canal-era Ohio.
Wapaukonnetta marked the Shawanee’s final stronghold in Ohio. This article traces its legacy—from Black Hoof’s final years to the 1832 removal—revealing a turning point where diplomacy, resistance, and forced migration reshaped Auglaize County’s future.
Introduction: A County in Time-Lapse It’s a rare privilege in historical work to find a tool that allows you to watch a community being built, year by year. We can piece together stories from letters and land deeds, but to have a series of documents that function as annual snapshots of a society in motion […]
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.
The historic 1891 St. John Church building in Maria Stein, a sacred edifice that stood for over a century as a commanding spiritual and architectural presence, was gutted by fire on May 29, 2025. This event struck at the heart of a community whose identity has been deeply intertwined with this landmark. As the St. […]
On September 10, 1851, thousands gathered in Fort Recovery, Ohio, to witness the solemn reburial of soldiers who had perished in the catastrophic defeat of General Arthur St. Clair’s army in 1791. The event, later referred to as “Bone Burying Day,” was one of the most significant early efforts to commemorate the soldiers who lost […]
Mercer County, Ohio, is home to stories that weave together its early frontier history, a sensational tale of a medical school that likely never existed, and the haunting memory of a brutal crime that shocked the region in 1872. These narratives—distinct yet intertwined—have shaped the county’s folklore and historical identity. The Rise and Fall of […]
The waters known today as Grand Lake hold layers of history, but few perspectives are as vivid or deeply rooted as those of Henry Koehn. A widely known owner of Koehn’s Landing on the south shore and a familiar square dance fiddler in the area, Koehn was born near the lake in a log cabin on January […]
