Paulding County History (County Engineer Overview)

From the Paulding County Engineer’s official website:

Traversed by the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers and numerous small streams, Paulding County is located entirely within that part of northwest Ohio once known as the Great Black Swamp. The first white visitors discovered a land dominated by water, mosquitoes and forest so thick that in some places the ground never saw the summer sun.

Celeron De Bienville was a French explorer who was instrumental in attempting to solidify French influence in the Ohio area. In 1749 his expedition, returning from an exploration of the Ohio River, traveled northeastwardly across the country along the Maumee River to the Great Lakes, then on to Montreal.

An army led by “Mad” Anthony Wayne marched through the County in 1794 en route to the Battle of Fallen Timbers. During the War of 1812, it was crossed again by General James Winchester, who fought a running battle across Emerald Township with the British and Indians. Also in 1812, Fort Brown was built at the confluence of the Big and Little Auglaize Rivers by General William Henry Harrison’s troops under Colonel Samuel Wells. It was later to be the site of the first post office in the County. See this archive’s 1973 reference map of the Maumee River watershed for a visual record of the region’s military roads, forts, and battle sites from this period.

Paulding County was originally inhabited by prehistoric mound builders and later by Pottawatomie and Ottawa tribes. Some Indians were still present until 1832, when the last occupants of the Ocquinoxcas Indian reservation near Charloe were resettled. The first nonnative settlement was near Junction in 1819, where on January 21, 1826, Daniel Clark Carey, the first white child, was born.* Around this time, John Chapman, “Johnny Appleseed,” planted apple trees, catnip, pennyroyal and hoarhound in Carryall Township.

Surveyed in 1820, the County is named for John Paulding, one of the three men who captured the British spy Major Andre during the Revolutionary War. The first county seat was established in 1838 at New Rochester on the Maumee River, the site of now an abandoned roadside rest along County Road 424. In 1841, the county seat was moved to Charloe on the Auglaize River, then relocated more centrally at Paulding in 1851.

Completion of the Wabash Canal in 1843 and the Miami and Erie Canal in 1845 opened the area to more settlement. Junction, a town that grew up at the junction of two canals, became a thriving community threatening to outrank Fort Wayne in importance. Opening of the Wabash Railroad in 1855, together with the presence of the Wabash Canal, made Antwerp the largest community in the County during the Civil War era. But the canals were unable to compete with the railroads and the Wabash Canal was abandoned by the State during the 1870s. Construction of the Nickel Plate and New York Central Railroads during the 1880s resulted in the rapid growth of other villages of the County, notably Paulding and Payne.

The State, however, had refused to abandon Six Mile Reservoir, which had been created to supply water to the Wabash Canal. The Reservoir was located near the Village of Antwerp, whose residents considered it a stagnant menace to public health. When legal efforts to close the reservoir failed, a group of 200 men marching under a banner inscribed “NO COMPROMISE,” blew a hole in the reservoir dike and destroyed three locks during the night of April 25, 1887. In response, a detachment of the State militia was dispatched, but the guilty parties were never identified. This event came to be known as the “Reservoir War” — see The Reservoir War by Jerett W. Godeke for a full-length account, and an unattributed county history typescript elsewhere in this archive for the detail that the reservoir guards’ camp was itself nicknamed “Camp Dynamite.”

Lumbering and timber products were for years the leading industry in the County, but these resources were largely depleted by the late 1880s, as the dense stands of native hardwoods gave way to pastures and farm ground. Today, the County is home to several manufacturing operations, but agriculture remains the leading industry.

The County motto, “No Compromise,” speaks of the resolute pioneer spirit and legacy of hard work and perseverance handed down for the last century. The people of Paulding County still reflect the spirit and pride and independence of those who tamed the Black Swamp so many years ago.

Note: this archive’s transcription of the 1882 Historical Hand-Atlas gives the same child’s name as “David Clark Carey,” son of settler Isaac Carey; this source spells it “Daniel Clark Carey.” The discrepancy is preserved here rather than silently resolved.