The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1948-07-22
The Columbus Grove
Road

Henry Knapp stood for q moment
and looked disconsolately at the mud
hole. His bride of month was stuck
Ihip-deep in there. Then, backing one
of the saddle horses up the puddle
he told his wife to grab it by the tail.
I"Giddap!" yelled Henry and Mrs.
Knapp, hanging on for dear life,
emerged from the mud.
Knapp, too, had been stuck in the
mud but had managed to get HIM
self out though unable to free his
wife. The couple were returning on
horse back to Kalida from a meeting
at Columbus Grove when the animals
became mired on the dirt road, now
modern hard surfaced highway be-
tween Kalida and Columbus Grove
and Continental on to Shannon
which, laid out in 1887, later changed
to Bluffton after the Mennonites ar
rived, in honor of the Indiana town
from which most of them had come.
Knapp was editor of the kalida
Venture, county seat weekly news
paper founded by James Mackenzie
in 1841. 1t was in the late 1840's when
the mud puddle episode occurred and
in that weeks Venture there was a
scathing editorial from knapp's Wit
riolic quill about what he thought of
Il ls.A IN
general.
Paper Moved to Ottawa
The paper, called by opposition ed
itors "the Vulture," was moved with
the county seat in 1866 to Ottawa,
where George d. Kinder ran it.
Later it became the Putnam County
Sentinel-still existent. Knapp lived
to write 1.-The History of the Mau-
NEE Valley" in 1872, which he dedi-
Gated to Rutherford B. Hayes. "Ex-
Governor of Ohio"
The muddy dirt roads in Allen and
Putnam counties before the Civil War
were traditional. The mud puddles
were so deep and so close together
that a new industry was born from
them-that of mud hole rescue.
Landlords of the various taVerns
along the roads provided themselves
with extra yokes of oxen to rescue
the travelers-mostly immigrants
whose teams could not pass the sue
cessive deep puddles. For that a
small charge was made and gladly
paid
The rescue business became so
systematized that the rights of set
tiers to the mud holes nearest them
were mutually recognized.
1t was related that one tavern keep
er who long had held undisputed pos
session of a particularly fine mud
hole which he had cared for and cul-
tivated with especial diligence for the
profit it brought him, sold his inn,
preparatory to leaving the country.
Regarding his interest in the mud
hole as a franchise too valuable to be
abandoned, he sold his quit-claim in
its interest in it to a neighbor for
S5-probabiy the only transaction of
its kind on record.
When horses hoofs and wagon
wheels failed to create enough mud
holes in the district, nature or provi-
dence helped them. Old accounts tell
of a low piece of ground some 20
rods wide in Putnam County's
Pleasant township, in which Colum-
bus Grove is located, where in 1s45
an unexplained upheaval of the earth
formed ridge four feet high and 30
feet wide which damned a creek from
bank to bank. -.....-
William Turner, who owned the
ground cut a channel through 1t to
let out the water and thus had great
mud hole Of his own. 1t would have
been worth small fortune had the
road run a little closer TO it.
Edge of Black Swamp
Just what was under ground in
that country or why so much mud
no early settler knew nor could
imagine. On the edge of the Black
= E