The Bluffton news. [volume] (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-current, 1949-02-03


mediately sprang into a great wheat
market for Stark, Carroll, Wavne.
Holmes and Richland Counties
Strings of wheat wagons from all
directions poured into the place, clog
ged the streets and the new town
enjoyed great prosperity.
By 1876, when Canton's founder
died, Massillon had the older town
in photograph finish and was ready
to beat it under the wire with p
stores, seven factories, seven church.
es, newspaper, a bank and about
1000 residents. It was OH the canal.
Contrary to the prediction Of the
old Canton doctors the canal did not
bring more ague into the community
but drained the swamps along its
course and with its advent the
malaria disappeared. Hurford sold
less quinine but the Stark County
people were free of "the shakes.n
Canal Beneficial
From its beginning the work ON
the canal was beneficial. Principally
dug by Ohio farm boys who earned
s6 to $40 a month and boarded at
home, it gave many their first chance
to earn money of their own. That
helped the farm folk whose wheat
had brought so little that they
depended on ginseng and beeswax
money for a scant living, Canton's
three old doctors still shook their
heads and looked wise but talked
less. Loss of the canal and the en-.
croachment of Massiilon lacked much
of breaking through the hard shells
of Canton's die-hard civic leaders.
They also lost the railroad,
Years after the canal fiasco the
Cleveland and Pittsburg 1ailroad,
first line across Eastern Ohio from
lake to river, offered to build
through Canton and asked the town
to subscribe $4,000 towards the
project.
Nothing doing" answered the
Canton conservatives, explaining:
"Its all in your eye. We won't do
any such thing. The railroad has
got to come through Canton anyway;
the railroad folk can't help them
selves"
Railroad Goes East
So the railroad went Is miles to
the east and Alliance sprung up. But
for the dead weights in Canton
neither Massillon nor Alliance would
have been there and Canton today
would have absorbed their entire
populations and the commerce from
their wide trade territories.
Things are different today. Canton
had its few fires and eventually the
funerals took place. But Alliance
and Massillon too, are coming right
along.
So goes the old story Of lack of
foresight and appraisal. 1t always
has been thus. Port Jefferson, a
squat hamlet in Shelby County, was
log cabin village when Chicago was
frog pond on the tip of Lake
Michigan. Tradition has it that one
settler looked at both places and
chose Port Jefferson because it was
on the Great Miami River He died
there of old age before the town
grew larger.
No Railroad in County
West Union, Adams County, is the
only county seat in Ohio not on a
railroad. But it is on the top of a
hill. Otherwise, Manchester, older
and once larger but periodically
swept by Ohio River floods, would
have been the Adams County seat.
Cincinnati once was the capital of
the whole Northwest Territory but
lost the honor to a log state-house
at FrankIinton, later Columbus, be-
cause the Queen City of the West
failed to appreciate the distinction.
Not long ago Hamilton gained q
very large industry while Cincinnati
quibbled about location for it.
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