The Story of Ohio’s Canal

The Auglaize County Historical Society and Miami and Erie Canal Corridor Association will present “The Story of Ohio’s Canals: An Engineering Endeavor that can Still be Traced in Ohio’s Landscape” with speaker Tom O’Grady as a Facebook Live event on Wednesday, August 12, at 7 pm. The program can be accessed via the Historical Society’s or MECCA’s Facebook pages, and is free and open to the public.

To access the event, simply go to the Auglaize County Historical Society or Miami and Erie Canal Corridor Association’s Facebook pages (also accessible via https://www.facebook.com/AuglaizeCountyHistory or https://www.facebook.com/Miami-and-Erie-Canal-Corridor-Association-136667596399601 )  a little before 7pm on August 12.  When the program is about to begin,  a red box with the word LIVE will pop up, and the program will appear as the most current post on the page.  Make sure you adjust your volume (on the screen), if needed.

Beginning in 1825, Ohio began constructing its canal system that eventually included nearly a thousand miles of channel and towpaths laced with stone locks and culverts, aqueducts, feeder lakes and slack water ponds. These canals opened up Ohio to world commerce allowing the export of surplus grains and manufactured goods and the import of items made in New York, London and Paris. Ohio’s canals linked the Great Lakes with the Ohio River and Ohio towns with markets in Chicago, Buffalo, and New York City and Pittsburgh, St. Louis and New Orleans. Canal builders negotiated Ohio’s diverse landscape as they traversed glacial moraines and the Allegheny Plateau. The ‘big ditch’ stitched the settlements of Ohio’s wilderness together and helped make it a player on the world’s stage.

About the speaker

Tom O’Grady sailed as a deck worker on an ore carrier on the Great Lakes aboard a sister-ship of the fated Edmund Fitzgerald, surveyed for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, launched the first comprehensive curbside recycling program in the state of Ohio and has been promoting waste reduction and sustainable economy for thirty years. O’Grady has also been an instructor of Observational Astronomy in the evenings at Ohio University for thirty years. He has spent a good deal of the past twenty-five years as a student of Ohio history researching its geography and settlement, the mound builders, Ohio canals, and several of its interesting characters and their stories.

States Historical Society administrator Rachel Barber, “We’re pleased to work with MECCA to present this story to the public. The Miami Erie Canal shaped so much of our county’s history, and canals across Ohio were integral to the state’s development.” The event is made possible through the Historical Society’s OH CARES grant from the Ohio Humanities Council.

For more information about this project or the Auglaize County Historical Society, please contact auglaizecountyhistory@bright.net or 419/738-9328.