TOPE FAMILY PAGE

Great Black Swamp
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almost to Fort Wayne, Indiana. How this land was changed into some of the richest farmland in the country is an interesting story.

Colwriter goes on to say,

  . . .A somewhat successful attempt through the swamp was the Miami-Wabash & Erie Canal system, begun in 1820 and finished between 1830 and 1840. The portions of the system lying within the swamp were the last to be built owing to the lack of laborers and contractors willing to work in the swamp. Those who did, commanded high wages and up to thirty-two ounces of whiskey a day. The canal was the catalyst for the lumbering companies to come into the area, as it provided a means to float logs out on the canal to Toledo and Lake Erie. . . . a firm in Montreal sent teams of French Canadian choppers into this area to cut down the oak trees to be sent to Europe to be used as ship timbers.

To be useful for this purpose the tree had to be white oak, and at least 60 feet from the ground up to the first branch. The choppers were known far and wide for the sharpness of their axes-razor sharp-they would say. They came in teams of one hundred or so, like an army, took the trees they wanted and moved on with a polish and flare that the locals admired and applauded.[i]

Several attempts were made to construct roads through the swamp but none was very successful until after a rather humorous episode in the history of states rights occurred.  In 1835 Michigan and Ohio were going to war over a boundary dispute about whether the Toledo strip was in Ohio or Michigan. The surveying dispute was about the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set the southern boundary of Lake Michigan further south than it actually was.  When Michigan applied for statehood, it claimed part of the territory, also claimed by Ohio that now is Williams, Fulton and Lucas counties.[ii]  Negotiations broke down when the Governor of Ohio set up a government in the Toledo Area.[iii]  As the story goes, the Michigan troops got to the scene promptly, but the Ohio troops 'bogged down' on the military road in the Black Swamp. Luckily, the Ohio troops never had to do battle.

President Jackson signed a bill on June 15, 1836 that required the people of Michigan to settle the dispute before Michigan would be granted statehood.

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