{"id":133424,"date":"2020-07-27T07:01:17","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T12:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=133424"},"modified":"2020-07-28T07:23:21","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T12:23:21","slug":"disease-plagued-settlers-before-black-swamp-drained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2020\/07\/27\/disease-plagued-settlers-before-black-swamp-drained\/","title":{"rendered":"Draining Black Swamp called ‘heroic’ effort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor\u2019s note: This is one of a series of articles on Paulding County\u2019s bicentennial (200th anniversary). This is the first of two articles on the clearing and draining of the Great Black Swamp.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MELINDA KRICK\/<\/strong>for the Van Wert independent<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAULDING — When today\u2019s residents look back on Paulding County\u2019s 200 years of history and think about what it took to clear and drain the Great Black Swamp, few may realize the struggle to drain the swamp continues to this day. As long as people want to live here and farm here, keeping the mud and water at bay will be a ceaseless effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The heroic effort it took to finally drain the Black Swamp merited a state historical marker, which is located at Archbold. Ditching and tiling helped transform the 1,500 square miles of swamp into productive farmland. photo provided<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Black Swamp — 1,500 square miles of water and\nmud beneath a dense forest — had acquired a menacing reputation and most\nsettlers heading into the Midwest wanted to avoid the mud and disease at all\ncosts. While other areas, such as southeastern Michigan, were attracting a\nflood of new residents, the Black Swamp counties grew very slowly. Draining the\ndeep, sluggish water from the flat landscape would become the key to finally\nsettling the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our earliest settlers came from other areas of\nOhio, from other states, or from Europe, which typically had hillier terrain.\nThey didn\u2019t have experience in artificial drainage. Here, they initially chose\nland with natural drainage, such as ridges and the high banks along streams and\nrivers. Populations remained low, even after the Wabash & Erie and Miami\n& Erie canals opened in the 1840s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first families of Paulding County first had to\nclear trees to build a cabin and shelter for their livestock. As they began to\nclear away more forest and plant crops, they started creating furrows and\ndigging ditches to drain their farms. These were individual efforts and had\nmixed results. Sometimes farmers only succeeded in diverting the water onto\ntheir neighbors\u2019 land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in the late 1840s, the State of Ohio\nattempted to bring about a more systematic effort to allow entire areas to be\ndrained. The state\u2019s first general drainage law, passed in 1847, allowed one or\nmore landowners to petition the county commissioners for a ditch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This law was superseded by the 1859 ditch law, \u201can\nAct to provide for locating, establishing and constructing ditches, drains and\nwater courses.\u201d The laws have been updated and modified several times. The cost\nof the improvement was shared proportionally among those who benefitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting rid of the wet conditions had another\nimportant benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clouds of mosquitoes inhabiting the swamp\ncarried what we know today as malaria, but the pioneers called the illness\n\u201cague\u201d or \u201cmarsh fever.\u201d Some estimates say as many as five out of six settlers\nwere affected; they regularly suffered with severe chills and shaking, fever,\nand profuse sweating. In some cases, people couldn\u2019t work for several years.\nSometimes the disease was fatal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents and travelers also were fearful of\ncholera, which can be transmitted through contaminated water. The fast-moving\ndisease could wipe out families within hours and cause others to flee and not\nreturn. Cholera pandemics struck Ohio, including the Black Swamp, numerous\ntimes in the mid-1800s. Epidemics of typhoid fever and yellow fever also\noccurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the obvious benefits of a united effort to\nfight the swamp, ditching met with some resistance. The taxes assessed for the\nprojects often cost more than the land\u2019s purchase price. Some owners couldn\u2019t\npay their taxes. Nevertheless, notices for petition ditches began to appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon, surveyors were laying out open ditches,\noften between section lines. Men would come in and clear the timber and\nunderbrush, followed by a horse-drawn plow to break the ground and scrapers\npulled by horses to remove the dirt. After the process was repeated a few times,\nthe men would finish the job, digging and grading by hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ditches ranged from 3-6 feet deep and up to 20\nfeet wide at the top and 6-7 feet wide at the bottom. They served to\nartificially lower the water table of the surrounding land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dirt removed from new ditches at the same time\nwas used to create new road beds. All over the area, roads paralleled the\nditches in a grid pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It quickly became obvious that surface drainage\nwasn\u2019t enough to dry out the land and produce good harvests. Farmers needed to\nadd underdrainage — removing standing water and excess water from the soil\nthrough a system of underground drains. The practice was introduced to the U.S.\nfrom Britain in the 1820s. A good ditch system was necessary to provide outlets\nfor the underground drainage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, tile factories were scarce — the first\nin central Ohio started in the 1850s — and transporting the tile was too\nexpensive. Even when tile mills began to appear, most farmers couldn\u2019t afford\nthe tile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers improvised using a couple of methods to\ninstall underdrains, using materials on hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One method was digging a trench and laying\nsaplings or split rains end to end at one side, then covering them with lengths\nof sawn lumber, usually oak, elm, black ash, or basswood, leaving an open\nchannel between the sapling and edge of the plank. Sometimes two lines of\nsaplings were used with the boards perched on top of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less common was a \u201cvault\u201d style drain. A trench\nwas dug then a narrower, deeper trench was created at the bottom, creating\n\u201cshoulders\u201d on which planks would rest. The lower trench would collect and\ncarry away the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of these types might last 8-15 years,\ndepending on the soil type, quality of construction, and how well they were\nmaintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More information on the bicentennial can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com\/PauldingCounty200<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next time: Part 2 of Ditches and Tile Mills.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This is one of a series of articles on Paulding County\u2019s bicentennial (200th anniversary). This is the first of two articles on the clearing and draining of the Great Black Swamp. MELINDA KRICK\/for the Van Wert independent PAULDING — When today\u2019s residents look back on Paulding County\u2019s 200 years of history and think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 11:19:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}