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An Artist's Conception of Toledo, 1856

Toledo grew quickly after the rivalry between Port Lawrence and Vistula ended in 1833 with their agreement to merge into one town. The new town soon needed an organized city government. When the Ohio General Assembly met in 1836, Toledo petitioned to be incorporated as a city. House Bill No. 30 passed both houses and was signed by Governor Vance on January 7, 1837. It provided that Toledo ". . . shall be and hereby is declared to be a city, and the inhabitants thereof are created a body corporate and politic, by the name of the 'City of Toledo,' and by that name shall be capable of contracting and being contracted with, of suing and being sued, pleading and being impleaded, answering and being answered unto, in all courts and places, and in all matters whatsoever; with power of purchasing, receiving, holding, occupying and conveying real and personal estate, and may use a corporate seal and change same at pleasure."

The city held its first election on March 6, 1837, with Democrat Andrew Palmer opposing Whig John Berdan for mayor. Berdan was elected, along with the members of the first city council, who in turn elected other officers at their first meeting a few days later. On April 24, 1837, the city council passed an ordinance to tax personal property, and on May 29

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An Artist's Conception of Toledo, 1852

they appointed a committee to determine the cost of two fire engines for the city. The council also appointed a committee on public health to "examine the various pools of standing water in different sections of the city, and take measures for drying up or draining same.

John Berdan
1798 - 1841

Most of Toledo's business district was low and wet. Mud Creek, a sluggish stream that often became a lagoon, wound through the city just north of and parallel to Summit Street. This left a huge swamp between Jefferson Avenue and Monroe Street as far out as Tenth Street, and northeast of Adams Street nearly to Bay View Park. In l832 Jesup Scott purchased seventy acres of Toledo real estate, including the present sites of the Lucas County Courthouse and the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library. On an inspection tour of his property, he and J. Austin Scott became lost in the swamp near the corner of Huron and Adams Streets. Only the whistle of a steamboat passing on the river guided them out.

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Later, in 1844, he offered this same corner as a building site for the First Congregational Church. The congregation declined, because they could get to the building site only by jumping from log to log across the marsh. The mud and swamps, and resulting malaria earned for Toledo the nickname of Frog Town and the reputation of an unhealthy place to live. A cholera epidemic in 1832, and the annual summer onset of ague or malaria, commonly called Maumee fever, discouraged all but the most determined settlers.

The Lucas County Courthouse, 1840

The Ohio legislature created Lucas County in 1835 with Toledo as its county seat. Toledo's slow growth and Maumee's more central location at that time led some of Maumee's leaders to begin a campaign to move the county seat to that town. Individual Toledoans had pledged $20,000 toward building a courthouse on donated land at the mouth of Swan Creek. In July of 1839 city council appropriated $80 to fight the effort to move the county seat to Maumee. The entire county voted on October 8, 1839, to leave the seat of government in Toledo, but Maumee appealed and in 1840 the legislature appointed three commissioners to review the issue. Maumee claimed that Toledo had paid canal diggers to stuff the ballot boxes. The review favored Maumee. The county built a courthouse along River Road in Maumee, on the site of Dudley's Defeat in the War of 1812. The Maumee branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library stands on that site today.

Maumee lost its central location in 1850, when Fulton County was created from the western part of Lucas County. In addition, the population of Lucas County increased from 9,382 in 1840, to 12,363 in 1850, with more than 80 percent of that increase in the city of Toledo. Toledo asked to have a referendum on the issue of the location of the county seat, and on October 12, 1852, Lucas County chose Toledo. A new three-story brick courthouse was completed about a year later near the corner of Adams and Erie Streets.

A Map of Toledo Showing the Canal, 1837

On August 22, 1836, the Ohio Canal Commission decided to continue the canal through Toledo to Manhattan, but to give both Maumee and Toledo connecting canals, or side-cuts, between the main canal and the river. The state awarded contracts in May 1837 to build the section from the mouth of the Maumee River at Manhattan past the rapids at Maumee.The canal workers, mostly Irish immigrants, dug with picks and shovels, then lined the sides and bottom of the huge trench with clay to prevent erosion. Between Providence and Manhattan nine locks, built from stone quarried at Marblehead near Port Clinton and brought to Toledo on lake ships, lowered the main canal about sixty feet.

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A Canal Lock at the Maumee Side-Cut

At Maumee a side-cut two and one-half miles long lowered the canal sixty-three feet to the level of the Maumee River. Each of the six locks in the Maumee side-cut was ninety feet long and fifteen feet wide. The side-cut at Toledo, with two locks, lowered the canal fifteen feet into Swan Creek, and an aqueduct carried the main canal over Swan Creek, to cross Toledo between Michigan and Ontario Streets. At Manhattan two locks lowered the canal into the Maumee River. Because so many of the canal workers became ill and died from malaria during the summers of 1837 and 1838, the canal contractors suspended work during the summers. This, along with continuing financial difficulties, delayed the canal's completion long past the anticipated two years. The city declared a holiday on May 8, 1843, the day the first canal boat from Indiana was to arrive in Toledo.

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A Canal Boat Pulled by Mules

The stores closed and most of the city met the boat with flags and a brass band to welcome the captain and crew. The first canal boat from Cincinnati did not arrive in Toledo until June 27, 1845, because heavy forests south of the junction of the Miami and Erie and the Wabash and Erie Canals, in Paulding County, Ohio, slowed construction on that part of the canal. Canal tolls at Toledo in 1847 amounted to $63,869, and in 1848, 3,753 boats cleared from Toledo for a total of $117,220.25 in tolls. Toledo shipped 1,121,401 bushels of wheat in 1848, and 2,052,071 bushels of corn in 1849. At any one time, as many as fifty or sixty boats might be loading or unloading at the docks. By 1850 canal shipments worth $10 million a year passed through the city. Toledo called itself the "Corn City."
Canals in Ohio never made enough money to pay more than maintenance costs and some interest on their debts, and canal traffic declined as the railroads grew. Wherever canals and railroads competed, both lowered their rates until neither made a profit, but the railroads could raise their rates in areas away from the canals to make up the loss.

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In 1861 the state leased the canal system to private corporations for seventeen years. During this time the legislature officially abandoned some of the canals, and by 1878, when the leases expired, what remained of the canal system had deteriorated from lack of upkeep. In a few areas where no railroads competed for business, the canals operated for some years longer. In Toledo, the leaseholder stopped using the two locks at Manhattan and the state legislature made this action official in 1864. In 1871 the state abandoned the aqueduct across Swan Creek and nearly four miles of the canal where it crossed the city, leaving canal traffic to lock into the Maumee River at the Toledo side-cut. The Miami and Erie and the Wabash and Erie were the last canals remaining in use in Ohio.

One of the First Passenger Cars on the
Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad

The railroads actually arrived in Toledo before the canal. Several Port Lawrence businessmen incorporated the Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad on April 22, 1833, in the Territory of Michigan. When the towns of Port Lawrence and Vistula merged to form Toledo, the terms of the merger required that the land owners buy stock in the new railroad. This was the first railroad company west of the Allegheny Mountains. The first train ran from Toledo to Adrian, Michigan, on October 3, 1836, pulled by horses, because the locomotives, "Adrian No.1" and "Toledo No.2," on order from the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, had not arrived. The engines came in 1837, and with steam power, the trains reached a top speed of twenty miles a hour.

In financial trouble from the beginning, the Erie & Kalamazoo became part of the Michigan Southern Railroad in 1849. The Michigan Southern then built a connecting railroad from the Michigan line to Chicago, and on May 22, 1852, the first train ran from Toledo to Chicago over what became the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad. In 1847 the Toledo, Wabash & Western Railroad Company incorporated, but it was five years before the company laid any track. The first train ran from Toledo to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in July 1855. Two railroads that organized in 1850 to build lines westward from Cleveland merged in 1853 under the name Cleveland & Toledo Railway.

The builders intended the first railroads only as short connections between ports on the Great Lakes. They never expected that long distance trains would replace the steam-powered, screw-propeller lake ships that could carry heavy shipments of grain, and required no tracks and no roadbed. Different railroads deliberately made the gauges, or distance between the rails different, so that only their own trains could use the tracks.

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The Island House Hotel

In Toledo all shipping, by lake, canal, and rail, came together at the Middlegrounds. A peninsula between Swan Creek and the Maumee River, the Middlegrounds extended from the mouth of Swan Creek to join the mainland above the present Anthony Wayne Bridge. Beginning in 1852, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad began to fill in the marshland between the shore and the peninsula to create one hundred acres of solid land. Trains could come onto the Middlegrounds to be loaded or unloaded directly to or from the lake freighters docked at the wharves on the opposite side along the river. By 1863 ten large grain elevators stood on the Middlegrounds, along with the stylish and elegant Island House. Opened in 1856, the three-story combined hotel, railroad station, and steamboat landing provided not only station facilities, but a popular banquet hall.

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With two passenger trains each day between Toledo and Chicago, and freight trains bringing grain and pork from St. Louis and other points west,  north, and south to Toledo's warehouses for shipment out by lake freighter, Toledo looked to a promising future as a railroad center.

Toledo's population nearly doubled between 1835 and 1850, increasing from less than 2,000 to 3,820, and by 1860 Toledoans numbered 13,768. The need for services and improvements grew with the city. During those years Toledo began building roads, draining the marshes, organizing police and fire protection, and providing schools.

In 1824 the federal government had authorized a national road to connect Maumee and Detroit, and in 1827 a road beginning at the mouth of Swan Creek and continuing out Monroe Street connected with the road from Maumee to Detroit, part of which is now Detroit Avenue. Summit Street, Toledo's main thoroughfare and only improved road in 1835, connected Upper and Lower Towns. The trees had been cut from the roadway, and ditches along the sides served as gutters, but it remained rough and muddy. In the fall of 1839 city council voted to have sidewalks installed on Summit Street between Monroe and Cherry Streets. In 1848 the city appropriated $25,000 to invest in the Toledo Plank Road Company, which built two plank roads, including Cherry Street. With planking, Cherry Street became the best street in Toledo. The tolls never covered the extensive repairs, however, and the Toledo Plank Road Company lasted only about ten years.

In 1848 Toledo built its first real sewer to replace earlier open drainage ditches. Still more for drainage than sanitary purposes, it opened into the Maumee River. The city paid $3150 for two thousand feet of sewer pipe nearly three feet in diameter along Monroe Street. During the summer of 1837 Toledo built two fire stations to house two new fire engines. Volunteer engine companies organized in 1837 and reorganized in 1841. Engine Company Number Four formed in 1852, followed by four more volunteer companies during the next ten years. The city provided buildings and equipment for the volunteer fire companies. Toledo's original charter called for a city marshal, giving him the authority to deputize. A later ordinance created a volunteer police force in 1852. The city started an unsuccessful professional police force in 1857.

The telegraph came to Toledo in 1848, over wires belonging to the Lake Erie Telegraph Company and the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company. About 1857 Toledo acquired gas lights, with the Toledo Gas Light and Coke Company supplying the gas. On May 27, 1862, the Toledo Street Railway Company began running horsecars on Summit Street.

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A Horse-drawn Streetcar

The First Cherry Street Bridge

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In 1853 the city of Toledo annexed Fast Toledo, then known as Yondota, or Utah. The only transportation across the Maumee River at that time was by ferry. This hindered development of the East Side. The city council authorized construction of the Cherry Street Bridge on April 20, 1864, and the wooden span opened to traffic on September 5, 1865. Built by the Toledo Bridge Company, the drawbridge opened to allow ships to pass through the bridge and continue up the river to the Middlegrounds.

When Toledo incorporated in 1837, the city took on the responsibility for providing public schools. Harriet Whitney taught the first school in Toledo, in a log cabin at the corner of Adams and Michigan Streets in 1830. Some of her fifteen pupils crossed the river from East Toledo in boats to attend the school. In 1835 Harriet Wright taught school in the frame building on Erie Street used for the first court in Lucas County. Toledo took little interest in the schools, which offered neither standard courses of study nor regular annual schedules. Many families continued to send their children to schools in the East, or to local private schools or academies. Changes in the state laws regulating public schools led to the creation of the Toledo Board of Education in 1849. The board immediately rented a room for a central high school and established grammar schools in each of the four wards. The Toledo Colored School Association formed in 1850 in order to provide a separate school for Toledo's black children. On August 11, 1853, the city laid the cornerstone for a new high school building at the corner of Adams and Michigan Streets, on the site of the first log cabin school. The first class graduated from the new Toledo High School on March 6, 1857. The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library now occupies the site of Toledo's first high school.

The Toledo Young Men's Association, formed in 1837 as the Toledo Lyceum, established a library in 1838 for dues-paying members. The library, the forerunner of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, reorganized in 1864 as the Toledo Library Association. In 1839 Toledo bought eight acres of land just outside the city which became Forest Cemetery. St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum and Hospital opened in 1854 in a house on Superior Street, and the County Infirmary became part of the County Poor Farm on Detroit Avenue about the same time. The Episcopal Church operated a home for widows and orphans from 1855 until 1860, when the Lutheran Church took charge of the institution and moved it to Oregon.

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The Toledo High School


In 1850 Toledoans could choose from seven churches. The first church in the city, First Congregational, organized in 1833 as First Presbyterian, changing to Congregational in 1841. Methodist circuit riders held religious services, beginning in 1823. The Methodist Society, formed in 1836, later became St. Paul's Methodist Church. Episcopal services began in Toledo in 1837. Trinity Episcopal, organized in 1842, built a church in 1845 at the corner of Adams and St. Clair Streets. First Baptist organized in 1853, Salem Lutheran in 1842, Emmanuel German Methodist in 1850, and St. Paul's Lutheran in 1854. The Western Seamen's Friend Society established Bethel Church in 1847 to minister to lake sailors and canal workers. A black clergyman preached in Toledo by 1850, and a black Baptist church formed in 1857. A congregation of black Methodists, organized in 1858, laid the cornerstone for Warren Chapel in 1861. A French priest, Father Machebeuf, said the first mass in Toledo in 1839. In 1841 Father Armedeus Rappe came to Toledo as a parish priest. He established St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church on Cherry Street. Both St. Mary's German Catholic and St.Joseph's French Catholic organized in 1854 on Cherry Street. St. Patrick's Irish Catholic parish organized in 1862 on Toledo's south side. The congregation dedicated a new church on St. Patrick's Day in 1864.

Toledo's first bank, Prentiss & Dow, opened at the corner of Monroe and Summit Streets in 1843, and operated successfully for several years.

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The Bank of Toledo opened for business on October 8, 1845, and reorganized in 1864 as the Toledo National Bank. The first stores carried general merchandise, but businesses soon began to specialize. A.K. Gibson & Company ran the first store supplying only groceries, and Sinclair & Wilkinson had the first tailor shop. Both opened in 1835. Erastus Roys & Company opened the first book store in 1838. Valentine H. Ketcham, Toledo's first millionaire, opened a retail grocery store in 1836, then expanded the business to include wholesale trade when Joseph K. Secor joined him in 1846. William and Charles Roff opened a wholesale hardware company in 1855. Carl and George Braun bought William Roffs interest in 1858, and in 1873 Alonzo Bostwick bought Charles Roff's interest. The firm became the Bostwick-Braun Company. In 1857 Frederick Eaton & Company opened a dry goods store that later became known as the Lion Store.

Industry developed in Toledo to supply the needs of the residents. The need for lumber to build houses led to the early establishment of sawmills. Goodale & Stevens had one on Swan Creek in 1831, and Edward Bissell opened a mill on Elm Street in 1834. That same year a foundry and brick yard appeared. J. & J.N. Mount Carriage Makers started in 1837, followed by a hat factory in 1838. By 1850 Toledo had 38 manufacturers, employing 263 workers. By 1860, 100 factories in the city employed 885 people. Most of the plants were small, because they produced only necessities for area residents. Before the Civil War, factories remained concentrated in the East. The West applied its energy and capital to agriculture, and to developing canal, lake, and railroad transportation, so that the produce from the farms could be shipped east to be exchanged for manufactured goods.

Lucas County voted for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. For about twenty years Toledoans had helped escaped slaves find their way to safety in Canada on the Underground Railroad, one route of which passed through Maumee and Toledo. When South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, all local political differences disappeared as Toledoans agreed that the Union must be preserved. Toledoans began drilling even before the start of the Civil War, and the city responded quickly to the President's April 15, 1861, call for 75,000 troops.

On April 24 more than one thousand men left Toledo for Camp Taylor at Cleveland. They became part of the Fourteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and many saw service at Shiloh, Corinth, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Atlanta. The Twenty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry fought in the battles of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, among others.

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Many of Toledo's black residents fought for the Union with the Twenty-eighth United States Colored Regiment. Battery H, the First Regiment of the Ohio Light Artillery, formed in Lucas County and served throughout the war. Called the Lucas County Battery, it held off the Confederate charge at Chancellorsville until reinforcements arrived, and it was at the center of Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg.

General James B. Steedman
1817 - 1883

At Chickamauga, the Fourteenth Ohio Volunteers, under Toledo's General James B. Steedman, helped save the Union army, and earned for their general the lasting nickname, "Old Chickamauga." Nearly all the northwest Ohio regiments went on the march to Atlanta. After General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9, 1865, the men were discharged and returned to their homes. In May 1865 Lucas County reported a total of 293 men lost. Countless others suffered from wounds and illnesses.

A cheering crowd at the station met every returning regiment. The men were marched down Summit Street in a grand parade, and entertained at banquets at the Oliver House. Throughout the war ladies' groups in Toledo sewed regimental battle flags, and prepared "comfort bags" containing sugar, tea, needles, thread, soap, postage stamps, and other items to send to the troops. The Toledo Soldiers' Aid Society gave strawberry festivals and dances to raise more than $10,000 during the war. They bought hospital supplies with most of the money, and the remainder went to the soldiers' families.

The city planned a celebration to commemorate the end of the war and the Union victory, but the assassination of President Lincoln turned it into a day of mourning. All the buildings on Summit Street were draped in black, flags hung at half-mast, church bells tolled from nine o'clock until eleven o'clock that morning, and a procession of military units, fire companies, and civic organizations, all in full regalia, marched to the post office. for a memorial service.

Toledo prospered during the Civil War. With Southern ports closed, grain shipments from the West came through Toledo to be shipped East on lake freighters, and with eastern factories unable to supply both the needs of the army and those of the country, manufacturing in Toledo grew to meet the demand. The city secured its position as a commercial center, and began to develop as an industrial city as well.

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