The Short Life of Manhattan,
Ohio
By JOHN W. WEATHERFORD*
Lured on by the geographical promise of
the Maumee Valley,
and by the venturesome spirit of the
times, speculators in the middle
1830's scattered a brood of infant towns
along the Maumee River,
there to compete for their lives. If the
founders and inhabitants of
these rival towns--Port Lawrence,
Vistula, Oregon, Maumee,
Perrysburg, Marengo, and
Manhattan--agreed on anything, it was
on the future greatness of the Maumee
Valley as a channel through
which would pass commerce and emigrants.
Goods from New York
flowed through the Erie Canal and across
Lake Erie to its western
end. The necessity to transfer cargo
from canal boats to lake boats
generated a thriving forwarding business
at Buffalo. The necessity
to transfer cargoes again from lake
boats to canal or land con-
veyances at the other end of the lake
was expected to generate a
similar activity and consequently a new
Buffalo. The western counter-
part of the Erie Canal was the Wabash
and Erie Canal, which (by
1842) linked the Maumee with the Wabash,
the Ohio, and points
west. Just now, however, the Wabash and
Erie Canal matters less
as a reality than as a great
expectation, for the town-building had
waxed and waned and run its course in
the eight years between the
authorization and the completion of the
canal. As a hope, the canal
affected activity in the valley perhaps
more than it ever did as a
waterway. Somewhere on the Maumee, lake
boats would meet
canal boats, and there a city would
rise. The area in which the
second Buffalo could be born was thus
defined. Since it had to be
where lake boats could go, it had to be
between the mouth and the
rapids of the Maumee. Here it was, then,
that the scramble took
place.1
* John W. Weatherford is manuscripts
librarian of the Ohio Historical Society.
1 For histories of this region, see:
Clark Waggoner, ed., History of the City of
MANHATTAN, OHIO 377
Port Lawrence and Vistula coalesced into
Toledo, and have re-
ceived from historians that attention
which the successful merit.
Even Marengo, Maumee, and Perrysburg,
though they never won
the laurels to which they once aspired,
at least survive as towns
to this day. Manhattan led an active
life of only about six years
after its foundation in 1835, and its
plat was vacated altogether in
1848. Perhaps on its own merits as a
town it ought never to take
up more than a paragraph or two; but its
origin, brief career, and
fate may represent broader things. As a
failure it may all the better
stand for the speculations of the
1830's, and be a microcosm of the
Zeitgeist as no success could be.
Manhattan was the creature of
speculators, largely based in
Buffalo, and operating through the
Maumee Land and Railroad
Company, which they incorporated in
October 1835. Much of what
can be learned about the venture is to
be found in the papers of
one of these speculators, Jacob A.
Barker, of the Buffalo forwarding
firm of Barker and Holt. One of Judge
Zenas Barker's many sons,
he could not have been more than
twenty-one at the time he under-
took his active part in this ambitious
financial risk. Barker and his
eleven associates corporately bought the
land, platted it, and
erected buildings.2
Before all this, however, they had to
pick a site on which to
bet their $350,000. J. T. Hudson and
Daniel Chase (accompanied
by a certain Bennett) shopped for a
location in June 1835 on the
left bank of the Maumee at its mouth.
Chase had soundings made,
and found a twenty-foot channel that
came in from the lake and
led up towards the bank about five miles
below Toledo, coming, he
Toledo and of Lucas County, Ohio (New York and Toledo, 1888); Charles S. Van
Tassel, Story of the Maumee Valley,
Toledo, and Sandusky Region (Chicago, 1929);
and above all, Randolph C. Downes, History
of Lake Shore Ohio (New York, 1953).
2 The letters referred to hereafter are
in the Jacob A. Barker papers at the Ohio
Historical Society. These are a series
of about 150 letters to Barker from various partic-
ipants in the Manhattan speculation.
Barker apparently spent most of his time in
Buffalo during the whole period at hand.
There are other Jacob A. Barker papers,
but this writer has been competently
assured that they do not concern Manhattan.
Jacob A. Barker is not the Jacob Barker of Buffalo in
the Dictionary of American
Biography. He and his family are mentioned in H. Perry Smith, ed.,
History of Buffalo
and Erie County (Syracuse, 1884), II, 39. The twelve stockholders are
said by Clark
Waggoner to have been J. A. Barker,
Henry N. Holt, Charles Townsend, George
Coit, Sheldon Thompson, James L.
Kimberley, J. T. Hudson, George P. Barker,
John W. Clark, Stephen G. Austin, George
W. Card, and Platt Card.
378
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
thought, as close to potential docking
facilities as the channel at
Toledo. Keeping a deep basin dredged out
would apparently be
necessary both there and at Toledo; but
Chase suggested to Barker
that maintenance of the basin would be
cheaper at the proposed
site than at Toledo. Platt Card, another
of the investors, had been
looking over the location as well, and
conceived the additional
advantage, that at this low-lying spot
grading down to the water
would cost $50,000 less than at Toledo.
Chase thought that room could be made
for a hundred sail. This
reference (all too short) to sail can no
more than raise the question
whether the selection of the very mouth
of the river for a port
was not prompted partly by an
expectation that accessibility to sailing
vessels would constitute an advantage
over towns farther up-
stream. Counting on sail just at this
time would have been a
blunder, for already steamers plied the
lake, and in a very few years
were to obliterate sailing traffic.
Unfortunately, in all the cor-
respondence that grew out of the
venture, this mere slip is the only
reference to what one would have
expected to be a vital con-
sideration.
The canal, authorized in the previous
year, had not reached the
stage at which anyone knew where it
would "come out," or join
the navigable waters of the river. It
has been said that the ex-
pectation of the Wabash and Erie
terminating below Toledo led to
the establishment of Manhattan at the
terminus. Certainly Hudson
was not counting at all on the canal
coming out at Manhattan.
"That old bed of the creek,"
he wrote, "can be turned to good
account if the canal terminates at
Toledo with a little expense & if
the canal terminates at Perrysburg or
Maumee the nearer the City is
to the lake the better."3
Haste was as important as selecting a
proper site. Platt Card
had long wished to lay out a town at the
mouth, but had been
deterred by the caution of the
"Buffalo folks." Now that Toledo
had a good start, speed became essential
to success. "I have no
doubt," wrote Hudson, "if a
city had been laid out there & a
name given to it 6 mths ago we should
have had considerable of a
3 Hudson to Barker, June 19, 1835.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 379
settlement there by this time."4
The sooner lots were sold in the
projected town, the fewer Toledo would
sell, and the sale of lots
meant not only money, but boosters
recruited for the town. In
Platt Card's mind boosters were more
important at the outset than
cash. He planned to sell lots very
cheaply to the commercial men
in Buffalo so that they would "take
hold with us." Every day, he
warned, that Toledo sold lots, she
gained both money and influence,
which "we mite as well have as
not."5 G. W. Card thought in terms
of shares rather than lots, but his
object was the same. He suggested
winning influence by selling an
eighteenth of the shares in the
Maumee Land and Railroad Company at
Oswego, an eighteenth at
Detroit, another eighteenth at Cleveland
and Erie, and perhaps
another eighteenth for more Buffalo
influence.6 If the merchants
of these cities had a stake in the new
port, they would send their
commerce to it. During July the Cards
pressed Barker to act, or
to get others in Buffalo to act. Platt
Card informed Sears that he
had sold out his holdings in Toledo
"to prepare for the change."7
He did not in fact sell out altogether,
for he appeared in subsequent
years as a tax delinquent for lands he
owned in Toledo.8 In the same
month (July 1835) he is said to have
bought 160 acres at the
mouth of the Maumee from the Ottawa
chief Wasaonoquit.9 G. W.
Card, too, stood ready, waiting, and
importunate. He had a sur-
veyor and a "1st rate
merchant" on call. He asked Barker to send
a pile driver, and advised him to be
"ready to put up in a hurry
a cheap saw mill." Then he would
need men to start a brick yard
and a ship yard. "Then," he
wrote, "we move in with our Docks,
Store House, Tavern, and School House
for holding meetings in."
He urged Barker to break ground by
mid-September.l0
The basic problem was not, however, an
internal one, but rather
to bring to the new town the commerce
essential to its survival.
4 Ibid.
5 Platt Card to Richard Sears in
Buffalo, July 6, 1835.
6 G. W. Card to Barker, July 23, 1835.
7 Platt Card to Sears, July 6, 1835.
8 Toledo Blade, November 14, 1838.
9 Waggoner, History of Toledo, 933-934.
10 G. W. Card to Barker, July 23, 1835.
380
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
For this end the promoters did not rely
entirely on lake commerce,
but worked by multifarious schemes to
make Manhattan a cross-
roads. Even before the foundation of
Manhattan, Barker attempted
to gain control of the Erie and
Kalamazoo Railroad. This rail-
road, intended to run between Toledo and
the Kalamazoo River
and form a short cut from Lake Erie to
Lake Michigan, was the
first railroad to run in the West.
Though it never reached the
Kalamazoo, it did enjoy in 1835 a solid
existence compared to the
many paper schemes that characterized
the West, since, before the
year was out, it actually ran between
Adrian and Toledo. Its two
steam locomotives were not to arrive
until June 1837, but in the
meantime it made do with horses.11 To
gain control of it and make
it terminate at the projected town was
an early plan which Barker
tried to effect in June 1835, or before.
His plan was apparently for
a friend of his on the Erie and
Kalamazoo board to have the stock
issue expanded, whereupon Barker,
anonymously through inter-
mediaries, would buy enough to gain
control of the railroad. Little
can be learned of this plot. It failed,
possibly because of the suspi-
cion of some of the Erie and Kalamazoo
board.12
Whatever prevented Barker from winning
the Erie and Kala-
mazoo, he was soon to seek substitutes
for it. The charter of this
railroad permitted any railroad crossing
it to use it freely at
standard rates. One had therefore but to
build a small branch from
Manhattan to join the Erie and Kalamazoo
track, and it was all
open to Manhattan interests; so Hudson
advised Barker.13 By
late August 1835 the group had succeeded
in getting a Michigan
charter for just such a line, the Maumee
Branch Railroad; it could
join the mouth of the Maumee with the
Erie and Kalamazoo at any
point, with single or double track, and
use the older railroad. The
Maumee Branch was capitalized at
$100,000. As the new road
need not have been longer than ten miles
to accomplish its purpose,
and considering the part it seems to
have played in Barker's scheme,
it is odd that the Maumee Branch was
never built. It joined the
11 "The Erie and Kalamazoo
Railroad," Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio
Quarterly Bulletin, XII (1940),
No. 2, pp. 15-19, reprinted from the Adrian Daily
Telegram, June
20, 1934.
12 Hudson to Barker, June 19, 1835.
l3 Ibid.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 381
scores of chartered railroads that never
had a foot of track. Another
railroad that was to lead to Manhattan
did not even reach the
charter stage. Barker, in 1837, ordered
a survey for a single-track
line, the Manhattan and Havre Railroad,
to connect Manhattan
with Havre, another dream town half way
between Manhattan and
Monroe, Michigan.14 This was
half of a plan to connect Manhattan
with Monroe by rail. The other half of
the plan was to lobby to
have the Havre Branch Railroad
chartered to touch Monroe. These
projects, nebulous though they were,
remained a part of the
scheduled development of Manhattan as
late as October 1840, when
D. S. Bacon of Monroe wrote to Barker,
"We look upon the con-
nexion of Manhattan and Monroe by the
Rail Road as certain, and
as being the salvation of each
place."15
During the first year of Manhattan's
existence the terminus of
the Wabash and Erie Canal remained an
open question. D. W.
Deshler of Columbus, for example,
advertising lots in Marengo,
used the "probability of the
termination of the Canal at this point"
as an attraction to buyers.16 Even
though, as we have seen, the
Wabash and Erie was not one of the
original expectations of the
Manhattan investors, it soon became one
of their most cheering
prospects. When, in April 1836, the
board of public works chose
Manhattan as the terminus, that town
scored a victory that must
at the time have seemed decisive to
many. In May 1837 bids were
taken for the building of the section
from the rapids to Manhattan.
In July the company expanded its stock
to $2,000,000.17 In May
1838 the jealous towns at the rapids
petitioned the legislature to
make the canal join the river there.18
The next month the Toledo
Blade announced that the canal would come out at three
points:
Manhattan, Toledo, and Maumee.19 The
canal, after all, lent its
facilities equally to the main
contenders, and remained neutral
14 John M. Bulkley, History of Monroe
County, Michigan (Chicago and New
York, 1913), I, 375-377.
15 Bacon to Barker, October 24, 1840.
Bacon was General George H. Custer's
father-in-law.
16 Platt Card to Sears, July 6, 1835.
17 Waggoner, History of Toledo, 933-934.
It also formed the East Manhattan
Land Company to develop lands across the
river.
18 Toledo Blade, May 16, 1838.
19 Toledo Blade, June
6, 1938.
382
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
in the struggle--at extra cost to the
state. To Manhattan the
decision must have been disappointing,
for whatever benefits the
canal offered, they were less when
shared than when enjoyed
exclusively.
The original conception of Manhattan
was, it will be recalled,
as a lake port; and to be a lake port
was the ambition of the
rivals all the way up to the foot of the
rapids. The steamers
Jackson and Brady, of Detroit, had reached Perrysburg in
the spring
of 1834 (sixteen years after the first
attempt by the Walk-in-the-
Water), and thereafter steamboats visited various parts of the
river
between the rapids and the mouth.20
The ports up at the rapids, how-
ever, were at the mercy of the river
level, and only in the wetter sea-
sons was an adequate channel assured.21
The Toledo Blade, of
course, made the most of this fact.
"The 'Miami of the Lake,' " wrote
the editor of the Blade, "censures
us for trying to stop the naviga-
tion of the Maumee with trash published
in our paper. The trash
with which the Maumee is impeded, is
good substantial rock and
sand bars, placed there by nature."22
The Maumee Express admitted
that sometimes, in a very strong west
wind, water was sometimes
too low for navigation, but claimed (in
October 1837) an average
of one ship a day since navigation
opened.23 A petition to have the
canal widened for lake boats suggests
that the inhabitants of Maumee
did not have full confidence in the
navigability of the river.24 If the
need for a deep channel favored Toledo
over Maumee and Perrys-
burg, it might be expected even more to
have favored Manhattan,
lying nearer to the lake. At the mouth,
though, were two channels,
one leading to Manhattan, and the other
(the main one) ascending
the stream past the other towns. Thus,
when the Maumee Express
cheerfully adverted to three ships
running aground at Toledo, the
Blade was careful to point out that the mishaps had occurred
in
the Manhattan channel, and had nothing
to do with Toledo traffic.25
20 Maurer Maurer, "Navigation at
the Foot of the Maumee Rapids," Historical
Society of Northwestern Ohio
Quarterly Bulletin, XV (1943),
159-194.
21 Ibid.
22 Toledo Blade, May 30, 1837.
23 Maumee Express, October 7, 1837. This claim presumably includes river
steamboats.
24 Maumee Express, February 17,
1838.
25 Toledo Blade, June 20, 1837.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 383
Despite this configuration of the river
bed, steamboats called at
the new docks of Manhattan. Evidence on
these visits is scant, but
we do have two tables of arrivals and
departures, one for the week
of August 8 to 15, 1837, and the other
for July 24 to 31, 1838. The
former table shows that the one-year-old
port had seventeen visits
during the week, from a schooner and
nine steamboats. Of these, two
steamboats cannot be considered lake
traffic, as they stayed on the
river, plying between Maumee and
Manhattan. The schooner and
two other steamboats coming in from the
lake were merely stopping
at Manhattan on their way to or from
ports upriver. The remaining
five steamboats called at Manhattan on
their way to or from
Buffalo and Detroit. They were the
important visitors, for only they
represent commerce which the port at the
mouth enjoyed to the
exclusion of its rivals on the Maumee;
and only exclusive com-
merce could count in the competition of
these ports. These five--the
Robert Fulton, North American,
Governor Marcy, New York, and,
DeWitt Clinton--were of the type that would have to frequent
Manhattan. Five, of course, were not
enough in a week. During
1837 Toledo claimed 756 steamboat
visits.26 Even supposing the
shipping season to have been thirty-five
weeks, it is clear that a
majority of boats went to Toledo without
stopping at Manhattan.
A year later Manhattan showed a slight
superficial improvement,
suggested by sixteen visits from eleven
steamboats within a week.
Of these eleven boats, nine represented
lake commerce which
Manhattan did not have to share with its
rivals upstream: the
Champlain, General Wayne, Commerce,
North American, General
Brady, Oliver Newberry, Erie, Robert
Fulton, and Commodore
Perry. By now, not only Buffalo and Detroit, but Sandusky and
Cleveland, traded with Manhattan; but
the increase was probably
not commensurate with the growth of
activity on the lake.27
More than one steamboat company used
Manhattan, but that
of Barker and Holt deserves notice, and
reminds us that part of
the strategy of building the new port
was to nurture the investment
26 Toledo Blade, January
31, 1838.
27 The Manhattan Advertiser is a
very rare newspaper, of which no complete
collection is known to exist. The issues
of August 16, 1837, and August 1, 1838, are
at the Western Reserve Historical
Society in Cleveland. The society courteously pro-
vided photostats for the writer.
384
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
by sending it trade. Barker and other
forwarding men were in a
favorable position for selecting those
lake towns which were to
enjoy the vital commerce, and those
which were to wither for lack
of it. Still too much can be made of
this point, since there was
always this threat, that shippers in
Buffalo might reach a point
where their own interests as shippers
transcended their interests as
city-builders and no longer permitted
the artificial injection of
trade into pet towns. Thus it is that,
as early as 1837, at least one
of Barker and Holt's steamboats (the Sandusky)
made the Buffalo-
Detroit run without stopping at
Manhattan at all.28 Two years
later the town-builders were even
neglecting the dredging requisite
to the function of Manhattan as a port.29
It ought to be remembered, however, that
during all these
difficult times (and they include the
nation-wide "hard times" of
1837) there were prospects that buoyed
up the investor, and hopes
that died hard. For example, even the
little lake traffic just cited
might justify the existence of some kind
of town at the mouth of the
Maumee. Add to this example the
uncertain but powerful influence
of the railroads that were expected to
connect Adrian and Monroe
with Manhattan, and the mediocre showing
in lake traffic can be
borne, for the sake of the future. Add,
again, the hope which
subsisted through the winter of 1837-38,
that the Wabash and
Erie Canal would terminate at Manhattan
and not at Maumee or
Toledo, and we can see how Manhattan
could still be considered a
fair bet. If the present belonged
(already) to Toledo, the future
was still in the reach of Manhattan.
This hopefulness was, more-
over, prolonged, when the discouragement
of the Wabash and
Erie's termination at three points was
supplanted by a new hope,
in a new railroad.
This route, the Ohio Railroad, was
chartered in March 1836, to
stretch from the Pennsylvania line
northeast of Cleveland to the
Maumee opposite Manhattan and up the
river to Perrysburg. Its
purpose was to carry freight and
passengers between October and
March, when lake shipping was closed.
Even in summer, it was
28 Ohio Daily Journal (Columbus), July 25, 1837; see also the
shipping list for
August 1837 above.
29 Wright to Barker, March 15,
1839.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 385
hoped it might compete with the
steamboats for passengers and
light freight. So long a line, however,
would have taken a long time
to build, in the infancy of railroads,
and in fact it was not even
begun until 1838. If, therefore, the
road were commenced at the
Pennsylvania line, Manhattan might die
of old age before a train
could reach it. Fortunately for the
Manhattan interests the road
was begun simultaneously at Lower
Sandusky (Fremont) and the
bank opposite Manhattan, the two crews
working towards each other,
so that the first stretch of track would
link Manhattan with Lower
Sandusky. Thus in the very year that the
canal ceased to be an
exclusive benefit, the Ohio Railroad
promised to be one.
This turn of events cannot be attributed
to luck, if we are to
credit Thomas Richmond, one of the first
commissioners of the
Ohio Railroad. He asserted that Nehemiah
Allen (a state repre-
sentative from Geauga County), as
president of the Ohio Railroad,
had forwarded his own investment in
Manhattan by commencing
the line there--and this without any
authority from the stockholders
of the railroad. What made Allen's
perfidy particularly despicable
to Richmond was that his own town,
Richmond, which he had
built on the proposed line between Lower
Sandusky and Cleveland,
had now to pine indefinitely for the
railroad. There is not much
reason to doubt Richmond. Nehemiah Allen
held lots in Manhattan,
and even lived there in the 1840's.
Moreover, the Ohio Railroad
was noticeably infiltrated with
Manhattan interests. G. W. Card
owned $92,333 worth of stock; John G.
Camp, a Whig state
representative who looked out for
Manhattan interests in Columbus,
held $1,000; Benjamin F. Tyler, the
Brooklyn financier who had
bought stock in the East Manhattan Land
Company, $30,000; A. T.
and G. H. Tuttle, who owned a store in
Manhattan, $10,000; Jacob
A. Barker, $30,000; Daniel Chase,
$30,000; Henry D. Ward, cashier
of the Manhattan Bank, $10,000; Platt
Card, $40,000; Benjamin
Franklin Smead, the editor of the Manhattan
Advertiser, $10,000;
H. S. Knapp, Smead's assistant, $2,500;
the Maumee Land and
Railroad Company, $64,000; Sheldon
Thompson and J. S. Kimberley,
original stockholders in Manhattan,
$10,000 jointly; Stephen G.
Austin, another original stockholder,
$19,100; John T. Hudson,
$5,600; Nehemiah Allen, $52,000; and
John W. Clark, another
386
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Manhattan stockholder, $28,000.30 These
stockholders all had stakes
in Manhattan, and there may have been
others as well. The known
holdings of the Manhattan interest in
the Ohio Railroad come to
$435,333, out of a total of $1,875,951.
And so it is not surprising
that the Manhattan-Lower Sandusky part
was begun first. Even so,
Manhattan had to pay a price, according
to the Maumee Express:
land equal to the cost of the whole line
to Lower Sandusky.31
In November 1838 Nehemiah Allen
advertised for pilings at a
dollar each32--for it was on
pilings that the railroad was to cross
the marsh that comprised most of its
right of way.33 By March
1839 the road bed was completed and
awaiting pilings. One naturally
wonders what this means; pilings
obviously substitute for a road
bed. To say that the route is ready for
pilings is merely to say that
the swamp is still there. In June, at
any rate, a pile driver arrived
at Manhattan on the schooner Hubbard.34
In the meantime other
preparations had been made. The Ohio
Railroad called in an
installment of five dollars per share
from its stockholders (for that is
how
the stock was bought),35 and a ferry began crossing the
Maumee between Manhattan and the
opposite bank, where the
road work would begin.36
According to the plan, two pile drivers
were to work towards
each other from opposite ends of the
line. Ten days after its arrival
the Manhattan driver went to work,
driving fifty-two piles on its
first day. In a few weeks it reached a
rate of 132 a day.37 Benjamin
F. Smead (of the Manhattan
Advertiser), naturally sanguine about
this development, visited the monster
shortly after it had begun
crawling across the swamp towards its
mate from Lower Sandusky.
30 C. P Leland, "The Ohio Railroad,
That Famous Structure Built on Stilts,"
Western Reserve Historical Society
Tracts, No. 81 (1891); see also the
local history
columns in the Toledo Blade for
May 13 and May 20, 1882.
31 Maumee Express, July 29, 1837.
32 Manhattan Advertiser, November 17, 1838. All copies of the Manhattan
Adver-
tiser cited, except for the two from Western Reserve, were
consulted in the Toledo
Public Library, which has the largest
holdings, beginning with Vol. III, No. 1,
August 22, 1838.
33 Leland, "The Ohio
Railroad," 268.
34 Manhattan Advertiser, June 12,
1839.
35 Manhattan Advertiser, March 13, 1839.
36 Manhattan Advertiser, March
27, 1839.
37 Manhattan Advertiser, June 26, July 24, 1839.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 387
It has two hammers [he told his
subscribers] guaged to the width of the
road, (7 feet,) and when both are in
play, and the whole machine well
attended, the facility of its movements
is astonishing. Everything is done by
steam, even to the sawing off of the
piles, and moving the machine forward
to the next set. The locomotive saw-mill
which is to accompany it, has not yet
arrived, but is expected every day.
The machine was erected at the Company
wharf [the Ohio Railroad wharf,
opposite Manhattan]. . . . It has now
barely left the wharf, and is con-
sequently driving in the water. . . .
When the saw-mill arrives, the timber
for rails and ties will be got out and
laid, and every thing made ready for the
reception of the iron as they progress.38
It apparently continued to run until
November, when the loyal
Smead announced that the pile driver was
little impeded by the
autumn gales that had stopped
shipping.39 There followed a long
silence on this subject until April
1840, when the Maumee Express
hopefully enquired whether the pile
driver had "gin out." "Pshaw,"
replied Smead. "Put your head under
the hammer once and if the sap
don't fly, then it's because there's
none in it."40
By that time, though the Ohio Railroad
had lost its momentum,
and so had Manhattan. The grandiose
transportation schemes were
to no avail. Nehemiah Allen, who had
gambled on both, blamed
the Manhattan investors for letting him
down. His letter to them,
written in November 1840, is not devoid
of hope. He points so
clearly, however, to one of the probable
causes of failure that it
would be best to use his words:
Understanding from friend Wright that he
is about to visit thy place I
thought it might not be amiss for me to
write a few words in relation to
the Maumee B. R. Road. We have timber
prepared to commence operations
and the Pile Machine [another one, of
course] is completed and will prob-
ably be delivered this week and a competent
gang of hands in readiness to
operate it. So far all is well, but how
we are to keep up the steam appears
at present to be involved in some
mistery. I must complain a little of the
Manhattan company. The impression is so
general that you have abandoned
your interest here, that it is a matter
of surprise with many that the ORR
Co. should continue to exert their
energies to build up a place abandoned
38 Manhattan Advertiser, July 3, 1839. C. P. Leland, incidentally,
says that the rail-
road had no ties. "The Ohio
Railroad," 268.
39 Manhattan Advertiser, November 27, 1839.
40 Manhattan Advertiser, April 1,
1840.
388
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
by its proprietors. Even some of our
directors say to me "you have got 500
lots but you cannot raise 500 cents upon
them till our Company build up
the place." Others say to me that
they thought your company would do
something to bring the place into
notice. Even the engineer upon the canal
is reported to have said that it would
be time enough five years hence to
talk about locating locks in the river
here. Not a gentleman composing your
company I think has been here this or
the last year. Will not your company
or the moneyed men in it point out some
method to assist me in some
way to raise money on a pledge of
unquestioned security, provided you
would be satisfied that the interest and
principal would be punctually paid.
It seems that the prudent course would
be to know how the work is to be
continued before I go so far that ruin
must follow a suspension of the work.
I am not one who abandons an object as
long as there is a ray of light by
which to pursue it, but it must be
confessed from present appearances that
Manhattan is now in a total relapse
& unless it had other & better friends
than its proprietors it would be
eternal. Please write to me at Willoughby
& say a word of comfort by way of
saying where the needful may be had.41
So wrote the unenviable Nehemiah Allen,
who had so far staked
the future of the Ohio Railroad on
Manhattan that he had to
boost the town after its very
proprietors had lost interest. In two
years the state auditor wrote the
epitaph of the Ohio Railroad in
a report explaining how much the
taxpayers had lost in the enterprise
owing to the "plunder law."42
Its assets were a trail of waiting
pilings. Yet there had been a time, say
in 1838, when it looked as
if all roads might lead to Manhattan.
Hope died slowly. Two years after
Allen's plea for action,
Frederick Wright sent a very similar,
though more sanguine, mes-
sage to Buffalo. He expected, even then,
that vigorous action would
save the whole investment, and spoke
still of "the great necessity
of enlisting the heavy forwarding
concerns of Buffalo." He warned
that
the present appearances indicate that
Toledo will make a bold dash in
the spring--whilst we as yet have not
apparently even a Corporal's Guard,
with which to show fight and do battle.
The Canal is ready for us, and we
must rally or beat a retreat. It opens
for navigation in the early part of
March. . . . Jay & Webster, &
Hunter, Balmer, & Co. must be induced
41 Allen to Austin, Townsend, and Barker, November 9, 1840.
42 Leland,
"The Ohio Railroad."
MANHATTAN, OHIO 389
to put shoulder to the Wheel and give a
friendly hoist. We have always de-
clared to the public that the success of our enterprise
was based entirely on
the business of the Canal.
Even at this late date Wright believed
that three months' activity
would "infuse new life into the
concern."43 It is interesting to note
that Allen thought only of rails, and
Wright only of water transport.
At the convergence of all these routes,
what was there? Manhattan
was not a mere paper town, even though
its commercial grandeur
never left the drawing board. Less than
a year after the site was
chosen, a writer whose main object was
to speak for Marengo
mentioned Manhattan in his description
of the valley in the spring
of 1836:
As you ascend the river, which is deep
and broad, the first town which
meets the eye is Manhattan, now a
thriving village with a population of
several hundred, where, about six months
ago, there was scarcely a house,
if indeed there was one. It has sprung
up as it were by magic.44
Manhattan had warehouses, an inn, at
least two lawyers and three
physicians, a barber shop, a clothes
cleaner, a painter (whose wife
was a milliner), a grocery, a bakery
(though the baker soon deserted
to Toledo), and two or three general
stores. James L. Chase
bought steamboat fuel wood, wheat, and
dubious bank notes; he
sold vinegar, almanacs, and shoes. 0.
Smith advertised "Lots of
goods--wet and dry--for sale." A. T. and G. H.
Tuttle, in December
1836, revealed the "Great
News!" that they were opening a store
"surpassed by no other
establishment west of Toledo"-- an
ambiguous boast, considering that they
were not west of Toledo.
William Crane sold India rubber clothing
to those "traversing the
western wilds."45
The panic of 1837 struck business here
as elsewhere. The
advertised pleas of the shops for the
payment of debts show distress,
and also the fact that much of their
trade must have been on credit.
Still, the shops generally limped on
after the panic for two or three
43 Wright
to Barker, December 5, 1842.
44 Ohio Daily Journal, May 31,
1836, quoting the Ravenna Star.
45 Manhattan Advertiser, 1837-40, advertisements, passim.
390
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
years. An anonymous traveler has left us
a sketch of Manhattan
as he found it in May or June, 1837:
Manhattan like all other points in this
country . . . is now entirely
prostrate. Indeed, I do not see how any
amount of business can be done,
save such as comes from the river. Town
lots, with the native forest still upon
them, are held as high as property on
Main st. Lancaster. . . . I passed a day
at Manhattan, where I found a very good
house, and had I written this
sketch in the midst of the ennui in
which I dragged out that period, I doubt if
I had not spoken somewhat more harshly
of that city. As it is . . . it has
many and fine advantages; and when its
proprietors shall cease to stand in
their own light . . . it will become a
flourishing place.46
The suggestion that the proprietors were
pricing their lots high
is not found anywhere else. If it is
true, of course the practice
must have had a particularly stultifying
effect at that time.
Besides the stores, lawyers, and
physicians, there were a bank,
a newspaper, and a school. The school,
it will be recalled, was
originally "for holding meetings
in," but more than enough children
appeared to fill it. A Mr. Galpin taught
the free school. It grew
too large for one teacher, and in
January 1840 the directors engaged
a Miss Washburn to open a free school
"for the instruction of young
Misses and a few boys," to take the
pressure off Mr. Galpin.47 For
two years, Miss Washburn had been
running a private school in
Manhattan, where for three dollars a
quarter the heirs of paper
fortunes could learn natural philosophy,
chemistry, botany, rhetoric,
composition, grammar, arithmetic,
geography, history, reading,
writing, and spelling. Miss Washburn
mentioned no colleague in
her advertisement, and one suspects that
all this knowledge flowed
from a single fount. In May 1840, when
public education halted
seasonally, Miss Washburn again opened
her private school in her
room on Maumee Avenue.48
In an enterprise like Manhattan one bank
was worth a hundred
schools. The whole project required
money, and its proprietors
knew from its very beginning the close
relation among money,
printing press, and bank. If money were
needed, why not (in those
46 Maumee Express, June 10, 1837,
quoting the Ohio Eagle (Lancaster).
47 Manhattan Advertiser, January 15, 1840.
48 Manhattan Advertiser, May 27, 1840.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 391
insouciant times) print some? One of the
prizes for winning the
Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad would have
been its bank in Adrian.
Failing to get this bank, the Manhattan
interests set out to have their
own chartered. Daniel Chase went to
Detroit in March 1836 to lobby
for a charter for the Manhattan Bank.
The territorial legislature
proved difficult. Chase wrote to Barker
from Detroit, "I have just
got through one of the hardest sieges I
ever had in my life, I mean
of a managing nature." Among his
difficulties in obtaining the
charter had been the contrary labors of
the Toledo lobby. Despite
the friendly help of Governor Mason,
Chase had to postpone his
charter in March; but soon after he
succeeded.49 The Toledo Blade
alleged (in 1840) that the Manhattan
Bank charter "was obtained
in Michigan as a price for the treachery
of its stockholders in aiding
Michigan to retain illegal possession of . . . the disputed
territory."50 Unfortunately,
the correspondence sheds no light on
this matter. There was a brief time when
the Manhattan men and
others in the disputed territory had a
choice of capitals in which to
lobby. They could approach Detroit or
Columbus, depending on
where they thought success more likely.
The boundary settlement,
following closely upon the granting of a
Michigan charter to the
Manhattan Bank, might look as if the
promoters had treated with
the wrong sovereign. After all, though,
time was all-important. A
bank of questionable legality was better
than no bank at all. In fact,
the Manhattan Bank spent most of its
life in this state of uncertain
legitimacy. Was it a Michigan bank in
the wrong state, or an Ohio
bank without a charter? Yet it went on
taking deposits and printing
money. Why not, when even the Granville
Library Company was
circulating its own currency?
Three years passed before Ohio
acknowledged this stepchild by
issuing a charter in March 1839. The
charter was moved in the Ohio
senate by John Hough James, the Urbana
banker. The bank had by
then been taken over by the Urbana
banking system, controlled by
James.51 At that time the
Manhattan Bank had a capitalization of
49 Chase to Barker, March 17, 1836.
50 Toledo Blade, August
1, 1840. "The disputed territory" was a strip of land
south of the present Michigan border. It
included Toledo and Manhattan.
51 William E. and Ophia D. Smith, A
Buckeye Titan (Cincinnati, 1953), 185n.;
Toledo Blade, August 1, 1840.
392
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
$100,000, with the privilege of
expanding to $500,000. Among its
liabilities the bank counted $50,000
worth of stock and $66,700
of its notes in circulation. It claimed
assets comprising $13,500 in
specie, $68,300 in bills discounted,
$18,600 "due from Western banks
and bankers," and $11,000 "due
from Eastern banks."52 Against
this published statement must be placed
the discovery of the Smiths
in their biography of John H. James that
in the panic the Manhattan
Bank was down to $160 in specie, and was
only saved by a hasty
transfusion of cash from Urbana.53 Perhaps
here, as elsewhere, the
same bit of specie traveled about among
various banks for the sole
purpose of supporting cheerful
statements of balance when the
examiner paid his visit.
The official reports concealed not only
the dearth of specie but
other internal difficulties as well. H.
D. Ward, the cashier of the
bank, wrote to Barker on June 26, 1839,
that the bank was holding a
note for $4,325.78, made out by Barker,
G. W. Card, Sheldon
Thompson, and Charles Townsend (all
stockholders of the Maumee
Land and Railroad Company) to John Hough
James. It was
protested for non-payment and would have
to be attended to im-
mediately. Another note for $500 by G.
W. Card as agent for the
company had been under protest for
several months. Ward
wondered what to do with it.54 Thus,
in late June, the cashier had
worries. When the Fourth of July came
around, Ward turned for
comfort to the jug. After eleven days
Frederick Wright informed
Barker that the cashier had been
"grossly intoxicated ever since the
fourth." A previous offense had
been forgiven, even though on that
occasion Ward had had the key to the
safe with him. This time
he had continued to appear at the bank,
where "the regular customers
of the Bank are not only not attended to
but sometimes personal
abuse is heaped on them."55
Even externally, however, the weakness
of the Manhattan Bank
(like the other banks in the valley) had
become apparent. The bank
had suspended payment on its notes late
in 1838, despite loyal
52 Required statement in Manhattan
Advertiser, May 31, 1838.
53 Smith, Buckeye Titan, 294.
54 Ward to Barker, June 26, 1839.
55 Wright to Barker, July 15, 1839. Ward
kept his job till autumn.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 393
supporters such as the editor of the Advertiser,
who declared that
he always treated the notes as if they
were money.56 This is the
closest the Advertiser came to
mentioning the dread word "suspen-
sion" until January 1839, when
Smead announced that Manhattan
Bank notes were now being redeemed at
face.57 The first report of
the Ohio Bank Commission suggests that
the Manhattan Bank
hired brokers in Cincinnati to circulate
its notes and draw specie for
the bank.58 The bank changed
hands again in 1840. James had ap-
parently accepted the Manhattan Bank
with reluctance, and only
with the inducement of some of the
Manhattan promoters offering
him a premium. So, in any case, G. W.
Card recalled seven years
later.59 Now James got rid of
the bank and it came into the hands
of Calvin L. Cole, the author of banking
schemes in Binghamton
(New York) and Circleville. Both were
insubstantial institutions
which collapsed during the summer. In
August 1840 the newly
acquired Manhattan Bank was put under
injunction by the state
commissioners, and so its active life
ended.60
The reasons for the injunction were not
made public until March
1841, when a special committee formed to
close up the affairs of
the bank reported. The committee found
that Cole had bled the
bank to death. He and his Binghamton
bank had placed among the
assets of the Manhattan Bank
certificates of deposit amounting to
$23,000. "These certificates,"
reported the committee, "appear to
have been placed in the bank to
represent its stock in lieu of specie,
and although utterly unavailable . . .
[appear] to have constituted
in part, the basis of the issues of the
bank, and the security of the
public." They also found that in
sixty days Cole and other principal
stockholders had overdrawn their own
accounts in their own bank
by $49,000--at that time $3,000 more
than the total capital stock
paid into the Manhattan Bank. The
commissioners need scarcely
have said that "no attention
appears to have been paid by the officers
56 Manhattan Advertiser, September 5, 1838.
57 Manhattan Advertiser, January 2, 1839.
58 First Annual Report of the Bank
Commissioners of Ohio to the Thirty-Eighth
General Assembly, December 16, 1839, Ohio
Executive Documents, No. 22 (Columbus,
1840), 10.
59 G. W. Card to Barker, May 31, 1847.
60 Toledo Blade, August 5, 1840.
394
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and agents of the bank, in this unusual
expansion of its issues, to
the security of the mere stock
holders." By the end of its career, the
Manhattan Bank had $89,283 of its notes
in circulation, against
$9,305 available for their redemption.61
The Manhattan Bank acquired a political
significance, largely of
the "horrible example" type.
The Cleveland Herald and Gazette
cited the Michigan charter of the bank
as an example of the hypocrisy
of the Democratic state administration.62
Though John H. James,
who moved the second charter in the Ohio
senate, was a Whig, the
president of the bank, Daniel Chase, was
an active Democrat. When
he presided over a Democratic meeting in
Toledo in 1838, the Whig
Maumee Express could not resist commenting on the disparity
between the theory of bank reform and
the practice of the
Manhattan Bank.63
No connection between the Manhattan Bank
and the Democrats
was revealed in so spectacular a fashion
as that which appeared on
the demise of the bank in August 1840,
when the commission
charged with its final affairs found a
note for $3,000 signed by
the Democratic governor, Wilson Shannon.64
Occurring as it did
at the height of a feverish campaign in
which banks were the main
issue, this discovery gave the Whig Blade
an opportunity that it
did not pass up. For two or three weeks
the newspaper relished its
cause celebre. The Manhattan Bank, it declared, had been "a great
favorite with our federal Locofoco Bank
Reform Legislature and
State authorities. . . . Gov. Shannon is
known to have exerted his
influence in its behalf." The Blade
was not hesitant about making
its point:
Among the assets found in the Bank by
the Commissioners . . . is his
EXCELLENCY BANK REFORM WILSON SHANNON'S
NOTE FOR
$3000. How came the note in this remote
corner of the State, if his Excellency
had no connexion with the Coles
transaction? Can he explain? The people
are anxious to know. We do not wonder
that Governor Shannon was so
61 Report
quoted in the Toledo Blade, March 10, 1841.
62 Cleveland Herald and Gazette, November
30, 1837.
63 Maumee Express, August 18,
1838.
64 Toledo Blade, August
5, 1840. Governor Shannon had visited Manhattan for
a few days at the end of May 1839. Manhattan
Advertiser, May 29, 1839.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 395
devoted an advocate of Bank Reform; for
it now appears that no man has
been more familiar with the frauds and
corruptions by which the people have
been swindled out of their hard earnings
through the abuse of the banking
privilege.65
A week later the Blade published
an affidavit by Seymour G. Renick
of Columbus, president of the late
Circleville Bank confirming the
report that Governor Shannon had
borrowed $3,000 from Cole.
Renick swore that Cole had told him that
Shannon had been specu-
lating with John Hough James in the
north of Ohio. When James
pressed the governor to furnish his
share of the money for these
adventures, Shannon had turned to Cole.66
The governor denied
Renick's allegations. A. Chamberlain,
the last cashier of the
Manhattan Bank, backed up Renick,
according to a quotation in the
Cleveland Herald.67 Whatever the merits of the case, and the
governor's role in it, it illustrates
how the bank of a town of few
people and short life can assume an
import that transcends it in
breadth and permanence. What was wrong
with the Manhattan
Bank was to a large extent what was
wrong with the banking system;
and when complaints were made against
the system, they were
sometimes made with the Manhattan Bank
in mind.
School, sawmill, warehouses, and bank
were all designed to make
a city of Manhattan. But to attract
buyers, travelers, and businesses,
to put up a brave front, and to look
like a city, nothing could serve
better than a newspaper. And so the
Buffalo forwarding men
forwarded to Manhattan a Buffalo editor,
Benjamin Franklin Smead,
in 1836. Maumee had its Express, Perrysburg
its Miami of the Lake,
Toledo its Blade, each raucously
booming and puffing its home
town, and for this, Manhattan had to
have its Advertiser. It was
Smead's task to deny that ague was any
worse in the Maumee Valley
than elsewhere, to deny that Manhattan
sat in a swamp, to deny
that Perrysburg had any chance of
success, to assert that every day
in every way Manhattan was growing
better and better. Smead was
the cheer leader of Manhattan, a
primeval public relations man.
65 Toledo Blade, August 5, 1840.
66 Toledo Blade, August
12, 1840.
67 Toledo Blade, August 26, 1840.
396
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
With a journeyman and a printer's devil
he struggled to put out
his paper. To appear blithe about the
future of Manhattan was
made harder by the fact that the
newspaper itself so obviously led
a stormy and precarious existence.
Usually it had eight pages, but
sometimes it appeared on only one side
of one sheet. Sometimes it
did not appear at all. In February 1839
Wright reported to Barker
great financial difficulty in keeping
the Advertiser going at all,68 but
Smead (true to his trade) attributed
the irregularities generally to
the illness of himself or his
journeyman. Once he resorted to the
desperate and ludicrous stratagem of
printing the same newspaper
that he had previously issued, but with a
new date.69 Newspapers of
the other valley towns observed these
interruptions with a gloating
and expectant relish, made more piquant
by the fact that they were
themselves sometimes irregular. Once or
twice they announced the
imminent dissolution of the Advertiser.
"Our hand in parting, old
friend, and if we ever see thy printed
face once more, we will hail
that day as a jubilee," wrote the Maumee
Express, prematurely, on
September 15, 1838. Smead kept up a good
front. "No paper next
week--can't help it--sorry though. But after
that--O, crikie!"
Or sometimes, without apology:
"Half Sheet. That's all you get
this week."70 If
subscribers complained, Smead had a counter-
grievance, that subscribers did not pay.
He asked those too poor to
pay to stop taking the paper,71
for like many other things sub-
scriptions were on credit.
Between the Maumee Express and
the Toledo Blade there sub-
sisted a geographical competition. Both,
however, were Whig papers,
and so they found themselves sometimes
enemies, sometimes allies.
But the Advertiser was
Democratic, and consequently at constant
war with its neighbors. The town itself
seems to have had no party.
Daniel Chase was a Democrat, Platt Card
and probably Barker were
Whigs. Smead was left to his own
political preferences. When the
Whigs won in 1840, the Express rejoiced
that "Manhattan shewed
by her vote the contempt in which she
holds the dirty locofoco paper
68 Wright to Barker, February 21, 1839.
69 Manhattan
Advertiser, September 4, 1839.
70 Manhattan Advertiser, November 7, 1838, January 9, 1939.
71 Manhattan Advertiser, October 16, 1839.
MANHATTAN, OHIO 397
of that place, and its low
contributors." In reply, the Advertiser
published a letter signed "A
Whig" stating that Manhattan Whigs
had always supported the Advertiser despite
its party, because it had
always been fair.72 One can
well suppose that the real reason for
supporting it was not its fairness, but
its devotion to Manhattan.
Benjamin Franklin Smead did not live to
see this defeat, but died,
at the age of forty, in the summer of
1840, of "brain fever."73
Although his journeyman, H. S. Knapp,
had taken over the paper
as soon as Smead fell ill, it
languished. It missed issues during the
winter of 1840-41, and this time Knapp
offered the excuse that "our
neighbors up-river" had engaged all
the paper supply.74 Knapp
announced that he would accept Manhattan
Bank notes at fifty
percent discount, or any goods, in
payment for subscriptions. On
this distressed note came the
long-expected death of the Advertiser,
in March 1841. It had so often skipped
heartbeats that its final de-
cease may not have been immediately
credited. The Blade, in a
rather ungracious epitaph, simply
recalled it as a "smut machine."75
For scurrility, there was little to
choose among them.
Thus, by 1843, bank, railroad, and
newspaper were all gone.
Early in 1843 the company itself closed
up business, but the town
it had deliberately created survived it
for a while. Some of the
members of the company kept a thin hope
in the town. Platt Card
and Frederick Wright lived there in the
1840's, and so did Nehemiah
Allen, the erstwhile president of the
Ohio Railroad. Barker and
Clark continued to be interested in
Manhattan. They bought up lots
very cheaply, simply by buying the tax
titles to whatever they
wished of the lands held by the
company--which of course had
ceased to pay taxes and so forfeited
large parts of Manhattan that
it had never succeeded in selling. These
men would have liked to
see a revival effected by the Wabash and
Erie Canal, which (too
late) joined their village with the
West; but Toledo, already far
ahead, won out. The frailty of Platt
Card's hope in June 1843 was
obvious when he wrote to Barker:
"The passengers begin to take
72 Manhattan Advertiser, October 21, 1840.
73 Manhattan Advertiser, July 29, 1840.
74 Manhattan Advertiser, March 3, 1841.
75 Toledo Blade, August 11, 1841.
398
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the Boats at Manhattan & if M.
Collins would prove True to his
trust (which I fear he will not) we
could sustain Business at Man-
hattan and Build up the place. . . .
Collins . . . is a Toledo man . . .
he has but one single Manhattan man on
all his boats . . . and that
one I am told is to be discharged."76
M. L. Collins is the man who,
according to tradition, left his
warehouse in Manhattan, moved to
Toledo, and stampeded the five hundred
inhabitants of Manhattan.77
Thenceforward, Wright, Platt Card,
Allen, and Barker abandoned
their more grandiose ambitions and
settled down to the milling
business. They rented water from the
canal commission, utilizing
the fifteen-foot drop from the canal to
the river. Platt Card's plan
to bring a steam engine of Barker's from
Monroe, Michigan, and
set up a small factory of some kind
never materialized. The mill
continued, somewhat spoilt by the
neglect of an incompetent
miller, at least until 1860. In the
meantime, though, the legal
existence of Manhattan had come to an
end. In 1848 the plat was
vacated by law: lots not occupied ceased
to be lots, and streets not
serving those still there ceased to be
dedicated. It remained for
some time an almost empty area east of
Toledo. If, in the 1860's,
anyone had wished to go from Manhattan
to Toledo, he had only
to go to the old limits of Manhattan and
take a Toledo streetcar.
Distances that had once seemed of
crucial importance had already
dwindled to the reach of the streetcar.
What was left of Manhattan
was soon absorbed altogether by Toledo.
76 Platt Card to Barker, June 19, 1843.
77 Waggoner, History of Toledo, 933-934.