Note 169 — Chapter XXXII · PASSAGE OF THE OHIO CANAL AND LAKE ERIE TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA, FROM THE 21ST TO THE 30TH OF JUNE

Bolivar, in the northern portion of Tuscarawas County, owed its existence to the Ohio Canal. The town was laid out in 1825 by two proprietors from Canton, Ohio, who at first christened it Kelleysville, for one of the canal commissioners. He, however, declined the honor, whereupon the name of the South American emancipator was chosen. Between the villages of Zoar and Bolivar, Maximilian passed the site of the former Fort Laurens, erected during the Revolution (1778) as an outpost for the protection of the Western frontiers. In February and March, 1779, the garrison, under command of Colonel John Gibson, sustained a protracted siege by a motley host of Wyandot and Mingo warriors, led by a few British soldiers. After the raising of the siege, Fort Laurens was found too remote from the frontier to be provisioned without undue risk; whereupon, in the autumn of 1779, the post was abandoned.

The township of Bethlehem, Stark County, was so named for the original home in Pennsylvania of the Moravian missionaries, one of whom, Christian Frederick Post, built (1761) within its precincts the first cabin in the present state of Ohio (see his Journals, our volume i). The village of Bethlehem, on the northern boundary of the township, was laid out about 1806 by Jonathan W. Condy, who intended to found there a religious society of Swedenborgians, upon the model of the Moravian settlement in Pennsylvania. The plan failed, and the village only revived upon the building of the canal.

Massillon (a thriving place of about 12,000 inhabitants) was a canal town, platted after the route had been arranged. Upon the opening of the line thence to Akron, a celebration was held at the new town of Massillon, which had been named in honor of a famous French theologian of the seventeenth century.—Ed.