donated the area on North Defiance Street known as Benner Cemetery.

William Helfenstein was not among the very first pioneers of the frontier He arrived just a few years later. He found here a town larger at that time than the places called Fort Wayne or Toledo. This was a place for a man of his talents. In 1837 he developed the North Addition. In 1838, the West Addition and in 1839 and 1840 he crossed over the river and started the East Addition. Other developers during the same period had laid out several additional plots to the south. In five short years, Helfenstein had increased the size of Saint Marys to almost ten times its original boundaries.

Scarcely a day passed but some new family would arrive seeking a home in this wonderful new land. The combination of cheap fertile land, available in suitable sized plots at reasonable terms, and a good demand for labor brought an influx from the old colonies that swept over this area and continued to the Pacific Ocean.

Many new towns were laid out during these times. Some like Jacksonville languished until transportation gave them a rebirth. Coilstown faded from the picture until the oil boom fifty years later when it was resurrected as Mendon. Places such as Deep Cut and Amsterdam flourished for a time until they eventually faded back into the plowed fields from which they sprang.

The new town of "Saint Marys, Mercer County, State of Ohio" as Murray, Houston and McCorkle had so proudly hailed, prospered. It had a good combination of things going for it. It had high ground that provided good drainage. It had good rich soil, free of rock out-croppings; it had an abundance of good sweet water from the many springs that flowed all year; but above all, it had what Charles Murray had proclaimed a necessity, transportation. The river route to Fort Wayne provided the basic line of travel and supply to the developing sections of Indiana and at the same time provided the commerce through Saint Marys.

The river, slow, crooked, unreliable as it was, was merely the promise of things to come. It was important in its day, but its days as a channel of commerce were numbered. Transportation was indeed the key but newer, more reliable, more efficient and larger means were in the making. Throughout the whole State of Ohio a new idea was sweeping like a forest fire to capture the imagination of its citizens. The new idea—canals ! ! Canals were to be built not only in eastern Ohio to connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River but also in western Ohio to link Cincinnati, the Great Miami river, the Maumee river and Toledo on Lake Erie as well. It had by then been established that this new town of Saint Marys would be on the line of this new mode of transportation.

Saint Marys was, in the words of John McCorkle, "at the front door to ten thousand miles af America."

Chapter III

The Canal Period

"Canal Fever" swept over Ohio like a tidal wave on the ocean. The Erie Canal in New York state had proven the feasibility of a canal system. Connecting the eastern seaboard with the Great Lakes had brought prosperity, commerce, population and civilization to the interior of America. It was now Ohio's job to bring these blessings to its own people.

As early as 1807, Thomas Worthington, one of the first Congressmen from Ohio had presented to Congress a resolution for Federal aid to the western - states for roads and canals. Worthington cited letters between Jefferson and Washington that discussed the possibility of canals to connect Lake Erie to the Ohio River and Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. By 1810, an Ohio Canal Commission had been appointed to again seek Federal aid through land grants. Although some progress was made by the Commission, the War of 1812 halted all activity in this field. The State of New York, however, proceeded immediately after that conflict to press for its canal system. Noting the tremendous advantages to the State of Ohio that such a cheap and easy route of travel would produce, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York asked the now Governor of Ohio, Thomas Worthington for financial aid for his Erie Canal. The Ohio Legislature enthusiastically supported the proposition, but denied the funds. Ohio now was catching "canal fever" and consequently was looking to its own plans. By 1818 an Ohio Senate bill to authorize a private company to build canals was vetoed by Governor Ethan Allen Brown. Brown, who became known as the "Father of Ohio Canals" wanted the canals to be built as Public Works to serve the people of the State that all may benefit by its existence and profits.