Columbus’ Canal Lock was worthy choice for artist’s allure

On Mar 29, 2022

In March 1832, a young, inquisitive and talented young man arrived in Columbus.

Seventeen-year-old Thomas Kelah Wharton was a recent immigrant from England with his family. His father was an entrepreneur facing business reverses in England and who had come to America seeking a fresh start. After spending time in Dayton, Springfield and Piqua, the decision was made to move to Zanesville. But in the meantime, the family would spend a bit of time in Columbus.

This pen and ink sketch of the Canal Lock in Columbus was one of two sketches by Thomas Kelah Wharton from the month he spent in Columbus in 1832.

Wharton was, among other things, a prolific diarist and an extraordinarily talented pen and ink artist. Over the years, he made dozens of sketches of the places where he had worked and visited. He was in Columbus for about a month in 1832. In that time, he made two sketches, one of them a view looking back toward the town of Columbus. It is the earliest known sketch view of the capital city and later adorned a Staffordshire Liberty Blue turkey platter.

Wharton learned early on how to profit from his art.

His other sketch wasn’t of the state capitol building, the streets of a busy town serving the National Road or even German and Irish neighborhoods. Instead, he became intrigued with a canal lock.

He explained his interest in his journal: “March 2-Very mild and pleasant. Made an outline of the lock thro’ which the Lateral Canal is supplied from the Sciota (sic) River …”

He later wrote: “The Ohio and Erie Canal was considered a gigantic undertaking in those days when railroads were yet in their infancy. It connected the lake at Cleaveland (sic) with the Ohio River at Portsmouth. … The lateral branch at Columbus was 11 miles in length and served the double purpose of connection and ‘feeder’ from the Sciota to the main canal. … The abutments were of substantial masonry, the upper one 17 feet high, the lower 12 feet and the average depth of the canal 4 feet.”

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Perhaps in retrospect, it is easy to see why Wharton might have been fascinated by the canal. If anything, “a gigantic undertaking” is probably a bit of an understatement. Ohio, in general, and places like Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus, in particular, were transformed in a few years by a transportation revolution in the state.

Columbus is a good example of the change. In 1830, Columbus was an isolated village near the edge of a moving frontier to the west. Created by the Ohio General Assembly to be a capital city, it was assumed the place also soon would become a busy center of transportation and trade.

That did not happen soon.

Columbus, like many villages and towns in early Ohio, soon saw productive farms and fields. But with narrow rivers, dirt paths for roads and poorly served lake ports, it was difficult to establish the place as a trade and commercial site. The people of central Ohio needed a way to get their goods to markets in other areas.

They found their way on both water and land. To some the answer was a federally financed highway to permit goods and livestock to find a way to Eastern markets. A National Road with a wide gravel path and stone bridges along the way began to be constructed in eastern Maryland in 1816. Slowly, the road moved west through the river valleys and then across the mountains. It was coming to Ohio, but it took a while to get there.

In the meantime, DeWitt Clinton of New York and his political allies successfully developed a canal that would link the Atlantic Ocean through New York City to the Great Lakes at Buffalo along the Mohawk River Valley. The Erie Canal opened much of New York state to commercial success.

The success of the Erie Canal soon led to imitators. Many political and civic leaders began to promote a canal system for Ohio. Initially, the plan was to build a single canal through the center of the state from Portsmouth to Columbus to Sandusky Bay. That route proved to be unworkable.

Rather than give up, canal advocates promoted a two-canal system – a Miami and Erie Canal from Cincinnati to Toledo and an Ohio and Erie from Portsmouth to Cleveland. In 1825, at Licking Summit, Clinton and Ohio Gov. Jeremiah Morrow turned over the first shovels of dirt for the new canals. By 1831, a 331-mile canal system with 25 miles of feeder canals was completed.

The Columbus Feeder Canal linking the capital to the main line of the Ohio and Erie Canal reached Columbus in 1831 at the same time the National Road arrived. The two routes transformed a town of 2,000 people in 1830 into a city of 5,000 by 1834. Hundreds of new people came to Columbus – some from rural Ohio, others from Germany, Ireland and elsewhere.