I wasn't able to visit the place, but I went online and I found some interesting facts about the history of New Philadelphia.
New
Philadelphia was founded by a man named John Knisely. Knisely, born on
September 21, 1752, became the successful owner of a grist mill in Bedford
County, Pennsylvania in 1795. In the fall of 1803, he went to Ohio with his
son, Samuel, to go on a hunting trip. The two followed an Indian trail to the
village of Schoenbrunn, where the two ended up staying for a few days. They
found lots of deer there, and Knisely befriended the founder of Schoenbrunn,
David Zeisberger. Noticing lovely looking valleys in the distance, Knisely
thought they would be a great place to form a town, and hopefully, in the
future, a city would be there. He went back home, made $16,000 by selling
possessions of his, and he moved with his family to eastern Ohio.
He went to Gnadenhutten. In
Gnadenhutten, Knisely met John Heckewelder, who was a land agent. Heckewelder
sold Knisely 3,554 acres of land for $5,454.33. This large area of land is where
most of New Philadelphia lies today. Knisely devoted a lot of time to making
this new-found town as successful as it could be, since he hoped one day it
would become a city. The layout of the town, provided by a man named John
Wells, looked very similar to the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Many of
the street names were also named after streets in Philadelphia. The town was
projected to have three public squares. They were a present public square, an
upper market square, and a lower market square. These still exist today.
Eventually, a group of settlers
arrived in the area. The group stayed at Knisely’s house for their first night,
and the next day, Knisely showed them the town. The only problem was that there
was no town; just a bunch of trees and surroundings of nature. Knisely showed
them places where buildings were going to built at. Eventually, the town was
built and Knisely’s contributions and devotion to New Philadelphia earned it
the position of the newly created Tuscarawas County’s County Seat in 1807. Over
the years, the town grew in size, reaching a population of over one thousand
people in 1846. This big incline of people was largely because of being a
popular site for trading, thanks to the town being located on the Ohio and Erie
Canal. By 1870, over three thousand people lived in New Philadelphia. As of
today, New Philadelphia has an estimated population of 17,551 people, and it is
the largest city in Tuscarawas County.
On December 15, 1834, Knisely, who
was 84 years old, died. His tombstone, located in the East Fair Street
Cemetery, honors him as the founder of New Philadelphia. I find it interesting
to learn about how cities and towns come to be what they are, and New
Philadelphia is no exception. I honor Knisely for putting a lot of work and
effort into creating a place that I have many fond memories of, even if I don’t
actually live there.
How cool! The man you wrote about bought land from someone very important to what I wrote about. John Heckewelder eventually became the first teacher in our county as well as our state! He started a movement which later created the states education system. Interesting how it is all connected.
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