Program

Hometown Heritage®

Subject

Site

Location

101 Schwieterman St, Minster, OH 45865, USA

Lat/Long

40.422185373063, -84.380034480646

Grant Recipient

Auglaize County Historical Society

Located between New Bremen and Minster runs Amsterdam Road, which serves as a reminder of the once bustling canal town of Amsterdam, for which the road was the northern border.

Established in 1837 along the route of the Miami and Erie Canal, Amsterdam in its heyday was described in the September 8^th, 1928, edition of the Lima Star and Republican Gazette by nonagenarian David Armstrong as “a village with a score of homes, several stores, factories, a grist-mill and a distillery.”

Unfortunately, that heyday was short lived: In 1849, a global outbreak of cholera struck. The pandemic was especially catastrophic in communities located along travel routes, such as the California and Oregon Trails, and the Ohio River; or, in the case of Amsterdam, along the Miami and Erie Canal.

While the pandemic was felt all throughout all of Ohio, it devastated the Amsterdam community. According to the 1928 interview with Armstrong:

The entire population of the village was exterminated. No man, woman or child escaped the ravages of the awful disease. There was no human being left to carry on. Their habitations decayed, returned to dust, and Amsterdam became a rapidly vanishing memory. Its former location is now no more than country side and its fields of waving grain…

Now, the historical marker located on Amsterdam Road explains the name of the road and reminds folks passing by of the once thriving community that existed there.

For more information about the 1849 cholera outbreak in Ohio, visit:

Links

• https://www.ohiohistory.org/ohio-in-the-time-of-cholera/