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Upcoming Events: NEW BREMEN FIREMEN'S PICNIC JULY 26, 2008 New Bremen News: PHOTOGRAPHY CLUB HELPING WITH WEBSITE NON EMERGENCY number for NB EMS New Bremen Life Quicklinks: Recreational Activities and Facilities New Bremen Community Photo Album |
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Canal Facts
Building an Opportunity The building of the Miami and Erie Canal and the Grand Reservoir brought to the frontier people of New Bremen and vicinity, their first commercial work, and opened a market for the products of agriculture, which before the canal had had practically no cash value. Lack
of markets, malaria fever, and the very large amount of sickness
which accompanied the opening of the wilderness, had greatly
retarded settlement. Subcontractors, who engaged to excavate
from one to five miles of the canal bed, found it difficult to
secure workmen. As whiskey was believed to neutralize the effects
of the fever, the subcontractors were compelled to supply it
to their hands in “jiggers” (2 oz.). In these days
of prohibition and alleged intemperance, it is interesting to
know that the contractor who could offer the most jiggers (sometimes
as high as sixteen a day) secured the most workmen. View Pictures of New Bremen History
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The
opening of the canal was a big day for New Bremen, a day of festivity
and rejoicing. The Canal banks were lined with interested onlookers,
who watched the old boat as she was slowly drawn up the canal,
from the direction of Piqua, and pulled into the New Bremen locks.
New Bremen became a busy, bustling town. Hundreds of sixty and
eighty ton freight boats traveled up and down the canal. Passenger
boats carrying forty and fifty people made the trip to Cincinnati
in a day and a night.
