Paulding County, formed in 1820, is named for Revolutionary War hero John Paulding. The youngest patriot, along with two others, captured Major Andre, a British spy. The current county seat was established in the Village of Paulding in 1851. The county's 416 square miles are home to eleven villages and more than 20,000 residents.
Until the 1800's, Paulding County was part of the heavily forested "Great Black Swamp" that covered northwest Ohio. The area was cleared and drained by hard-working settlers in the second half of the 19th century, turning it into some of the most fertile farmland in the state.
The construction of the Wabash & Erie Canal and the Miami Canal through Paulding County in the mid-1840s helped foster the county's early development. These vital thoroughfares met at the village of Junction. The merging of the canals made Junction the chief rival of Fort Wayne as the area's center of commerce. Remains of these two canal systems can still be seen today.
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