MOUNT VERNON — History Knox reader Dan Renwald wrote in with a couple of questions:
Cavallo and Rochester have been depicted in historical writings to be across the Mohican River from each other — but on which side? And where is Rochester today?
It takes some untangling to answer these seemingly simple questions. Movable towns doesn’t help, either.
A community was laid out on the south side of Flat Run Road, near the Mohican River, in Knox County’s Union Township in 1837. The reason it was put there was because of the completion of the Walhonding Canal, which made the Mohican River a major trade route in and out of central Ohio.
Most of the canal was, simply enough, the river. But canal bypasses were dug to avoid the rockiest parts of the river, making it possible for flatboats to navigate the entire distance.
The town was clustered around four large warehouses which were built to handle the goods flowing in and out of Knox County. In addition to crops, a major export was wool, Knox being one of the most prominent sheep farming regions in the U.S.
But the lack of reliable early maps and other sources makes it tricky to pin down exactly what this community was called. Many sources claim it was called Butler or Butlertown, after a local family, though I didn’t see that name on a map until the state railroad map of 1854.
And that name would not have stood with the U.S. Post Service, as there was another Butler just over the line in Richland County to the north.
Other sources, including an 1842 tax list, say that the town was called Knox Port, for it was indeed the gateway into Knox County, and as such it boomed for a dozen or so years, becoming a very lively and rowdy canal town.
At some point along the way, the name Cavallo came to be applied to it (or Cavalla, or Carvallo, according to various early references).
No one is sure where this name originated. It is used in Italian as a word for “horse,” coming from the Latin word “caballus,” which specifically referred to a pack horse.
Yet the earliest residents of the area are not known to include Italians nor Latin scholars. There is, however, a possibility.
Cuthbert Workman took a very roundabout route to end up in central Ohio. Born in Maryland, the enterprising young man was fired by dreams of making it rich when he heard about the 1849 gold rush in California. Like many youths, he headed west and gave prospecting a go.
Not making any headway, Workman decided that the gold rush was not going to pan out, and he returned east. Originally intending to return to Maryland, he stopped to visit some cousins in central Ohio. It just so happened that they lived in our mystery town.
While visiting, Workman was enchanted by a local young woman named Nancy Conkle. When she returned his interest, Workman pondered his situation and realized he didn’t really have much to return to in Maryland. So he married Nancy, settled down, and remained in the area the rest of his life.
So, what does Cuthbert Workman have to do with the name of Cavallo?
Well, consider this: We know he joined in on the 1849 California gold rush. That boom was centered around San Francisco.
To use a familiar modern reference point, if you look at a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge taken from San Francisco looking north, there is a little neck of land that sticks out from the Marin Headlands on the right (east) side. That is Point Cavallo.
When Workman was in that area during the gold rush, he could easily have encountered the name and brought it back with him to Ohio.
That would have put Workman arriving at the canal town’s height, in the late 1840s, and it matches the fact that the earliest county record citing the name Cavallo is from 1851.
Cavallo’s heyday didn’t last long. The completion of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark railroad connecting Knox County with the outside world in 1851 spelled doom for the town, for shipping by railroad was much, much faster than shipping by canal boat.
Cavallo apparently withered away.
Or did it?
At some point, it was realized that the low-lying field Cavallo was located in was a flood hazard. One good flood of the Mohican River could have wiped out the village, the way Zuck was destroyed in the 1913 flood.
So, the decision was made to move Cavallo across the river, to the higher bank on the east side. Not only was this a major physical move to make, it was also a substantial political move, for it meant that Cavallo was no longer in Knox County, but had moved to Coshocton County.
That surely gave Coshocton countians something to chuckle about.
The last Knox County record of the town is 1851, which suggests that Cavallo’s move to Coshocton County hadn’t yet happened. The 1871 Caldwell & Starr atlas of Knox County shows Cuthbert Workman’s residence on the south side of Flat Run Road. It appears to have been the last standing structure of the original Cavallo.
In all likelihood, if the house hadn’t been abandoned by 1913, it was probably demolished by the 1913 flood, which wreaked havoc throughout Ohio.
That left the field empty, though in 1971 Danville resident Chester E. McMillan wrote a letter to the Coshocton Tribune stating that as recently as “some 20 or less years ago,” meaning around the early 1950s, a farmer had hit foundation stones of an old building while plowing in that field.
So, where does Rochester enter into the story?
It was already there. The village of Rochester had been laid out in 44 plots of land in 1833, in Tiverton Township of Coshocton County. It was located near the Mohican River on the high ground on the eastern bank.
The only thing preventing it from touching the river was a pair of mills, one a sawmill and the other a grist mill, located on the river’s edge.
By 1840, Rochester had a population of 111 people. It seems that Coshocton County had better ways to move goods, with canal activity centering in Roscoe Village, further downriver, so Rochester never took off as a shipping port.
Knox Part, or Butlertown, or Cavallo, sprang up on the opposite bank from the mills because Knox didn’t have an equivalent shipping port to Roscoe Village. Cavallo was meant to be Knox’s Roscoe Village, and for a time, it was.
Rochester declined because it wasn’t on a major railroad route. The Cleveland, Akron & Columbus railroad passed a few miles north, though Brinkhaven, leaving Rochester with little reason to exist.
By the end of the 1800s, it was essentially gone. Only a few houses remain today. Ironically, the railroad came after Rochester went.
In 1893, the Walhonding Valley Branch Railway, popularly known as the Wally Railroad opened. It closely followed the course of the river and canal, connecting Loudonville and Coshocton.
I suspect that the coming of the railroad was what prompted the residents of the dwindling village of Cavallo to officially relocate across the river, though it’s possible that everyone but Cuthbert Workman had already moved across by then.
By the early 1890s, canal trade was just about dead, and the coming railroad was guaranteed to kill it for good — which it did, with the Walhonding Canal officially closing for business in 1896.
A bridge was built across the Mohican over the site of the original mills that predated Rochester and prevented it from touching the river.
The relocation placed the new Cavallo less than a half mile south of the original site of Rochester. Technically, it lies on the south end of Rochester, though the reality even then was that Rochester had died, while Cavallo reinvigorated the spot for a time.
Where it had once been a rowdy canal town, it became a rowdy railroad town, locally famous for its brothels and, during Prohibition, its speakeasy.
Today, Cavallo has largely followed the route of Rochester and withered away, though a couple of structures remain, as well as a hand-made sign at the intersection near the bridge saying “Welcome to Cavallo.”
So, the untangled timeline:
1833 Rochester founded on east bank of Mohican River in Coshocton County.
1837 Butlertown founded on west bank of Mohican, also known functionally as Knox Port.
c. 1850 Butlertown renamed Cavallo.
1851 Cleveland, Akron & Columbus Railroad opens.
1851-1871 Cavallo residents begin relocating across the river
1871 Cuthbert Workman is the final remaining household in old Cavallo.
c. 1890 Rochester is no longer officially a town.
1893 Wally Railroad opens.
c. 1893 Cavallo officially relocates across river in Coshocton County.
1913 Major flood removes last buildings of old Cavallo in Knox County.
1919-1929 Prohibition brings a renewed burst of life to new Cavallo.
1936 Wally Railroad closes, new Cavallo begins long, gradual decline.
