A town platted for the canal
In 1806, Christian Deardorff and his brother-in-law Jesse Slingluff of Baltimore bought 2,175 acres along the Tuscarawas River near the mouth of Sugar Creek. Deardorff's 1807 plat laid out 256 lots and the public square that still anchors downtown.
Deardorff built the area's first grist and saw mill and was behind its first bank, post office, and bridge over the Tuscarawas. He also lobbied to route the Ohio and Erie Canal through town, making it a toll stop and setting up decades of growth.
From Canal Dover to Dover
The town was first called Canal Dover. Its post office opened in 1815, it became a village in 1842, and a city under Ohio's 1903 municipal code. The name was officially shortened to Dover on February 12, 1916.
Iron, steel, and the Reeves era
After the canal years, Dover turned to milling, iron smelting, and steel. In 1883 English-born Jeremiah E. Reeves and his brother Jabez bought the struggling rolling mill and built the Reeves Iron Company, which employed more than 850 people by the 1890s.
Reeves later founded Reeves Manufacturing, which made galvanized sheet steel for nearly a century, started Reeves Banking and Trust in 1903, and donated land for Union Hospital in 1904. His Victorian home is now a museum.
A carver known around the world
Dover native Ernest "Mooney" Warther became famous as the "World's Master Carver." He opened a museum in his backyard in 1936. Today the Ernest Warther Museum & Gardens is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Dover today
Dover had 13,112 residents in 2020 and is one of the two main cities of the New Philadelphia–Dover area. Nearby Fort Laurens, near Bolivar, was Ohio's only Revolutionary War fort.