Piqua: Underwear Capital of the World

Piqua, Ohio, on the Mad River, takes its name from a Shawnee village that once stood nearby, the word meaning something close to man who arose from the ashes. The original Shawnee town of three thousand people was destroyed in the Battle of Piqua in seventeen eighty, the largest Revolutionary War battle west of the Alleghenies. American settlers rebuilt here in the early eighteen hundreds.

The Miami and Erie Canal arrived in eighteen thirty-seven and turned Piqua into a shipping hub. Then textiles took over: by the late eighteen hundreds, fourteen different companies in town were manufacturing knitted underwear and knitwear, earning Piqua the unofficial title of Underwear Capital of the World. That era is mostly gone now, but the canal history is preserved at the Johnston Farm and Indian Agency historic site.