Thinking Like a Floodplain: Water, Work, and Time in the Connecticut River Valley, 1790-1870 by (C) 2016 Jared S

Thinking Like a Floodplain: Water, Work, and Time in the Connecticut River Valley, 1790-1870 By (c) 2016 Jared S. Taber Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Sara M. Gregg ________________________________ Gregory T. Cushman ________________________________ Edmund P. Russell ________________________________ Robert J. Gamble ________________________________ Peggy A. Schultz ________________________________ Dorothy M. Daley Date Defended: 28 April 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Jared S. Taber certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Thinking Like a Floodplain: Water, Work, and Time in the Nineteenth Century Connecticut River Valley ________________________________ Chairperson Sara M. Gregg Date approved: 28 April 2016 ii Abstract Residents of the nineteenth-century Connecticut River Valley learned the character of the river, and water more broadly, through their labor. Whether they encountered water in the process of farming, shipping, industrial production, or land reclamation, it challenged them to understand its power as both an object outside their control and a tool that facilitated their work. This awareness of water's autonomy and agency necessitated attention to how water's flow varied across timescales ranging from seasons, through historical precedents in working with water, and into the geological processes whereby the river shaped the contours of the Connecticut River floodplain and the valley as a whole. Communities mobilized this knowledge when explaining the limitations that ought to circumscribe novel water uses and trying to maintain the river's status as a common tool shared among diverse bodies of users. This converted working knowledge of water's flow into a political tool that both criticized and shaped industrialization. This dissertation asks how people knew the river as a common resource shared between independent communities and how the deployment of this knowledge—and the attendant political power that it carried—shaped the character of industrialization in the valley. It uses sources ranging from weather diaries to corporate records and municipal petitions to uncover patterns of local knowledge about water use and explore their influence on the politics of industrialization between 1790 and 1870. The temporalities that people saw underlying geological, and seasonal variations in the flow of water on the landscape, shaped how they responded to interventions on the landscape such as the construction of dams or bridges, alterations to the channel, or changes to drainage. When assessing these proposals, people looked beyond the immediately visible consequences of iii these interventions on the landscape. Understanding how water had flowed in the past helped people to imagine how it might flow in the future, and this imaginative viewpoint on the landscape shaped everything from farming practices to the design of water power dams in the nineteenth century valley. To document these accounts of the flow of water in everyday life, this dissertation uses a variety of sources. When accounting for individual perspectives on the flow of water, it looks at weather diaries—which used the flow of water as a heuristic tool for understanding seasonal change. When accounting for societal perspectives, it folds in accounts of the valley's physical geography—which relied on information from ordinary people who understood water's power as a geological force. When examining the political ramifications of these perspectives, it uses petitions, legal complaints, and corporate records to understand how knowledge of seasonal and geological processes shaped the historical transformation of the river. With all of these sources, this dissertation uncovers patterns of local knowledge about water use and explores their deployment in the politics of industrialization and urbanization. Ideas about water in the nineteenth-century Connecticut River Valley reveal the practices and politics of water use alongside how it shaped people's lives in practical ways. Their efforts at stewarding human entanglements with the landscape emerged from a perspective that envisioned a popular alternative to river engineering. Attending to how encounters with the landscape shaped perspectives on temporality provides a means of understanding how valley residents understood their river and its floodplain. In addition to its role in forming an environmental politics that shaped industrialization, treating public perspectives on rivers as engines of temporality provides a means of critically assessing key concepts in river history including watersheds, flooding, and the commodification of water. iv Acknowledgments: I cannot help being awed and humbled by the amount of support that I have received from old friends, colleagues, mentors and even open-hearted strangers throughout graduate school in the completion of this dissertation. I would not have imagined attending graduate school without the support of professors who encouraged my curiosity during my undergraduate years. I could not have completed my research or kept with my writing without the team of friends and family members who opened up their houses, shared meals, and facilitated transportation during my research trips. I could not have completed coursework and writing without the advocacy, support, and criticism of faculty and colleagues in the University of Kansas Department of History, the Department of Environmental Studies, and the interdisciplinary community that facilitates environmental research across the university. Karl Brooks welcomed me into the Department of History and professors Paul Kelton, Kim Warren, and Jeffrey Moran provided a background in United States history. Donald Worster, Sara Gregg, and Gregory Cushman introduced me to the principles and practices of environmental history in a series of seminars and colloquia. Within this coursework, I befriended an array of colleagues whose critique and friendship made graduate school possible. Josh Nygren, Melinda Landeck, Shay Wood, Adam Sundberg, Amanda Schlumpberger, and Harley Davidson encouraged the completion of my first draft in a dynamic writing group. Brian Rumsey, Brandon Luedtke, and Alex Boynton also provided valuable feedback on chapter drafts. Laura Dean and Allison Schmidt shared coffee and commiseration in writing and editing. The University of Kansas provided me with a generous University Graduate Fellowship, the Doctoral Student Research Fund, and teaching assistantships that made it possible to v complete my studies and develop my dissertation. Outside the university, funding from the CUNY Crossroads in Environmental Science and Technology Program and Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society supported the development of the ideas in this project. Particular thanks are due to Peter Drummey, Kate Viens, and Conrad Wright at the Massachusetts Historical Society and Charles Vorosmarty, Caroline Hermans, and Brian Voight at CUNY. Studying a river valley far removed from my home on the Kaw necessitated, and undoubtedly tried, the patience of more than enough friends to field a soccer team. Bart Everts shared an attic apartment in Hyde Park while I worked at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, Pooja Kanwar and Rose Graves welcomed me to Vermont during a side trip connected with that effort. Val Hunt and Teresa Hohenstein welcomed me to Boston after I defended my proposal and set me on the road to research, Jonah Erikson lent me a car, which traversed the valley from the Canadian border to the Long Island Sound. Judy Williams welcomed me to her home in Hanover, New Hampshire and rekindled a friendship going back decades. Allison and Dustin Ray shared their home in Coventry, Connecticut and the rare charms of Hosmer Mountain Root Beer. My brother, David Taber and his partner Alana Kumbier provided more than a month of shared meals, engaging conversations, and the charming, but elusive presence of Radio the cat in Northampton, Massachusetts. My parents, Sarah Spencer and Shearman Taber, provided hospitality during research travel and grandparental childcare for my daughter during a research trip to Boston. While researching In Washington, D.C., Jeffrey Brideau provided a welcoming apartment. When traveling to conferences, hosts including Jessica Rae Musinski and Jim Straub welcomed me into their homes. I also spent a great deal of time during this project couch surfing vi in the guest rooms of strangers from Worcester, Massachusetts to Lyndonville, Vermont and from Brattleboro, Vermont to Toronto, Ontario. Thanks to Jeremy and Sherry Champlin, Geri Medina, Emily Buckley, and Jacob Larsen for your companionship while traveling for research and conference presentations. The opportunity to share my fascination with the history of your hometowns made the research process exciting and opened up new windows in my research. In two research trips funded by a University of Kansas University Graduate Fellowship and the Doctoral Student Research Fund, I benefitted from assistance by archivists at the American Antiquarian Society, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Dodd Special Collections Library at the University of Connecticut, Memorial Libraries at Historic Deerfield, Brattleboro Free Library, University of Massachusetts Special Collections and University

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