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Home , Benjamin Wright, Canal age, Canal basin, Canandaigua Outlet, Erie Canal, Jesse Hawley (merchant)

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!”

Notes & Notions on the Construction & Early Operation of the Erie

Chuck Friday Editor and Commentator 2005

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 1

Table of Contents

TOPIC PAGE

Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 3

The as a Federal Project………………………………………….. 3

New York State Seizes the Initiative………………………………………… 4

Biographical Sketch of - Early Erie Canal Advocate…………. 5

Western Terminus for the Erie Canal (Black Rock vs Buffalo)……………… 6

Digging the Ditch……………………………………………………………. 7

Yankee Ingenuity…………………………………………………………….. 10

Eastward to Albany…………………………………………………………… 12

Westward to ………………………………………………………… 16

Tying Up Loose Ends………………………………………………………… 20

The Building of a Harbor at Buffalo………………………………………….. 21

Canal Workforce……………………………………………………………… 22

The Irish Worker Story……………………………………………………….. 27

Engineering Characteristics of ………………………………………… 29

Early Life on the Canal……………………………………………………….. 33

Winter – The Canal‘sGreatest Impediment……………………………………. 43

Canal Expansion………………………………………………………………. 45

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 2 ―Low Bridge; Everybody Down!‖

Notes & Notions on the Construction & Early Operation of the Erie Canal

Initial Resource Book: Dan Murphy, The Erie Canal: The Ditch That Opened A Nation, 2001

Introduction

A foolhardy proposal, years of political bickering and partisan infighting, an outrageous $7.5 million price tag (an amount roughly equal to about $4 billion today) – all that for a four foot deep, 40 foot wide ditch connecting Lake Erie in western with the in Albany. It took 7 years of labor, slowly clawing shovels of earth from the ground in a 363-mile trek across the wilderness of New York State. Through the use of many references, this paper attempts to describe this remarkable construction project. Additionally, it describes the early operation of the canal and its impact on the daily life on or near the canal‘s winding path across the state.

The Erie Canal as a Federal Project

In 1784, wrote a letter to congress outlining his designs for the infrastructure of the new United States. In regards to the waterways of New York, Washington suggested:

Extend the inland navigation of the eastern waters; communicate them as near as possible with those which run westward; open these to the ; open also such as extend from the Ohio towards Lake Erie; and we shall not only draw the produce of the western settlers, but the peltry and the fur trades of the lakes also, to our ports; thus adding immense increase to our exports, and binding these people to us by a chain which can never be broken.

Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) continues the discussion advocating canals:

―In 1796 published a book on small canals, which he boasted about in correspondence to George Washington a year later. Fulton was fixated on the notion of canals for bringing great quantities of merchandise to market at prices far cheaper than road transportation…in subsequent reports Fulton provided a wide variety of examples from existing routes in the United States and revealed a keen sense of how such reductions in the cost of moving freight can enhance and enrich the process of economic growth.‖

―Fulton estimated that construction of a canal would cost about $15,000 a mile, a figure remarkably close to the amount spent on building the Erie Canal, where work would not even begin for some time. The primary attraction of moving cargo instead of on a river is in the calm and flat surface over which a canal boat can travel without having to deal with either upstream or downstream currents. A well-built boat floating on water could carry much more freight at no slower speed than a horse-drawn wagon rumbling along a bumpy road. On most canals at that time, boats had no motive power of their own but were pulled along by horses or mules walking on a by the side of the canal, with a boy leading or riding on the horse and a man on board steering the boat. Although this sounds like a poky, primitive means of locomotion, in reality it was the critical technological advantage over travel by road or by river. By allowing the boat to move smoothly along its waters, the canal avoided all the heavy human efforts spent poling boats upstream on rivers and controlling the speed when moving downstream – major obstacles on both the Potomac and the Mohawk. As a result, a canal could carry larger boats, with more cargo-carrying capacity than boats forced to confront the trials of river travel.‖ [pp 115-116]

In 1808, agreed with Washington‘s thinking --- at least in theory. A project scope of which Washington was suggesting would require a tremendous amount of time and effort, and red tape.

Jefferson‘s reply to the idea of a canal across New York State:

―Here is a canal for a few miles, projected by George Washington, which, if completed, would render this a fine commercial , which has languished for many years because the small sum of $200,000 necessary to complete it, cannot be obtained by the general government, the state government, or from individuals – and you talk of making a canal 350 miles through the wilderness – it is a little short of madness to think of it as this day.‖

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 3 Just prior to the War of 1812, DeWitt Clinton and Governor Morris meet with President Madison. Mr. Madison receives them coldly. Despite Clinton‘s eloquent pleas for federal assistance in building the canal, the President refuses to lend his support to the project. There‘s no time now to think of internal improvements, he says. Just last month he warned Congress to get ready for war. [Phelan ―Waterway West‖]

If New York wanted its canal, federal funding looked out of the question. Funding for the Erie Canal project must come from within the borders of New York State. But first, deteriorating relations with put the canal debate on hold.

New York State Seizes the Initiative

Ralph K. Andrist (The Erie Canal) picks up the discussion as it was at the end of the War of 1812:

―The war with Great Britain dimmed the hopes for pushing the immediate construction of the canal forward. The war, however, did emphasize the need for a good waterway; the rotting old locks built by the Western Inland Navigation Company could barely take care of the heavy war traffic. ―

―Unfortunately, the war also gave the opposition time to gather its forces. politicians stubbornly and stupidly opposed the upstate project although common sense should have told them that the commerce brought by the canal could only increase the greatness of their city. Then there were people in the counties who wanted the canal to end at Oswego on Lake Ontario, instead of going on to Lake Erie and opening east-west traffic. And there were farmers near the border who saw no reason to pay taxes to help build a waterway so far away from them. But Clinton, always the master politician, promised to run branch canals into other parts of the state and soon had most of the farmers on his side.‖

―People complained that there was not a chance in the world that a canal 363 miles long could be dug successfully through all that wilderness. The Western Inland Navigation Company which had tried to carry out a much less ambitious program, had been able to complete only a small part of it before it broke. Another sad example was the which ran twenty-six miles from Boston to the Merrimack River; the longest canal in the country at that time. The Middlesex Canal was a marvel and a joy to shippers bringing New Hampshire granite and lumber to Boston markets, but it was a nightmare to its owners, who had to dig into their pockets again and again to pay off its debts. If a twenty-seven mile canal near busy Boston went broke, asked the critics of the Erie Canal, what chance had a ditch that would run hundreds of miles through the wilds of upper New York state?‖

―But in spite of all the opposition, the pressure for the canal was becoming stronger all the time. New England farmers, thinking about taking up a piece of easily plowed land out in the Indiana or territories, were fascinated by the prospect of gliding along a smooth waterway rather than facing the difficulties of wearing out horses and axles on a miserable, pot-holed road over the mountains. Eastern merchants were ready to sell axes, buttons, plow-points, cloth, fox traps and a thousand other things to western settlers as soon as economical transportation was available.‖

―More vocal were the people in almost every town and along the route of the proposed canal who, throughout 1816, were holding mass meetings to demand that the lawmakers in Albany get busy and do something. Many of the responsible citizens of New York City signed a petition asking for the same canal their own representatives were opposing. Thousands of people in other parts of the state also signed petitions for the canal… In the spring of 1817, the people elected DeWitt Clinton governor of New York by a vote of 43,310 to 1,479. It was the most lopsided vote the state had ever seen. And in voting for Clinton and his political allies, who had made the canal a major issue in their campaign, the people were really voting for the canal itself.‖

―Later that year, when the all-important bill for funds to build the canal came up in the state legislature, its enemies still fought hard. Not until the final hour of the session did the bill come to a vote and pass.‖

―But even then, the battle was not quite over. Under the rules of the New York Legislature, the bill had to be approved by a special group called the Council of Revision. Two of the five members completely opposed to the idea of a canal; a third, James Kent, chief justice of the New York supreme court, thought the canal might be a fine thing some day – but not for a good many years in the future. The great waterway seemed doomed when Daniel Tompkins, the Vice President of the United States, walked into the meeting room of the divided council.‖

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 4 ―Tompkins was a former governor of New York and very much against the canal, which he considered a waste of money. Just to make sure the council would vote against the canal bill, he warned its members that there would be another war with England within two years, and that the state ought to be spending its money on weapons and fortifications, rather than for anything as foolish as the canal.‖

―This was the worst thing he could have said. Judge Kent, who was going to vote against the canal bill, resented Tompkins‘ attempts to frighten the committee with talk of war. Rising from his seat, he announced, ‗If we must have war, or have a canal, I am in favor of the canal‘.‖

―And so, by the margin of one vote, the Erie Canal was approved. It was one of the most important votes in American history. The crowd of people waiting outside in a hard April rain to hear the decision knew how important it was and cheered again and again when they received word of the final vote.‖

―Now the job was up to the men with axes and picks and shovels‖

A Biographical Sketch of Jesse Hawley – Early Erie Canal Advocate

It was Lockport NY‘s resident Jesse Hawley who first introduced the notion of a canal that would connect Lake Erie with the Atlantic Ocean. Hawley advanced many of his ideas from debtor‘s prison and people generally regarded his writings as the ravings of a naïve lunatic.

Hawley was working as a flour merchant in Geneva, NY. Forced to pay high shipping costs to transport his flour by wagon, Hawley lamented his lack of options. It would be cheaper and faster if he was only able to load his flour onto a packet boat and send it off to its destination. There were few roads bridging the wilderness that was New York State in the early , and there was no guarantee as to the condition of the few dirt roads there were. The heavy wooden wheels carved deep ruts into the dirt, and heavy rains could turn roadways into sloppy muck and mud. A packet boat loaded with goods could float large tonnage and move by inertia, without bogging down travel time with muddy conditions and unnecessary fatigue.

Hawley studied maps of the state in search of an answer to his dilemma and determined that Lake Erie would be an ideal source of water for a manmade canal. However, as Hawley studied his maps, his business costs continued to mount. Deep in debt, he fled to . Hawley returned to New York State to visit a friend who helped bail him out of some of his financial straits. Hawley most likely at the urging of his benefactor, surrendered himself in Canandaigua County and was sentenced to 20 months in jail.

While in prison, Hawley wrote 14 essays calling for the immediate creation of a cross-state canal. These letters, signed with the nom de plume of ―Hercules‖, appeared in the Genesee Messenger sporadically throughout 1807 and 1808. Hawley‘s initial enthusiasm grew into fanaticism. Reflecting on his days as an imprisoned Hercules, Hawley later wrote:

―There I was ! – In a Debtor‘s Prison for the relief of my bail; betrayed and defrauded by my partner; broken down and almost destitute in despondency at the thought that hitherto I had lived to no useful purpose of my own; -- accompanied with many pensive reflections that I never want to recall. Recovering myself, I resolved to publish to the world my favorite, fanciful project of an overland canal, for the benefit of my country, and endure the temporary odium that it would incur.‖

Despite his reservations, Hercules‘ essays began to get some endorsement in New York. Overland transportation was arduous and expensive, and New York was not kind to travelers. The vast majority of the terrain was undeveloped, covered with dense forests, wilderness and swamplands. The made travel through unfamiliar territory a daunting challenge. The prospect of disease also kept many travelers close to home, especially when a cross- state journey meant seven weeks of travel along rocky roads in a horse drawn carriage.

Hawley presented his proposals in nationalistic rhetoric, appealing to the American public, a nation which had already illustrated such ―inventive genius and enterprise‖ (Hercules‘ words) in its short history. Not to build a better canal than those already existent throughout Europe would be roughly akin to a crime against a nature – an obstacle against America‘s manifest destiny and a deterrent against opening the country to European commerce and trade.

―My countrymen are capable of encountering many difficulties and apparent impossibilities, by which improvements will be undertaken and completed in a future day, ― Hawley wrote. ―It would be a burlesque on civilization and the useful arts, for the inventive and enterprising genius of European Americans, with their

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 5 large bodies and streams of fresh water for inland navigation to be contented with navigating farm brooks in bark canoes.‖

Though Jefferson remained of the mind that such a proposal was best left to a future generation, Hawley had succeeded in generating enthusiasm for a canal across New York. Acting on the urging of their constituents who were reading essay after essay from this ―Hercules‖, -- legislators Joshua Forman and proposed a Congressional survey and exploration of what they considered the most direct route between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.

In 1808, a survey by engineer of Syracuse proved that a canal from the Hudson to the Erie could be built. However, a system of locks was necessary to overcome the 560-foot height differential between the two bodies of water [Note: Other sources note the elevation was anywhere from 560 feet to 600 feet ?] In addition to raising and lowering vessels, the locks were needed to regulate the flow of water. Otherwise, as water moved east from Lake Erie, it would pick up speed and become shallow rapids, preventing any traffic from using the waterway.

Also in 1808, Albert Galton, the Secretary of the Treasury, issued his recommendations on how to expend the federal surplus. Galton proposed building a series of roads and canals to connect the east and west. Chief among his suggestions was a canal to ―wed the waters‖ of the Atlantic with the .

Galton‘s proposal bolstered hopes among state officials. Suddenly, it seemed like federal funds might be available for the canal project. Geddes‘ study demonstrated that a cross-state canal was possible, at least technologically. But was the project economically viable? And, more importantly, if a canal was to be built, where should it go ?

Note: As has been noted earlier, federal funds were not to become available and New York State had to shoulder the funding for the Erie Canal by themselves.

Western Terminus for the Erie Canal (Black Rock vs Buffalo)

If done correctly, there was no doubt a canal spanning New York could prove profitable, and with the possibility of making money cam political support. Congressman Peter B. Porter, a Black Rock power broker with commercial interest on Lake Ontario, was among those who saw easy money on the canal.

Soon after being elected to Congress, Porter moved to relocate the customs houses on the Niagara Frontier to positions more favorable to his business interests. He lobbied to move the Buffalo customs house three miles north along the to his home base of Black Rock. The customs house in Fort Niagara would better serve the public if it were relocated south to Lewiston, Porter suggested. Not so coincidentally, Porter‘s trading firm, Porter, Barton & Company, had already built trading facilities on the latter site. With the increase of traffic through that the canal promised, Porter stood to gain a great deal of money by increasing traffic to his commercial sites.

New York City mayor DeWitt Clinton also became an outspoken advocate of the canal, which stood to reason. New York City would be an immediate beneficiary of the waterway, as food and goods from the west would quickly be transported on canal waters back to the city. In 1811, a five-man canal commission including both Porter and Clinton, traveled from Albany to Lake Erie to examine for themselves the most desirable route for the canal to follow.

Porter supported a system of two canals. One would connect the Hudson with Lake Ontario, while a second would sidestep Niagara Falls to connect lakes Erie and Ontario. Porter‘s system would bring canal-bound vessels through his properties in Lewiston before sending them on to Lake Erie, where ideally the Lewiston vessels would then land at his customs house in Black Rock. Clinton opposed Porter‘s plan, arguing that Montreal may infringe on trade if the canal were to end at Lake Ontario. Why expend federal or state money when trade could be diverted to British outposts in Canada ? If American money was to be spent on the project, Clinton declared, American should be the sole beneficiaries of the canal trade. Instead, the canal should proceed in a straight line from the Hudson to the Lake Erie, bypassing Lake Ontario entirely. Clinton decried Porter‘s proposal as ―The Porter Heresy‖, and in so doing, made a lifelong enemy of the Black Rock businessman.

But the canal commission was stonewalled when President James Madison expressed his doubts. Despite Galton’s advice, Madison was unsure of whether federal funds should be allocated for a New York State-only canal.

The politicians‘ debate on the feasibility of the canal and the availability of funds were set aside as war erupted on the Niagara Frontier. On July 11, 1813, a force of 400 British soldiers crossed the Niagara River and sacked American naval supplies in Black Rock. The British set fire to the nearby barracks and navy yard, and destroyed Black Rock. A fierce War Hawk, Porter took the invasion as a personal affront. That same night, he assembled a volunteer militia which returned to Black Rock and forced the British back across the river. Subsequently Porter resigned from Congress “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 6 to become a full-time military general in the war effort. By the time the Treaty of Ghent was signed to end the War of 1812, Porter was an American hero with significant political clout. But when the canal commission was re-organized, Porter found that he had been replaced. Clinton (who had since been elected New York‘s governor) selected to replace Porter on the commission. Not surprisingly, the ―Porter-less‖ commission voted to adopt Clinton‘s model for the general location of the canal.

Porter wasn‘t the kind of man who would walk away from a fight. Instead of giving up, Porter shifted the focus of the debate from the canal‘s route to its western terminus. The canal would have to come to an end either at Black Rock or Buffalo, and whichever city received the designation as western terminus would no doubt become the commercial center of western New York. Porter was determined that Black Rock should receive that honor.

Both Buffalo and Black Rock offered their own advantages. Ending the canal at Black Rock would make the canal slightly shorter, and therefore, less expensive to construct. Black Rock also had a read-to-use harbor and pre-existent trade at Porter‘s customs house.

Ellicott argued that Black Rock was too close to Canada. After the War of 1812, why should the canal meet the lake at a point within range of the British ? Of course Ellicott‘s motives weren‘t entirely selfless, either, as he owned a stake in the which owned properties in Buffalo.

Buffalo, however, faced its own obstacle – the entrance to Buffalo Creek was too shallow to allow boat traffic. Determined not to be overlooked in favor of Black Rock – particularly after newspapers in both cities turned the debate into a mud-slinging contest – a group of Buffalo citizens took it upon themselves to dredge the creek and build their own harbor. A local merchant, Samuel Wilkeson, abandoned his own private business and set forth with others to a harbor at the Buffalo site. The work in Buffalo Creek would take 10 years to complete [Buffalo Harbor documented in detail later in these notes].

Digging The Ditch

In a ceremony on , 1817, the first ground was broken for the canal in Rome, a small village in the central part of the state. DeWitt Clinton‘s canal commission had not yet received permission to expand the canal into the western section of the state, never mind determine where the thing was going to end if it even made it west. Critics argued that the projected cost of the project was largely based on speculation; who knew what the final price tag for such an ambitious project would be in the end ?

Clinton suggested starting construction in Rome and digging both east to Utica and west to simultaneously. Therefore, if the cost of the project would exceed the available funds, the state would be left with a relatively useless canal – one that began nowhere and ended nowhere. Clinton‘s plans were agreeable to even his biggest political opponents of which there were several. The Seneca valley section Clinton proposed completing first spanned 94 miles, slightly more than a quarter of the length of the entire canal. By conceding to Clinton‘s wishes, his opponents hoped they were giving the governor just enough rope to hang himself.

But while the political powers-that-be conceded to Clinton‘s wishes, the media wasn‘t so kind. While many newspapers loudly backed the canal, several prominent papers assailed the undertaking. In newspaper editorials across the state, the canal came to be referred to as ―Clinton‘s Ditch‖, a term which was quickly seized upon by Clinton‘s rivals. His rivals proclaimed: ― … in the big ditch would be buried the treasury of the state to be watered by the tears of posterity.‖

A team of surveyors set out along the route of the first section of the canal, planting rows of red stakes 60 feet apart to mark the area to be cleared for the dig. A second row of stakes was planted at 40 feet apart to mark the actual width of the canal itself.

Profile of Original Specifications for Erie Canal

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 7 Once the section was clearly marked, the canal commission sought private contractors for labor. The contractors were expected to provide their own tools and workers. To make the task less daunting, the commission offered contracts for as little as a quarter of a mile to make the work of digging the canal available to as many citizens as possible. The canal offered a tremendous job boom to those living in the towns it was to cross, and between 2,000 and 3,000 laborers took advantage of the new work.

Canal laborers were generally paid from $8 to $12 per month or 50 cents per day, depending upon the individual contractor. The contractors were paid at a rate of 10 to 14 cents per cubic yard for the excavation of soil with bonuses for the various types of rock they might encounter along the way.

Ralph Andrist (The Erie Canal) discusses one aspect of construction on the middle section of the canal that had the potential of making the canal project a disaster. This particular challenge had to do with the Montezuma Marsh [or Swamp] briefly mentioned earlier and discussed a little later relating to the Irish workforce. Andrist writes:

As one point it looked as though the canal was going to be stopped dead long before 1823. At first the middle section had been selected largely because it seemed to be the easiest digging, but one part of it turned out to be a nightmare. Near the section‘s west end, at the outlet of , was a low, marshy area across which the line of the canal was to run for four and half miles. The Montezuma Marshes, named after a small village on their edge, were a dismal spot with impenetrable thickets of rushes taller than a man, and oozy black muck underfoot.

The first day in the marshes, the men joked about the easy digging. But the next morning their jokes had turned sour because the soft mud they had shoveled out had settled and flowed back into the ditch. There was little sign of the channel dug the day before. So, to keep the sides of the canal firm, they constructed retaining walls of planks held in place by long stakes driven down through the soft mud and into the firm layer of clay beneath. That worked pretty well, except that occasionally a man would pound a stake through the mire into the clay only to watch it sink into bottomless quicksand.

Even the Irishmen, who had shown a knack for working in swampy places, did not like this spot. Their legs swelled from standing in the water for hours, and leeches fastened onto them. But their sense of humor stayed with them and they gave such names to the worst places as ―Bottomless Pit,‖ Digger‘s Misery,‖ ―Backbreak Bog‖, and ―Mudturtles Delight,‖ They also added to their song:

We are digging the Ditch through the mire; Through the mud and the slime and the mire, by heck! And the mud is our principal hire; In our pants, up our sleeves, down our neck, by heck! The mud is our principal hire.

But the worst did not come until early summer brought the mosquito season. The insects, enormous clouds of them, fell on the men in such savage numbers that hands swelled and eyes were puffed almost shut. Little smudge pots were obtained for the men which contained a small glowing fire covered with green leaves to create dense smoke. They were worn around the neck, and the men were soon calling them ―Montezuma necklaces.‖

One of the pests that was making like so miserable was the anopheles mosquito, the carrier of malaria – although no one yet connected the insect with the disease. By early August, workers by the hundreds were coming down with chills and fevers. Almost every man able to walk left the job and got away because it was believed that bad air caused the sickness. A traveler passing through found a doctor working himself hollow- eyed curing for his hundreds of patients night and day. His first treatment had done little for the men, as they included bleeding, and the administration of feverwort, snakeroot, green pigweed, and Seneca Oil (known as petroleum in later years). He also tried a new drug called ―Jesuit‘s Bark‖ and found that it seemed to do some good. In fact, the bark contained quinine which later was recognized as the best treatment for malaria.

Soon, work in the Montezuma Marshes stopped completely and there was dark talk about giving up the whole project. But when the autumn came, the sickness disappeared with the mosquitoes – and the work went ahead once again. One of the bridges across the marshes was a marvel of the Big Ditch. It was a wooden structure built on stone piles which spanned some 1,300 feet of marshy ground.

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 8 Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) speaks to the interaction of the contractors, engineers, and ―paymaster‖:

―Contractors were paid at the rate of 10 cents to 14 cents per cubic yard for the excavation of earth, with higher allowances for shale or rock. For the excavation of marl the commissioners paid as high as 75 cents; and for breccia, a particularly hard rock, as high as $2.00. For embankments, 16 cents to 25 cents a cubic yard was given and locks and culverts were contracted from 75 cents to $1.50 per perch. In many instances these allowances were so liberal that some contractors sublet their work to others and pocketed the profit. The principal engineers received a salary from $1,500 to $2,000 a year and assistant engineers $4.00 a day. The salary of the acting commissioners was set in 1819 at $2,500, which was reduced to $2,000 in 1820. More than this, Joseph Ellicott advised Clinton, would create in uneducated minds that idea that the commissioners were ‗aggrandizing themselves on the canal funds.‘ ―

―Relationships among the builders of the Erie Canal were personal and direct. A set of overall specifications applicable to every contract was drawn up for grubbing, clearing, and excavating, and for the construction of embankments, , fences, waste weirs, locks and culverts. Beyond this, each contract was suited to the requirements of the individual situation. The engineers boarded in homes near the canal and , who was appointed treasurer of the canal board and who, of all the commissioners, devoted himself most fully to the construction of the canal, drove his carriage slowly up and down the line paying the contractors out of his strong box in small bills drawn on local banks.‖ [pp 91-92]

George Condon (Stars in the Water) describes the beginning of the Erie Canal construction:

―The commission, in choosing to begin the canal by building the middle section first, using Rome as the starting point and digging east and west simultaneously, was neither casual nor capricious. It had sound reasons for its decision. Test borings of the ground in the Rome area had come up with soft, workable earth and there were some ninety-four miles of flat terrain between the Seneca River and the at Utica which posed no major problems and offered the possibility of quick progress. This was important, both physically and psychologically. An important consideration for the canal was, of course, an adequate water supply, and the Mohawk offered that. Furthermore, this particular section of canal would be so strategically important in itself when completed that even if the remainder of the canal to the east and to the west were never built, for whatever reason, the middle section would stand as a vital improvement and justification enough in itself for all the work and money expended.‖

― One of the lesser considerations that led to the choice of the middle section for the canal beginning was that Benjamin Wright was a resident of Rome and the adjacent countryside was an area he knew well. Wright‘s family had moved from to Rome when he was a youth of nineteen, and here he had begun his career as a surveyor at a time when the wilderness around Fort Stanwix was being subdivided for sale to venturesome easterners. In a period from 1792 to 1796, Wright had laid out into farms about 500,000 acres of land in Oneida and Oswego counties. Later, when the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company undertook to connect the Mohawk River and by canal near Fort Stanwix, it was Wright who had done the . He also, of course, had surveyed the eastern half of the entire Erie Canal route. Nobody knew this part of America better than Benjamin Wright. ―

―No roll of drums said so, but it was the end of the wilderness in New York State that morning [July 4, 1817]. Civilization would ride the canal. All through that summer of 1817 man set about the job of changing the natural environment to suit his ends. Hundreds of men tore at the shrubs and the trees, hacking and slashing, clearing the way. Stakes first went into the torn-up ground along the path of the canal – outer rows of stakes that were sixty feet apart to set off the land that was to be grubbed, or cleared of brush, and then an inner row of stakes forty feet apart to mark the precise width of the canal itself.‖

―The Canal Commission followed an unusual plan in letting out contracts for the work. Individuals were invited to make sealed bids for the construction of sections of the canal as short as one fourth of a mile. Each of these bidders had to agree to furnish their own tools and hire their own labor. Funds were advanced to successful bidders under bond to enable them to buy teams of horses and such equipment and supplies as might be needed.‖

―What the commission had in mind was providing an extra source of work and income for farmers and their hired hands along the route of construction. Labor was not plentiful in that frontier country, “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 9 which still was so remote that there was not even a stage service connecting Buffalo to Albany, a country that was particularly low in population and the creature comforts west of Utica. The farmer- contractor system, it was thought, would have the doubly beneficial effect of dipping into the farm labor supply and of plowing some of the canal money back into the counties through which it passed.‖

―More than fifty contractors were involved in work on the first fifty-eight miles of work authorized by the commission. Their laborers were paid anywhere from 37.5 cents to 50 cents a day. Even that minimal pay scale left many of the contractors with only a marginal profit, and where the contractor- farmer himself was inefficient or his help not satisfactorily productive, there was no profit at all.‖

―By the end of the first year, 1817, which represented only about six months of actual work, some fifty-eight miles of the waterway were under contract. Approximately fifteen miles had been completed and it could be said that the canal, after years of talking and planning, really was underway.‖

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) talks of the resources available for construction of the canal:

―Fortunately, most of the materials needed for construction were found near the canal. The engineers discovered a much called ‗the blue mud of the meadows‘ which served as a canal lining to prevent water seepage. A high grade of limestone which was discovered near Medina provided excellent facing for the locks and other structures where stone was required. Furthermore, a particular variety known as ‗meagre limestone‘ became the welcome answer to the pressing need for suitable water cement. Until this resource was discovered, construction was hampered by the poor quality of ordinary lime morter on which the engineers were forced to rely.‖ [page 94]

Yankee Ingenuity (Peter Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, pp 208 – 211)

While the majority of contractors profited from the project, the backbreaking labor and harsh climate took its toll upon others. Faced with the competition of other contractors and a desire to work as efficiently as possible, canal laborers were encouraged to develop any effective labor-saving devices as possible.

Between 1817 and 1819, new stump pullers, wheelbarrows, and earth-movers were developed. While there were no professional engineering schools in existence in the U.S. at the time, engineering and technology advanced through basic on-the-job training along the Erie Canal. Engineers closely studied publications and the completed works of French and English builders such as Paul Riquet, James Brindley, and Thomas Telford. The canal system built in France throughout the 1600s served as models for the project.

One of the more interesting areas where new technology played an important role was in the method of ―grubbing standing timber‖. Grubbing referring to the digging up or digging out of trees in the path of the prospective canal. Not a yard of ditch could be dug until the workers had cut down the countless thousands of trees, chopped them up into movable sizes, uprooted the stumps, and then carted away the staggering mess of logs, branches and leaves.

Neither scientists nor engineers devised the ingenious laborsaving solution to these tasks. Rather, the inventors were the men doing the hard work on-the-job. They remain anonymous. When the great celebrations at the completion of the canal took place, these men would continue to be unheralded. Yet the scale of their achievements was not to be denied.

Most of these remarkable laborsaving innovations on the canal owner their success to the principles of Archimedes, the great inventor and mathematician of ancient Greece. Archimedes received the credit for inventing the lever – a device based on the theory that a small amount of force moving a relatively large distance could translate into a greater amount of power delivered over a smaller distance. Most levers are boards set on a fulcrum nearer one end than the other – a kind of unbalanced seesaw – or are gears where a small wheel turns faster than a larger wheel to which it is connected.

One such clever invention during the construction of the Erie Canal dramatically reduced the time-consuming labor needed to chop down the massive trees in the forests, which would often have involved more than a hundred swings of an axe before the job was done. This gadget consisted of a wheel wound around with a cable and mounted so it could spin freely. When the loose end of the cable was attached to the top of a tree, one man all by himself could fell it by turning the wheel until the cable bent the tree over so far it finally broke free of its stump and crashed to the ground.

But the stump was still there, its thick roots reaching in all directions under the surface. The contraption contrived to uproot the stump was a truly formidable device. The basic machinery consisted of two wheels, each sixteen feet in diameter, set on either side of a huge axle thirty feet long and twenty inches in diameter. Another wheel, with a diameter “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 10 of fourteen feet, was mounted in the middle of the axle. As the diameter of this wheel was two inches smaller than the outside wheels, it did not touch the ground and could spin freely. In order to drag a stump and its roots completely out of the earth, the men first braced the two outside wheels of the axle with heavy rocks so that the device could be stationary. Then they wound a chain around the axle and fastened the chain to the stump. After wrapping one end of a strong rope several times around the fourteen-foot wheel in the center of the axle, the men attached the other end of the rope to a team of horses or oxen. As the animals moved forward, pulling the rope behind them and turning the wheel, the tremendous pressure on the chain yanked the stump and its roots free from the earth. According to one authority, one of these contrivances with a team of four horses and seven laborers could grub thirty to forty stumps a day.

After all this, the ground was ready for the excavation to begin, but no one had built anything as enormous as the Erie Canal before. In the early stages, the men followed the so-called European method of digging with spades and carting the excess earth away on wheelbarrows, an approach hallowed by thousands of years of use. Pressed to find more efficient ways to dig and remove the excavated earth, the men discovered they could save a lot of time and effort by replacing spades with horse-drawn plows. These plows carried heavy and sharpened pieces of iron that sliced through the roots as they were pulled along, tearing apart the earth. In addition, the teams of horses constantly carrying away heavy loads of excavated earth were packing down the ground along the side of the canal into solid banks much less vulnerable to leakage than with the traditional method. . Using that method, it was found that three men, aided by horses or oxen, could excavate a mile of canal in a season.

Charles Hadfield (The ) reflects on the arduous task of lining (i.e., ‗puddling‘) the canal:

―Top soil had first to be removed for later return to the completed banks and neighboring land. Digging was done by hand, using wheelbarrows on planks, and temporary horse tramroads for moving soil longer distances. Ina deep cutting, where man and his barrow had to be got up the sides, rings on the end of ropes could be slipped over the barrow‘s handles, and it could then be helped up by a horse at the top walking away. Should cutting be through clay or other watertight soil, no lining would be necessary; otherwise the canal bed must be lined or puddled. Puddle, said an instructional account written in 1805:‖

‗…is a mass of earth reduced to a semifluid state by working and chopping it about with a spade, while water just in the proper quantity is applied, until the mass is rendered homogeneous, and so much condensed, that water cannot afterwards pass through it, or but vary slowly. The best puddling- stuff is rather a lightish loam, with a mixture of coarse sand or fine gravel in it; very strong clay is unfit for it, on account of the great quantity of water which it will hold, and its disposition to shrink and crack as this escapes … ‗

This puddle was then spread in layers over the bottom and sides of the canal excavation to a thickness of 18 inches to 3 feet depending on the porosity of the soil, and covered with a layer of ordinary soil or second quality clay about 18 inches thick. The canal then had to be filled with water before hot weather could damage the lining. Filling with water enabled working boats to be used to move soil and construction material from place to place.‖

Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) continues the notes on ―puddling‖:

―Leaky earthen walls are among the biggest problems canal builders have to confront. The leaks can run either – seeping into the canal from underground springs and neighboring rivers or draining water out of the canal into the surrounding earth. The 17th century builders of the overcame this difficulty with another remarkable innovation: they ‗puddled‘ the claylike soil used for the canal walls – a process of kneading and massaging the earth by manual labor over and over, and then over and over and over some more, until sufficient oxygen has been blended into the soil to make it impermeable. The sides of the Erie Canal, among many others, are sustained in this manner‖ [pp 39-40]

George Condon (Stars in the Water) describes the saga of the essential construction ingredient -- hydraulic cement:

―The canal locks had to be built of stone blocks because wooden locks would deteriorate too quickly underwater. This meant that hydraulic cement would have to be employed, but the only source of hydraulic cement was Europe, and as it would be needed in huge quantities, the logistical problem of hauling the special cement across the ocean and into the frontier country was staggering. Even more to the point, the expense would be unbearable.‖

―That was the dark, perplexing situation when , an assistant engineer on the canal, returned from a remarkable field trip to Europe. White, a native New Yorker, born in Oneida County, was a protégé of “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 11 Benjamin Wright. In autumn 1817 Wright sent him to Europe with specific instructions to inspect the canal systems, get some modern surveying instruments, and otherwise absorb such knowledge as would prove helpful in the Building of the Erie Canal.‖

―With a zeal that few men would be capable of summoning, White not only inspected the canals of Great Britain first hand, he walked 2,000 miles on the towpaths of the system that laced England and Scotland, making sketches and detailed drawings of locks and construction methods all along the way. He came back with a portfolio bulging with invaluable data and sketches. But the joy over his return was diluted by the air of gloom that had been generated by the hydraulic cement crisis.‖

―White, buoyed by the optimism of youth and confidence in his own ability, refused to be depressed and set about, instead, on a search for the solution. He found the answer right in the path of the canal, at a place near Chittenango in Madison County. There a lime rock deposit with unusual properties intrigued White. With the help of a Dr. Barto, ―a scientific gentleman from Herkimer County‖, and a memorable experiment in Elisha Carey’s barroom, White, using the local limestone, was able to make a hydraulic cement that was judged to be as good as any produced in Europe, perhaps better. And it was right on hand.‖

―There is a rather unhappy footnote to this particular development, the sort of footnote that has won history a reputation for repeating itself. While Canvass‘s discovery of a good waterproof cement was a rare piece of good luck for New York State and the builders of the Grand Canal, it didn‘t net White himself much more than a public commendation and a pat on the back from his superiors. He generously permitted contractors to use his discovery generally for all masonry work on the canal on the strength of a promise by the canal commissioners that he would receive just compensation for his wonderful product.

The promise was never redeemed. Although some half-million bushels of the special cement were said to have been used in the Erie work, White received no extra compensation. A measure supported by the governor and the canal commission would have paid him $10,000 some years later, but the bill was defeated by the legislature. Even the private manufacturers failed to pay White the royalties due him.‖

―The Canal‘s Commission‘s luck in finding a solution to the hydraulic limestone crisis, was duplicated in its discovery near the canal route of a muck called the ‗blue mud of the meadows‘ which proved highly effective in preventing water seepage when applied to the lining of the canal.‖

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West), cites a section from the report of commissioners in 1819 on the construction of specific locks. These specifications reflect the quality of the work called for throughout the canal.

―The foundations of these eight locks, are to consist of a solid flooring of hewed timber, one foot thick, and covered with well jointed three inch plank, over which, within the chamber, will be laid another flooring, of two inch plank, accurately fitted together with water joints, and spiked down, so as to prevent leakage: and this foundation is to be strongly supported and guarded by piling. The lock walls are to sustained by several massy buttresses [sic], to be laid in water-cement, and thoroughly grouted – to have all the faces, ends, and beds, of each stone, laid in front of the wall, together with the hollow quoins, the lock culverts and the ventilators, well cut – and the whole to be sufficiently cramped together with iron, and the best construction, and properly fitted, secured, and hung.‖ [page 97]

All of these engineering improvisation by untrained talent would one day be known as Yankee ingenuity. But these innovations had an awesome quality as well, as signs of the growing force of man over nature in the budding .

Eastward to Albany

Peter L. Bernstein‘s Wedding of the Waters describes this construction effort as follows:

Toward the end of 1820, construction crews started work on the stretch running from Utica to Albany and the terminus of the canal at the Hudson River. A rapid rate of economic development followed the completion of each stretch of the canal as it flowed through little towns that signified their newfound prosperity with an increasing number of proud Greek revival homes. Albany itself was building a harbor facility with a wharf three-quarters of a mile long and a hundred feet wide, fully equipped with large numbers of storehouses of varying shapes and sizes.

Utica was a remarkable little city, which had caught Clinton‘s fancy on an expedition in 1810, when he admitted the elegance of the houses and the shops ―well replenished with merchandise‖. With the canal running right through the “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 12 middle of town, Utica‘s commercial activity blossomed despite the absence of the dramatic waterfalls and rapids that powered the textile and grist mills to the east. The local businessmen made up for this shortcoming with a wide assortment of light manufacturing and a lifestyle that attracted a variety of cultural institutions.

Forty miles east of Utica, Canajoharie was known for its very popular footraces in the early days of the Erie Canal, but the canal‘s transportation facilities would convert the town into a large manufacturing center based on the headquarters of the Beech-Nut Company, a chewing gum and candy firm. Farther along the Mohawk valley, there is a village originally known as Remington‘s Corners in honor of Eliphalet Remington, the inventor of both the Remington rifle and the Remington typewriter. In 1828, Remington took advantage of the town‘s location on the canal to develop global markets for his remarkable and highly successful inventions, but in 1843 Remington decided he did not like having his hometown named after him, and insisted on a change. The postmaster – perhaps inspired by the town of Troy farther to the east – proposed Ilion, the Greek word for Troy, a suggestion immediately approved by the local citizens as well as Remington.

By the end of 1821, navigation on the eastern section was open on the stretch of twenty-four miles from Utica to Little Falls, and the difficult excavation from Little Falls to Albany was well advanced. Furthermore, money was now coming in as well as going out. The canal collected tolls on everything from salt, gypsum, grains, timber, and bricks to passenger boats charging 5 cents per mile. Toll revenues in 1821 were nearly five times the 1820 revenue of $23,001, which covered 13 percent of the annual interest payments due on the $2.9 million canal loans outstanding at year‘s end. And the work had only just begun.

The work to the east of Utica began with a particularly difficult stretch where the land drops off sharply by 105 feet over about eight miles, requiring thirteen locks one after another. Beyond that point, construction of the canal along the eighty-six miles from Little Falls to the Hudson River was a tough test of the skills of the engineers, through some of the most spectacular scenery along the entire route – scenery described neatly by one traveler as ―too sublime for my dull pen.‖ The valley is seldom straight, the hills on both banks have many steep slopes right down to the river, the course of the river is narrow, and the level of the land slants steadily downward. The narrow gorge at Little Falls is the point where the Mohawk [River] slices through the mountains. The drop from Schenectady to near Troy is the steepest part of the canal. And at the end of the line, there was the seventy-foot cataract of Cohoes Falls itself to contend with. Benjamin Wright and Canvass White spent many hours surveying all the surrounding areas in search of a more congenial route to bypass the Mohawk valley, but finally had to settle on following the river right down to the Hudson.

The landscape at Little Falls was the most defiant in the entire valley. Although there would have been no Erie Canal without that pre-glacial gorge at Little Falls – described by a traveler in 1829 as ―the wildest place on the canal‖ – there nearly was no Erie Canal at all because of it. Squeezed between steep banks rising as high as five hundred feet above the level of the [Mohawk] river, the torrent of white water puts down over a broad tumble of rocks and then falls over forty feet in less than half a mile through the narrowest stretch of the entire canal from Buffalo to the Hudson. The village of Little Falls connects with the canal along a large about thirty feet over the rushing waters. Today, Little Falls combines its wild scenery and sparse remnants of the original remarkable set of locks with a cluster of high quality art dealers and a fine museum.

By November 1821, just before activity close down for the winter, the engineers began to fill the canal with water through the grueling sixty-two-mile stretch from Little Falls to Schenectady. The work had been well done; no meaningful leaks or breakdowns in the canal walls developed. But most of the Mohawk‘s passage between Little Falls and Schenectady tended to be rocky, uneven, and roiled by rapids. The engineers would have preferred to use the river if at all possible, but the effort to make the river navigable here had led the old Western Inland Lock Navigation Company to sorrow and ruin among shallows, white water, floods, and falls. In some areas, the passage was so narrow the engineers had to blast a route out of the rocks along the sides of the banks – including space for the towpath as well as the canal itself. Benjamin Wright was concerned they might even have to tunnel right through the cliffs in some places. In other areas, they built the canal high above the water, along embankments strong enough to be safe from the Mohawk‘s violent seasonal flooding. Thirteen locks with a total drop of ninety feet were necessary between Little Falls and Schenectady.

The work became even more demanding below Schenectady, where the land drops over two hundred feet in the sixteen miles to Troy. Planning the construction of twenty-seven locks – almost one-third of the canal‘s total – over this short stretch was just part of the problem. Traveling toward the Hudson from that point, the canal ran along the south bank of the Mohawk, but the shape of the hillsides on that bank was steeper and more irregular than on the north side. Crossing back and forth from one bank to the other seemed like an awkward solution, but the engineers figured they could actually save money if they bypassed the hurdles on the south side. Two substantial aqueducts were needed, one to go from south to north and one to bring the canal back to the south side. The northbound aqueduct just below Schenectady “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 13 was 748 feet long, supported by sixteen piers that allowed the canal boats to sail along 30 feet above the roaring river. The other aqueduct, just above Cohoes Falls, a cataract as impressive for its width and thick white foams as for its height, brought the waterway back to the south bank on an even more imposing structure, 1188 feet long with twenty-six piers supporting it. This was the longest of the eighteen aqueducts on the canal. When the canal arrived at Cohoes Falls, the crews had to chop the route out of the sheer rock walls at a great elevation above the water – a job completed in eighty days, even though the English engineer William Weston had predicted it would require two years.

The crisscross of the Mohawk, executed in large part in 1823-1824, saved $75,000 in construction costs, or nearly 30 percent of what it would have cost to go all the way on the south side of the river. Total outlays for the Schenectady— Albany section came to $540,000, most of which was spent on the sixteen-mile a stretch from Schenectady to Troy. The cost per mile was thus more than double the per-mile cost of $12,000 for the portion of the canal from the Seneca River to Utica.

Later, in 1824, when the whole complicated and treacherous construction from Utica to the Hudson was complete, with all the daunting obstacles overcome, the commissioners could hardly believe the extraordinary achievement. Their report of that year admitted that if construction had begun there, without the experience gained from the earlier work on the relatively easy middle section, building the canal would have been ―entirely abortive‖, and the completion of the project would have been postponed for as long as a hundred years. At that happy moment, they expected the full canal to be open and operational within the next twelve months.

Re: Section below from Nobel Whitford‘s book “History of the Canal System of the State of New York – Together with Brief Histories of the Canals of the US and Canada”, 1906. [The first paragraph is an opinion about his work]

Nobel E Whitford’s 1906 book on the canal systems of New York does address the construction on the eastern section. Whitford‘s description, in my opinion, is very difficult to follow. Since Mr. Whitford‘s book is considered (by some) as the alleged ―bible‖ of the Erie Canal, I am including this particular component of his book for you to judge for yourself the effectiveness of his narrative style. This section is contiguous in nature and no attempt was made to filter out those items that are not particularly relevant to the construction of the eastern section. His tome acquired from the ‘s Erie Canal internet site. Here it is:

On the middle section in 1821 navigation was interrupted for a short time only, and the total amount of tolls collected was $23,001.63, a portion of this revenue also being derived from the old canal at Rome. During this season work on the eastern section had been greatly extended and contracts entered into for its entire completion to the navigable waters of the Hudson. Navigation had been opened between Utica and Little Falls and from the latter place to Schenectady much of the excavation was completed. In order to accommodate the public a wooden lock was constructed at German Flats, which connected the Erie Canal with the navigable waters of the Mohawk, thus affording an uninterrupted boat navigation from Schenectady to Cayuga and Seneca lakes.

The location of the canal between Little Falls and the Hudson caused the engineers and commissioners much solicitude. The engineers, Wright and White, made repeated investigations to discover some route other than that along the valley of the Mohawk. As their efforts were unavailing the commissioners were forced to adopt a line through this valley until the Cohoes Falls were reached. Beyond the falls the canal bore to the south and conforming to the gradual descent of the ground, took a direct course to Albany where the junction with the Hudson was made, as well as another connection with this river opposite the City of Troy. The principal difficulties of construction through this valley occurred in the narrow passes of the Mohawk, where the hills terminated abruptly at the water's edge, rendering it necessary to build the canal wholly in the river or partly in the river and partly in the bank. In either case, high embankments were needed to carry the canal above the floods, and these embankments had their bases in the river and required a covering of stone. The magnitude of these embankments, the quantity of stone required to protect them, the difficulty of excavation, which frequently was of rock, rendered these sections the most expensive of the whole undertaking.

Between Schenectady and Cohoes Falls these obstacles were so great on the south side of the river that it was finally decided to cross to the north side and, after passing the most difficult places, to re-cross the river. After vainly trying to suitably locate the canal on the south side. Canvass White decided to try a line along the other side, and finding this much more favorable he recommended crossing the river twice. Benjamin Wright and James Geddes, the two senior engineers, after carefully examining the situation, corroborated Mr. White's opinion. Accordingly aqueducts were built, one at a place known as Alexander's Mills, about four miles below Schenectady, and the other [aqueduct] at the locality called Fonda's Ferry, about four miles above Cohoes. The portion on the north side of the river between these aqueducts was about twelve miles long. The estimates of cost of the two routes showed the economy of constructing the canal for a distance on the north side. They were as follows: south route, $279,949.09; north route, including the two aqueducts, $304,178.18; balance in favor of the latter method, $75,770.91. “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 14

While the Legislature was in session in 1822; an act (Chapter 274) was passed, regulating the speed of boats on the canals. The matter was embodied in Section 4, and reads: "No boat or craft, or floating timber or lumber, shall move on either the Erie or Champlain canals, faster than at the rate of four miles per hour, without permission in writing, and signed by a majority of the canal commissioners.‖ The penalty for each offense was to be ten dollars.

In 1822, two hundred and twenty miles of canal were open to navigation. Contracts for constructing a tow-path along were let, and also for building a dam at its mouth. The work of excavating in the rock cut at the mountain ridge proved to be more difficult than was at first expected, owing to the shelly condition of the rock and the slight effect of powder upon lit. As the work progressed so slowly here, and as complaint had been made that the excavation could not be done, at contract prices, the commissioners determined to adopt a new method. The work was divided into smaller sections; the former contractors were retained but were required to employ as many laborers as the commissioners demanded; an assistant engineer was placed on the work to inspect the whole course of operations and to keep an account of all expenses necessarily incurred in the prosecution of the work, and the contractors were paid reasonable prices according to the engineer's accounting. Under this plan good progress was made and with little more expense.

Some trouble was experienced in building the aqueduct on account of the smooth, sloping surface of the rock upon which the foundations of the piers rested. The first pier, which had been partly built on this rock, was carried away by the swift current in the river and those built thereafter were sunk into the rock six inches.

During this entire season [1822] the middle section was open, to navigation and a larger amount of tolls collected than in the former years. The construction of the eastern section was being pushed forward rapidly, as it was expedient to obtain all the revenue possible from tolls so as to pay the interest on the maul [?] debt. In November water was admitted to that portion between Little Falls and Schenectady without any serious breaches or leaks following. Shortly afterward navigation beyond a place known as the "Nose" was suspended during the construction of a feeder from the Paper Mill Creek, and while the lining of the canal between the "Nose" and Schenectady was in progress. Work between the latter city and Albany was being successfully prosecuted, five of the locks being completed and excavation on the others finished.

At Schenectady a change of location had been made after the canal had been partly constructed. Mr. Jervis description of the change discloses an interesting bit of local contention. He says: "Schenectady is built upon a tongue of land that projects from the bill of the south side to the shore of the Mohawk River. Above this tongue of land, the interval lands of the Mohawk extend about three miles, and in most part about half a mile wide, terminated at the upper end by the hill that strikes the river.‖ The canal was locked down at the upper end of this interval land, so as to carry a cutting or excavation through the central portion of this interval, of one to six feet in depth. As this line neared the city, it curved off to the shore of the river, and so passed the tongue of land between the city and the Mohawk River. This made a cheap line to construct. This piece of canal was nearly constructed over the interval land, and some work was done along the river shore. This line had been opposed, as being liable to damage from river floods, and as there was a local interest in the location, the matter was a good deal discussed among the citizens. One party favored the location as made, and another contended for a line through the center of the city, through the elevated tongue of land above described.

At that time it was considered the business of the city would center on the canal, and hence the local excitement. One party was led by Governor Yates and the other by B. Gevins, the proprietor and keeper of Gevins Hotel. The commissioners and engineers were guests at the hotel, and Mr. Gevins did not lose the opportunity of influencing, so far as he could his guests, on the question of location, and was very active in looking after the route through the city, which would most probably run near his hotel. At this time a heavy flood occurred in the Mohawk River, rising over the banks of the canal, and gave great force to the objection that had been raised, as to such dangers. This so impressed the engineers that they saw the necessity of some change, either by a new line, or expensive guard banks to protect the canal in time of flood. This circumstance gave energy to the Gevins party, and though much work had been done, they succeeded in impressing on the engineers and commissioners the necessity of a change in the location. Mr. Gevins was a sagacious man, and one that could keep his own counsel; and finally succeeded in inducing the engineers to run a new line through the city, and in getting the canal authorities to vacate the river line, and locate through the central portion of the city. The day after this was done, it so happened that Gov. Yates and Mr. Gevins met at the halfway house, between Schenectady and Albany. Mr. Gevins said to me that Governor Yates called him out privately, and gave him a severe reproof for the course he had taken saying he (Gevins) was an uneasy Yankee and could not be kept still. Mr. Gevins said he took the rebuke very quietly, knowing the matter was settled.

The plan this measure gave rise to, was to take up the lock at the upper end of this interval, and raise the canal banks to correspond with the new level. The former excavation was not filled up, leaving the water in the canal, six feet extra “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 15 depth. The alluvial land was supposed to be water-tight, but it was found afterwards, after water was let in, to be full of holes, like pipe stems, made by the decay of aqueous roots, and gave a good deal of trouble to secure the banks against this difficulty. In some cases long courses of sheet piling was put in, but the method adopted for the most part, was to line the sides and bottom with sand from the hill. It was not until midsummer that this section of canal was so improved as to hold water for navigation.

…. The eastern section of the Erie Canal and the Champlain waterway were completed by October 1, 1823, thus making a continuous canal navigation from Genesee River to Albany and from Whitehall, at the head of to the latter city.

[End of Whitford’s Discussion of the Eastern Section of the Erie Canal]

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) references the construction on the eastern portion on pages 134 –135:

―If the western section of the canal boasted the most imposing structures, that portion of the canal between Schenectady and Albany required an equal or greater application of engineering skills. There the gorge of the Mohawk narrowed and deepened briefly as the river rushed downward in descents as steep as eight and a half feet to the mile. ―How we shall get a line from Schenectady to the Hudson I am most anxious to know,‖ wrote Henry Seymour to Clinton. Benjamin Wright proposed a plan for tunneling through the rocky gorge, but it was not adopted for fear of adding years to the work. In some places the canal clung to a narrow ledge above the water, and in others the steepness of the banks forces the canal into the bed of the river itself. Twenty- seven locks were built in the thirty miles between Schenectady and Albany [30 miles ?] , nearly a third of those required for the entire canal. At Alexander’s Mills the aqueduct carrying the canal to the north side of the Mohawk was 748 feet long and rested on sixteen piers; twelve miles below, the canal was brought back to the southern side by an aqueduct stretching 1,188 feet and resting on twenty-six piers, the longest on the canal. Although many feared that these tasks would take months, and even years, to complete, by October of 1823 the Erie Canal was opened all the way from Brockport to Albany and the entire line of the was completed.‖

Westward to Lake Erie

In October of 1819, the first experimental section of the canal was opened. Each section of the canal was to be an independent canal that could be filled and drained without affecting other sections. Once a section was completed, it would be filled and checked for leaks. If a leak was found, it was to be repaired at the expense of the contractor who oversaw development of the section. The Seneca section was filled and apparently ready for travel.

The canal commissioners and a group of friends boarded the ―Chief Engineer‖ on October 23, 1819, and set off along the 94-mile section of the canal between Utica and the Seneca River. The first segment of the canal was complete, and the project had stayed roughly within its budgeted allowance. An eyewitness to the trip‘s historic trek wrote of it in the Rochester Telegraph:

―To see the first boat launched, to be among the first that were borne on the waters of a canal which is to connect the great chain of western lakes with the Hudson, and which will be one of the most stupendous works the world has ever known … produced emotions which only those who felt them can conceive.‖

Despite that initial euphoria, construction of the canal was nowhere near complete. While the 94-mile section represented about a quarter of the total length of the project, the stretch was relatively easy digging. But there were plenty of other hurdles on the way to Buffalo.

Peter Bernstein in his book ―Wedding of the Waters‖ states:

―The hurdles to be overcome in the western section of the canal would turn out to be every bit as intimidating as in the east. There were violent undulations in the land across the canal‘s route as it approached Rochester. The Genesee River in Rochester itself, running [northerly], was the most extensive river crossing in the whole system, and an awesome confrontation with the would have to be resolved before the easy sail to Lake Erie would come into view.‖

In the Valley, the dig was scheduled to run right through the glacier-gorged valley, dropping the canal some 70 feet on one side and then lifting the canal back on the other. Rather than build four separate lock systems so close to each other, the site engineers decided to fill the valley with rocks and dirt. Built one wheelbarrow at a time, the Great Embankment is located just west of Bushnell’s Basin. “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 16

Further west was the Genesee River, a waterway prone to heavy flooding that crossed the canal‘s path. To cross the river, laborers constructed 11 stone arches spanning more than 800 feet to cross the river. That structure, built entirely by engineers with only sparse on-the-job training, was the world‘s largest conduit.

Finally, there was Lockport. Lockport presented engineers with two big problems. First of all, this is where the canal would have to cross the Niagara Escarpment, the same rock ledge that created Niagara Falls when it crosses the Niagara River. To scale the escarpment, vessels would have to be raised a total of 50 feet to be on the same level as Lake Erie. But even once a lock system was put in place, the 23 miles remaining to get to Buffalo wouldn‘t be easy.

Just beyond the final lock, the canal hit the wall – literally. A stretch of solid limestone and dolomite ran about five miles along the path between Lockport and the Tonawondas. The solid rock layers started right beneath a thin layer of soil and ran more than 30 feet into the earth, making it impossible to penetrate with picks and shovels. This clearly called for a new approach.

While laborers weren‘t able to shovel solid rock, they were able to drill through the stone using star bits and sledgehammers. Working in pairs, one man would hold the drill while the other swung away with the sledgehammer. Once a deep enough hole was bored into the rock, the hold would be filled with surplus black powder from the War of 1812. Rock blasting was an entirely new science, and it was far from perfect. Once the fuse was lit, workers ran as the powder ignited and exploded, sending rock fragments flying in every direction. Young boys were recruited to crawl between the cracks, place the powder, ignite the fuse, and (hopefully) make it out before the charge blew. While it was obviously dangerous, a ―powder monkey‖ could earn a premium wage. Even the rough and tumble laborers held powder monkeys in the highest regard.

With regard to the use of explosives in building the Erie Canal, George Condon (author of Stars In The Water) offers the following narrative:

―There is disagreement on what explosives were available to the canal builders. Some historians say that the rock cut was made only with the help of manpower and gunpowder. Some say that ice power also was used, that is, holes were drilled in midwinter and filled with water that promptly froze and cracked the rock as it expanded, making it easier for the men wielding sledge hammers to make progress. But there also are casual references to the use of ‗newly invented Du Pont blasting powder,‘ and there is no question that it was used at Lockport. Gunpowder couldn‘t have caused the explosions that occurred there.‖

Whatever it was that the contractors used to blast their way through the stone wall that stood in their path, it not only was effective in clearing the way, but it also helped to make the colony that had sprung up at the Lockport site amore interesting place to live.

The Niagara County Historical Society has an interesting volume of personal recollections known to the townspeople as ‗Aunt Edna’ Smith … According to Aunt Edna, the force of the blasting was such that ‗stones several inches in diameter were daily thrown over into Main Street‘. The townspeople, under daily siege from the blasting, hit on the idea of taking cover under trees. That is, they cut down small trees, removed the branches, and propped the trees together against the sides of their houses, ‗putting the lower part eight or ten feet from the house and leaning them against the roof, letting the tops extend above it.‘ The tree cover provided some measure of protection and also helped to solve the nagging problem of living quarters for the Irish laborers. Aunt Edna praised the trees as ‗ a great safeguard … and the space underneath was utilized by our Irish brethren by being converted into a pig sty or cow house—no cholera in those days or impertinent health officers prying into people‘s domestic arrangements and interfering to prevent their being as dirty as they chose.‘ ―

Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) speaks to the type of explosive materials available to the builders of the Canal:

―There was just one innovation of importance that had become available only recently: the newfangled blasting powder manufactured by a young Delaware chemical company, E. I. Du Pont de Nemours, providing more bang for the buck than the black powder used over the centuries but nowhere near as powerful as the dynamite and nitroglycerine that would be developed in the future.‖ [p 204]

While crews were slowly blasting their way westward, engineers were at work building the ―Flight of Five‖ locks. To overcome the 50-foot challenge of the Niagara Escarpment, crews built five pairs of combined locks, each with a lift of 10 feet. Built side by side, one set of locks was used for upbound (westerly) travel and the other used for downbound (easterly) travel, thereby preventing bottlenecks as vessels waited for their turn to lock through. A massive stone “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 17 walkway was built between the sets of locks. Though it was constructed without mortar holding the blocks together, the walkway still stands today – a model of remarkable early engineering ingenuity.

Beyond the rock cut, the canal connected to Tonawanda Creek, the only natural waterway used as part of the canal. As work in the west started to come to a close, word came down that the canal would be complete by the end of 1825. After seven years of backbreaking labor, the canal was nearly complete.

Ronald Shaw‘s book Erie Water West describes, in some detail, the engineering solutions needed to conquer the geographical and geological barriers facing canal construction in western New York.

Westward from the long Rome summit level, the completed line of the middle section was lowered near Syracuse to the lake country. There it passed over a lower summit from Nine-Mile Creek to the Skaneatleles Outlet on its way to the Seneca River. The numerous streams abounding in were laced to the canal by feeders and kept it plentifully supplied with water. At the beginning of the western section, the canal crossed over the Seneca River by a towpath bridge and passed through the Cayuga marshes to the village of Lyons where it took the waters of the and Mud Creek. After following the valley of Mud Creek to its headwaters at Palmyra, the canal was dependent for its water supply upon the Genesee River which was 130 feet above the Seneca River and 36 feet above Mud Creek. A series of natural ridges solved the problem of carrying water from the Genesee River down the valley of Mud Creek to the Cayuga marshes, requiring only an embankment to be built across the valley of Irondequoit Creek at Mann‘s Mills. The discovery of these natural ridges was the cause for James Geddes’ elation on his survey of 1808. They were the key to the western section of the Erie Canal.

Plans in 1817 called for the canal to cross the Genesee River behind a dam ten feet high with a bridge for a towing path, but an aqueduct was later found preferable. From the Genesee River to Lake Erie the canal followed Geddes‘ route along the famous Ridge Road rather than the more southerly route passing near Batavia, which had been traced out by William Peacock at the behest of Joseph Ellicott. The choice was a difficult one and the public presses of Rochester and Batavia maintained a lively difference of opinion to the respective merits of the routes involved. In Buffalo the southern route was favored because it would guarantee that the termination of the Erie Canal would be at the mouth of Buffalo Creek rather than at the rival port of Black Rock on the Niagara River.

By either route a ridge had to be crossed, for between the northern ridge which paralleled the shore of Lake Ontario and a southern ridge running from near Avon to the eastern tip of Lake Erie, a middle ridge lay like the bisector of a huge parallelogram. The southern route was shorter and less expensive and passed nearer the larger settlements on the state road to Buffalo. But by this path the canal was required to rise seventy-five feet above Lake Erie and the consequent shortage of water induced the commissioners to direct the line northward. By cutting through the middle ridge near Eighteen Mile Creek, the canal would remain always lower than the lake, though it relied for its water supply primarily on the waters of Tonawanda Creek, Skejaquada Creek, and Buffalo Creek ―rather than the fluctuating waters of Lake Erie‖. The canal therefore crossed the Genesee at Rochester and followed the northern ridge for sixty-three miles to the point where it crossed the middle ridge, then turned south through the Tonawanda swamp, and joined the Tonawanda Creek for twelve miles in its passage to the Niagara River. To use the water of Lake Erie whenever the level of the lake should make it available, the canal between the Niagara River and Lockport was carefully constructed with a drop of one inch to the mile.

The long levels across the Cayuga marshes and from the Genesee River to the ―mountain ridge‖ needed only mile on mile of digging, the construction of towpath on one side and bank on the other, and the building of locks, culverts, waste weirs, bridges, and fences. For these tasks the procedures were by now well established, although still subject to difficulty and delay. The line through the Cayuga marshes was dug in water from six inches to a foot in depth, and sickness struck nearly every contractor as the work progressed in 1820 and 1821. The canal was navigable through the marshes by the spring of 1822. As new stretches of the canal were finished they brought the same excitement that had characterized the completion of the middle section.

While the scattered settlements of western New York read of the novelty of navigation on the portion of the canal already completed, they were equally fascinated by the great edifices taking shape among them. Three great engineering problems faced the builders of the western section of the canal, exclusive of the harbor which must be constructed at its termination. The canal must pass high in the air over the valley of Irondquoit Creek; the Genesee River must be spanned; and the ―mountain ridge‖ must be scaled and cut to make the water available for the long level from Lockport to the Genesee.

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 18 The valley of Irondequoit Creek presented the most spectacular challenge and the commissioners were no less daring in their proposal. Examination of the soil led them to conclude first of all that an embankment would not be feasible. They therefore announced contracts in 1821 for the construction of a wooden aqueduct, sixty feet in height, which would carry the canal for a quarter of a mile across the valley. When this was erected, earth of a suitable variety would be brought in boats to provide a permanent base. The following season, however, they reconsidered, and fearful lest such a structure be unable to withstand the winds they accepted an offer to build the whole embankment of stone and earth. Nine hundred piles were sunk deep in the quicksand of the valley bottom to sustain a semicircular culvert with carried Irondequoit Creek 245 feet under the embankment. Workers brought earth of sufficiently cohesive texture from miles around to build the mound a full seventy feet high.

In the season of 1822, while sweating teamsters found the going ever more arduous at the pyramiding top of the embankment, the level line from Rochester to Pittsford was easily completed. Genesee water flowed into the canal from Rochester to the embankment on the second of July. Two days later the village of Rochester celebrated the forty-sixth anniversary of the nation‘s independence.

The embankment was done in October. With the waters of the Genesee River supplying the canal across its narrow summit as far as the Seneca River, 180 miles of navigation were open from Rochester all the way to Little Falls. Yet it was an uneasy victory. For many weeks the commissioners drained the structure nightly and posted a constant watch for fear that the entire pile would dissolve in one great torrent onto the forest and farmhouses below.

At the Genesee River itself, the construction of one of the longest aqueducts on the canal was well underway. Nine hewn-stone arches of fifty-foot span were being raised in the swift current of the river and a smaller arch was in progress at each end. In all the aqueduct would carry the canal a distance of 802 feet. The central piers were sunk six inches into the rock of the river bottom, and from the anchorage the parapets of the aqueduct were so fastened with bolts and bars of iron that it must stand or be swept away altogether.

The aqueduct was completed in September 1823 after an expenditure of $83,000. Now that the canal had reached the west bank of the Genesee where most of the merchants lived and worked it was time for Rochester‘s first real canal celebration.

Work began at crossing the ―mountain ridge‖ in 1822 where the operations were not only the most extensive of anywhere on the line of the canal but where a brand new city was in the act of creation. To surmount the ridge the commissioners decided to carve out a channel through the solid rock of the ridge itself. But it soon became evident that carving the channel was beyond the resources of individual contractors. Accordingly, the state itself took over their function in 1823. Contractors were given wages to act as overseers while the commissioners hired the laborers and directed operations. Here was the first assumption of public works by the state on the Erie Canal, and perhaps, the first such project in the history of the United States.

A thousand men were employed by the commissioners to cut a deep, straight, clean-cornered trough for seven miles through the ridge, two miles of it through solid rock. The channel was 27 feet wide and varied from 13 to 30 feet in depth. In addition, a towpath was chiseled from the side of the cutting. Over the heads of the workers, high wooden-armed derricks swung baskets loaded with rock blasted from the bottom of the excavation. Flying pieces of stone from the drills and blasting frequently endangered the workers‘ lives and accidents were numerous. The rocky bottom of the excavation had to be drained after every rain before blasting could go on, and near the top of the ridge, the rock became so flinty that even large explosions produced little effect. Progress was often frustratingly slow.

At the eastern extremity of the deep cutting, a double flight of five locks was constructed to carry boats up and down the sixty-six foot rise in the canal. They were the work of Nathan B. Roberts, whose plan was chosen from several advanced by the other engineers. The acceptance of his plan by the commissioners, he later said, was the greatest event of his career. With something of the appearance of a cataract, the locks stood at the head of a natural basin, flanked by steep banks a hundred feet high on either side. The long herringbone arms of the lock gates at each step emphasized the suggestion of a waterfall. Besides the immense quantities of timber, cement, and coping iron accumulated for the construction of the locks, fifty thousand feet of facing stone were imported to the site. They have almost invariably been chosen by authors from that day to this to illustrate any work on the Erie Canal.

Within little more than seven months a new village was born at the center of this intense activity. In July of 1821 (two months after the first contracts were let) only three families resided there. By January of 1822, 337 “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 19 families (exclusive of the transient laborers on the canal) had established permanent residences at the village of Lockport.

While costly delays retarded the work at Lockport, the uncompleted portions of the canal west to the Niagara River and all the way east to the Hudson were opened. Boats began to traverse the nineteen miles from Rochester west to Brockport in October 1823, and he remaining distance west to Lockport was open to traffic by September of the following year. For the entire distance from Rochester to Lockport that canal followed a single level. West of Lockport, the digging was delayed somewhat by poor roads where the canal turned south through the Tonawanda swamp. Near the mouth of Tonawanda Creek a dam was constructed and the slow moving stream was widened, deepened, and lines with towpath and bank to become part of the canal. By 1824 boats were passing for twelve miles along the length of the creek and entering the Niagara River through a lock.

Tying Up Loose Ends

As for the Black Rock – Buffalo terminus debate, the canal commission continued to waffle. The commission hired an engineer to determine the logical endpoint for the canal, only the engineer was employed by the Holland Land Company. Predictably, the engineer determined Buffalo (the Holland Land Company‘s home base !) would be a preferable endpoint. Peter Porter cried foul and hired his own engineer, Nathan Roberts, to study the matter. Roberts, of course, said Black Rock‘s natural harbor made it the only logical choice.

The debate was picked up by newspapers in both Black Rock and Buffalo who attacked Clinton and Porter respectively. Depending on whose newspapers were read, General Porter was either a national hero or he was a loose cannon who had, ―needlessly plundered helpless Canadians‖ during the War of 1812. In actuality, both viewpoints were partially correct.

Finally, a team of five engineers hired by the canal commission studied both harbors and ultimately recommended Buffalo as its choice for the canal‘s western endpoint. Porter was not about to back away from the fight and went to Albany were he loudly argued to anyone who would listen. It didn‘t help – Buffalo was to be the canal‘s western terminus, though Porter did manage to temporarily halt construction in the west while his appeals were being heard.

Twelve years after the canal finally opened, Porter abandoned his beloved Black Rock and relocated to Niagara Falls. It was the beginning of the end for the town of Black Rock. In 1853, Black Rock was annexed to Buffalo. Today even many locals are unaware that once upon a time their little community had very nearly surpassed Buffalo to become the hub of economic development in western New York.

Completed, the Erie Canal stretched 363 miles, making it far and away the longest canal in the world. The waterway measured 40 feet wide and four feet deep, with 18 aqueducts to carry its waters across rivers and 83 locks to raise and lower the boats a total of 682 feet from one end to the other.

The final price tag of the canal was $7,143,789, a cost Clinton assured would be covered by tolls. The final figure was surprisingly close to the $6 million price tag Hawley (aka ―Hercules‖) had projected years earlier, and Hawley had never personally traveled the route his theoretical canal would take. Hawley‘s figure was based on pure speculation. According to initial projections, the canal would raise $9 million in tolls in 50 years. Even the most optimistic had no idea how profitable the canal would ultimately be. ―Clinton‘s Ditch‖ would in fact pay for itself, several times over, in a mere fraction of that time.

According to a map found in Ronald Shaw‘s book Erie Water West (facing page 130) entitled ―The Erie Canal, showing the Stages of Completion, 1819 –1825‖, the following eight segments of the canal and their completion dates are as follows:

Segment Year of Completion

1 Utica to Seneca River 1819 2 Utica to Little Falls 1821 3 Little Falls To Schenectady 1822 4 Seneca River to Rochester 1822 5 Rochester to Brockport 1823 6 Schenectady to Albany 1823 7 Brockport to Lockport 1824 8 Lockport to Buffalo 1825 “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 20

Ronald Shaw‘s book included a small map showing the stages of completion of the Erie Canal. His map is based on a map prepared by the Canal Society of New York State and is presented here.

The Building of a Harbor at Buffalo

No adequate natural harbor existed at the eastern end of Lake Erie. The shores of Lake Erie curved smoothly into the Niagara River, shallow bays affording little protection. The prevailing westerlies swept down the lake directly into the open bays and river mouths, and at times reaching gale force. The small streams flowing into the lake near its eastern end were clogged by sandbars. Even the largest Buffalo Creek was obstructed by deposits of sand that prevented all but the smallest craft from entering and reaching deeper water upstream. Those interested in the future of Buffalo were certain that it would be possible to construct a harbor that would not only increase its usefulness for the traffic of that day, but convince the Canal Commission that the Erie Canal should have its western terminus at Buffalo [the debate between Black Rock vs Buffalo being discussed earlier in the notes]. The state loaned $12,000 for the construction of the harbor. Three Buffalo businessmen Samuel Wilkeson, Oliver Forward and Charles Townsend posted personal bonds to secure the loan. According to the agreement, if this venture proved successful, the loan was to be forgiven. But it was Wilkeson who was the moving force in constructing a harbor at Buffalo.

Henry Wayland Hill‘s Municipality of Buffalo, New York, A History, 1720-1923 describes in detail the construction of this harbor:

Samuel Wilkeson was a man of action. He formulated his plans, and then he acted. The exact date in 1820 on which the harbor work was begun is not on record. The work was prosecuted under extreme difficulty, and the result of the first two days of work was destroyed by the action of the waves on the second night. Judge Wilkeson writes:

"Two plans had been proposed for the work; one by driving- parallel lines of piles, and filling up the intermediate space with brush and stone; and the other by a pier of hewn timber, filled with stone. The later plan was adopted * * * the timber intended for piles was used in the construction of cribs, three of which were put down the first day.

"The first two days after commencing the work, the lake was calm; but the succeeding night a heavy swell set in, and the waves acting on the outside of the cribs forced the sand and gravel from under them, sinking the ends of some, the sides of others, and throwing them out of line, the whole presenting a most discouraging appearance."

One might well imagine that it would be discouraging to a man who was not experienced in engineering matters. However, there was a rift in the clouds of perplexity that hovered over Samuel Wilkeson, the superintendent. He writes: "Fortunately a little brush had been accidentally thrown to the windward side of one of the piers, which became covered with sand, and preserved this pier from the fate of the others." There he found the key to his problem. "Profiting by this discovery every crib subsequently put down was placed on a thick bed of brush, extending several feet to the windward of it."

But other "unforeseen difficulties" arose. The cribs could only be put down when the lake was perfectly smooth. So they decided to fit them up on the shore, so far as was possible. The opposite timbers were made secure with six feet ties, timbers were bored and numbered, and then floated to their respective places. There they were assembled, the trunnels, two feet long and made of oak or hickory, were driven home, and the crib put together in an hour. It would be secured with stone the same day. Judge Wilkeson's faithfulness to the underlying principle of the undertaking, i.e., economy, is indicated in the following paragraph of the record:

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 21 "Neither clerk, nor other assistant, not even a carpenter to lay out the work, was employed for the first two months, to aid the superintendent, who, besides directing all the labor, making contracts, receiving materials, etc., labored in the water with the men, as much exposed as themselves, and conformed to the rules prescribed to them of commencing work at daylight and continuing until dark, allowing half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. Besides the labors of the day, he was often detained until late at night, waiting the arrival of boats, to measure their loads of stone, and to see them delivered in the pier, as without this vigilance some of the boatmen would unload their stone into the lake, which was easier than to deposit it in the pier."

As the pier-construction proceeded, and the deeper water was reached, "the cost of the work alarmingly increased." It was decided "to suspend operations for that year, on reaching seven and a half feet of water." Possibly they hoped to gather additional funds during the winter months. But if the future of the harbor was uncertain, in matters of money and of use, the builders had had the satisfaction of seeing that the cribs could make a harbor. Samuel Wilkeson writes:

"On the 7th of September, after the timber work was completed, and while the pier was but partially filled with stone, two small vessels came under its lee and made fast. Towards evening appearances indicated a storm, and while the superintendent and captains were deliberating whether the vessels might not endanger the pier and perhaps carry away that part to which they were fastened, the gale commenced, rendering it impossible to remove the vessels otherwise than by casting them loose and letting them go on the beach. This was proposed by the superintendent and agreed to by the captains, on condition (in the event) that the safety of the pier should appear to be endangered by the vessels. Both the pier and the vessels, however, remained uninjured through the storm, which was regarded as no mean test of the utility and permanence of the works. The pier, which at this time extended 50 rods into the lake, was in a few days filled with stone, and the operations upon it suspended for the season."

During the stormy fall months the people of Buffalo watched the effect of the waves on the pier with anxiety. "The position was the most exposed on the lake," and if the work should be destroyed by gales, or by ice, "the fund remaining would be insufficient to repair the damage and extend the work to the requisite distance to make a harbor." The pier was then about 600 feet long. However, it withstood the worst that equinoctial gales, or spring ice, could do to it, the pressure "not even removing a timber."

But another perplexity faced the Harbor Company officials. The pier was only part of the harbor plan: "A most difficult part of the plan for forming a harbor was yet to be executed, and the more difficult because the expense would depend upon contingencies which the company could not control." Buffalo Creek, in 1820, entered the lake about sixty rods north of its present mouth, running for some distance nearly parallel with the shore. A new channel had to be cut across this bank of sand. It did not seem an impossible or an expensive task, and with scrapers and the voluntary assistance of citizens, work was begun on it in November. But three feet below the surface the bank was found to be formed of a "heavy compact body of coarse gravel and small stones," which the workers felt would, "if removed by the current of the creek," block up their channel in another place. Therefore the scraping was discontinued before water-level had been reached, and the subject of forming a new channel was "laid over for further consideration."

In the spring, and before work had been recommenced on the pier, an attempt was made to form a new channel. A dam was built across Buffalo Creek, at the required point. The water was raised about three feet. Then, by breaking the sandbank at the western end of the dam, "a current was formed sufficient strong to remove about fifteen feet of the adjoining bank to the depth of eight feet." The dam was extended across the new channel '. And when the dam would be full, the water would be released, causing much excavation. This easy method was repeated until the new channel had been pushed to within a few feet of the lake. Then an Act of God changed all of their plans. Judge Wilkeson writes:

The work was arrested by one of the most extraordinary rises of the lake perhaps ever witnessed. About seven o'clock in the morning, the lake being entirely calm, the water suddenly rose, and by a single swell swept away the logs that secured the materials in the dam, broke away the dam on the east side, wholly destroyed the west end, which was made of plank, and left the whole a total wreck. A more discouraging scene can scarcely be imagined."

It appears that the swell was caused by a tornado, "an extraordinary vein of wind," which, crossing the lake a few miles above Buffalo, had proceeded eastward, and "prostrated the timber in its course." Upon examination, it was found that the dam had lost about thirty feet of its eastern end, and that it had been weakened throughout. And an even worse calamity was almost upon them, for "a northeast wind commenced blowing, accompanied by a heavy rain." A flood had been hoped for, but now they prayed that it would not come. They saw that unless the dam could be repaired within twenty-four hours, a might destroy all that they had been working to accomplish, and perhaps undermine the pier. Volunteers and paid men, all loyal Buffalonians, set to work with a will, and worked far into the night, by the light of torch, and despite torrential “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 22 rain, in an endeavor to make the dam tolerably strong again. The freshet came, and after it had subsided it was found that it had accomplished as much work for Buffalo, in excavating their new channel, as could have been bought "for more than the whole of the harbor fund."

The harbor makers had succeeded; a kindly Providence had seen them triumphantly emerge from their difficulties. Wilkeson writes: "From this time, small vessels could enter and depart from Buffalo Harbor without interruption and the entry of two or three vessels in a day excited more interest then, than the arrival of a hundred large vessels and boats would now."

There were other obstacles to overcome before the pier could be carried into the deeper water to its full length of eighty rods, and to 12 feet of water; and in overcoming these; their improvised pile-driver was invaluable. Apparently they had not been able to prevail upon Joseph Ellicott to lend, or rent his apparatus. Their own pile-driver had been partly constructed in 1820, but had no hammer. It was ready for their use in the spring of 1821, after they had improvised a hammer. Wilkeson writes: "A good substitute for a hammer was found in a United States mortar used during the last war, but which had lost one of its trunnions. After breaking off the other, two holes were bored through the end for the staple by which to hoist it * * * it proved to be an excellent hammer of about 2,000 pounds weight. The machinery to raise the hammer was of the cheapest and simplest kind, and worked by a single horse."

Canal Workforce (from Carol Sheriff‘s The Artificial River)

The Canal‘s sponsors took every opportunity to laud the waterway as an American achievement. They pointed with pride to the American-born engineers who surveyed the Canal‘s winding route, designed its locks and aqueducts, contrived machines to remove tree stumps, and discovered a waterproof cement to ensure the permanence of the artificial river‘s structures. The most prominent of these engineers – James Geddes, John Jervis, Nathan Roberts, Canvass, and Benjamin Wright – had received no professional training in engineering. Not until 1824 would the United States have a single school of civil engineering, when several of these men founded the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, near Albany. RPI would graduate most of the Canal‘s later engineers, but in 1817 the Erie‘s designers had been schooled in other professions. Roberts, who laid out the plans for the Lockport locks, had started out as a surveyor. He and the other men learned the science of making rivers as they went along – and thus served as exemplars of American ingenuity.

For all their ingenuity, though, the success of these engineers‘ plans depended on the brute strength of the laborers who felled forests, shoveled and piled dirt, picked away at tree roots, blasted rock formation, heaved and hauled boulders, rechanneled streams, and molded the canal bed. In their eagerness to tout the project as an American enterprise, the canal commissioners bragged in 1819 that three-quarters of canal workers ―were born among us.‖ What they neglected to mention was that foreigners made up only a tiny percentage of the population in the Northeast generally as well as in New York in particular. Foreigners were thus very disproportionately represented among canal workers from the outset. In the years after 1819, the number of foreign workers on the waterway continued to swell, so that by 1825 the number of American workers on the Canal had dwindled even further; by the , the majority of canal diggers in North America would be Irish. The exact composition of the Erie‘s construction workforce of almost nine thousand remains in question. Contractor, rather than the government, hired most of the workers, and few of them kept any documentation on their employees. Our strongest image of canal workers comes from folklore, which portrays the typical construction worker as a young Irishman recently off the boat.

Whatever the actual numbers of foreign workers, other 19th century New Yorkers would have disagreed that ―republican free men‖ had alone constructed the Erie Canal. Much less important than the birthplace of the canal diggers was the nature of the work performed. The concept of ―republican free men‖ carried very specific connotations in the early Republic, ones that most of these canal workers, even those born in the United States, would not have satisfied. In order to participate as a citizen in this republic, a man was not supposed to be beholden to anyone. Someone who worked for wages, or even rented the land he tilled, left himself open to economic, and hence political, control of another person. A boss or landlord, in this era before the adoption of the secret ballot, could coerce his economic dependents into voting how he wished.

Only adult white men (for citizenship was limited to them) who produced for no one but themselves and their families could truly achieve the independence necessary to give reasoned thought to how they voted. Republican free men, in other words, should vote not from fear but on the basis of calm deliberation. For this reason, state constitutions in the early 19th century made property ownership a prerequisite for suffrage. Although shortly after 1825 New York would relax those property requirements, during the construction phase of the Erie Canal only property-owning white men qualified as citizens. By these standards, the vast majority of male laborers at the Lockport locks and elsewhere on the Canal did not qualify for political manhood regardless of their ethnic background. “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 23

Many contemporaries recognized the baneful conditions faced by canal construction workers and worried about the political and social implications. While more and more Americans had accepted commercialization as necessary, if not desirable, after the War of 1812, many continued to fear the development of a permanent class of ―laboring poor‖. They shared views of the 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith, who believed that economic growth and social progress could develop hand in hand and that such development would require an increasing division of labor. Yet at the same time, Smith and his American followers worried that too much division of labor would dehumanize workers and make them ―stupid and ignorant.‖ For this reason, Americans had imagined that their early factories, like the textile mills in Lowell, would be run by a revolving workforce of unmarried women and children, people who would leave the mills after a short while to assume their duties as either mothers or citizens. Yet the colossal Canal project demanded a large workforce of unskilled male laborers, and it would be upon the backs of these workers that the market revolution of antebellum America would be built. Nothing was more deadening to human sensibilities than the repetitive and brutish labor of digging ditches day after day for someone else. Americans partially resolved this contradiction for themselves by justifying such labor as a temporary stage in the process of opening the West to settlement, a place where men‘s digging would be transformed into the more productive labor of tilling fields.

The men who held the status of canal laborer could not by any stretch of the imagination be called republican free men. They were not like the part-time diggers that the canal commissioners liked to boast of: those American-born farmers who worked on the Canal during slow periods in the agricultural cycle. These noble farmers, rather than devoting a moment to idleness, threw themselves into a project that promoted the ―general utility.‖ Everyone recognized that without the grunt of labor, the Canal would never be built. But virtually no one wanted to imagine a class of men who permanently held the status of ditchdigger. If Americans realized that not everyone would become a farmer, they nonetheless hoped that citizens would produce something. In 1825, the same year New York debated adopting universal manhood suffrage, a state engineer wrote to the canal commissioners explaining why they should consider as alternative route for one of the lateral canals then under consideration: the proposed route would interfere with eel fishing. ―It is said,‖ the engineer conceded, ―that this employment is not of the brilliant national use, which is attached to agriculture … ― But he insisted that:

―Those employed in it are citizens and men, and fill a niche in the general estimate; deprive them of this resource, and they will not become husbandmen; they will remain what they were – fishermen, or become something worse. They have elected to rake the waters for their supplies, and their surplus, they barter with the farmer for their bread, who is glad to make the exchange, rather than break in upon his profession to catch fish.‖

Hardly a tribute to American republicanism, these fishermen at least raked the food. Ditchdiggers shoveled up only dirt and stones. Their occupation was ―something worse‖ and could seem at times to compromise the workers‘ most basic status as ―free men‖.

To many residents of the corridor, Irish immigrants in particular appeared less than fully human in their desperate willingness to work for low wages and live in poverty. One English couple wrote home that ―there is so many Irish keep coming every day, and they work so cheap, that it makes it bad for laboring people.‖ The idea that Irish immigrants hurt the prospects of workers in general certainly contributed to the tensions between the Irish and other ethnic groups, which occasionally erupted into brawls and even riots …

Many, if not most, canal laborers probably felt that their occupation was beneath them. If Irish immigrants were not ―free-born‖, they shared with Yankees the hopes of escaping their degraded status as wage laborers and, perhaps, qualifying as citizens of the Republic. While the famines of 1817 and 1822 drove Irish immigrants from their homeland, the lure of opportunity also pulled them to the United States. If many of these immigrants had been common laborers in their own country, they had reason to believe that they could find work in the New World that would eventually allow them to return to the landed occupations of their ancestors. These men did not come to the United States because they wished to remain dependent. Articles and letters in Irish newspaper painted the United States as ―the best poor man‘s country,‖ a place where affordable farmland and work opportunities abounded.

Few canal laborers found their expectations met during the years of the waterway‘s construction. Landing in New York or Quebec, many immigrants found their employment prospects at best grim. They arrived as the United States was suffering a major economic slump, the depression of the late . Many immigrants found themselves at their port of arrival without prospects of work, let alone property ownership. The Erie Canal answered their immediate needs. In August 1817, The Exile, an Irish newspaper in New York City, advised disappointed new arrivals about several specific employment opportunities, including jobs on the Canal. The editor promised that the Canal ―will afford steady and permanent employment, as laborers will work winter as well as summer.‖ The Irish were not alone in turning to canal digging out of necessity. ―If it were not for the canal,‖ wrote the Welsh laborer William Thomas in 1818, ―many of the “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 24 Welsh would be without work.‖ Artisans also accepted canal-related work during the economic downswing that brought the post-War of 1812 boom to a stunning halt.

―The carpenter who is out of work, works on the canal,‖ William Thomas reported. Americans as well as foreigners saw the Canal as a way to earn money in the midst of a financial crisis that made cash a very scarce commodity.

Canal work generally offered competitive daily or monthly wages, though the seasonal nature of some canal jobs – despite The Exile‘s promises to the contrary – still left many of its laborers in poverty. Workers‘ earnings did not follow a set pattern, since individual contractors hired and set the terms for their workers. Some contractors provided room, board, and often liquor as part of their wages; others paid higher wages but provided no amenities. Peter Way, in his study of North American canals, has seen the former arrangement as an attempt to create a paternalistic bond between employer and employee, which would allow employers to maintain a certain amount of control over their workers‘ habits. Yet it seems more likely, on the Erie Canal at least, that a shortage of cash, particularly after 1819, led many contractors to offer a portion of their payments in kind.

The desire of many contractors to shelter their workers in shantytowns suggests they had no intention of adopting the paternal role of instilling good republican values in their workers. By all accounts, workers were housed in these shanties like animals in barns; their very living conditions were dehumanizing. And these shanties stood physically removed from the ―civilizing‖ influences of nearby settle communities. Contractors did not plan to hire these workers on a permanent basis, so their long-term character and work habits were of little import to their bosses. What workers did on their own time did not matter to their employers as long as enough of them showed up ready to dig the next day. Even a certain amount of absenteeism probably did not matter, since most tasks were interchangeable. Moreover, some employers had no choice but to find shelter for their workers performing tasks deep in the New York wilderness. No other options existed.

The cash part of workers‘ wages fluctuated with the supply of laborers and the demand of contractors, and it varied in different locations on the Canal. A Welsh laborer near Utica reported in 1818 that ―wages on the canal are one dollar a day and thirteen to fourteen dollars a month with food and washing and half a pint of whiskey a day. Those who provide their own food, wet and dry, get twenty-two to twenty-three dollars.‖ Three years later, one company advertised for fifty laborers to construct a feeder canal near Rochester for ten dollars a month, and the following year another company offered twelve dollars a month to a thousand laborers at Lockport – presumably with food and lodging. It undoubtedly took greater incentives to lure a thousand men to the wilderness outside Lockport than it did to find fifty willing workers in the booming town of Rochester. The more general dip in wages after 1819 and the increased reliance on payment in kind probably reflect the national glut of unemployed workers as well as the national shortage of cash. That shortage of cash strained all aspects of the economy, encouraging local farmers, merchants, and craftsmen to supplement their incomes by building sections of the Canal. Many would-be contractors tried to underbid one another by cutting their single greatest expense; labor. Even accounting for variations, though, wages for canal laborers appear to have been comparable to those offered other Northern wage earners. During the years of the Canal‘s construction, wages in ranged from seventy-five cents to one dollar a day.

Although canal work paid comparatively well, laborers found to their disappointment that their earning did not buy them a better way of life. William Thomas, like other Welsh immigrants he knew, took work on the Canal when he could not find other employment. Life in the United States did not meet his expectations, nor did it seem worth the initial expense of emigration. ―I beg all my old neighbors,‖ he wrote, ―not to think of coming here as they would spend more coming here than they think. My advice to them is to love their district and stay there.‖ Thomas reported that he and many others were thinking seriously about returning to Wales. In 1818 another Welsh immigrant complained that ―this country is not what we had heard about it in any way.‖ As their dreams for independence faded immigrants‘ appreciation of their former homes grew sharper.

For those laborers who had anticipated working at their chosen trades or on their own farms, canal work could only have led to disenchantment. Construction laborers worked long hours, in good weather and bad, and many worked seasonally only, unable to perform their tasks after the onset of the upstate region‘s deep frosts. Those whose jobs did continue in winter faced truly frigid conditions. Summertime weather, too, brought problems, mostly in the form of epidemics. In 1819, more than one thousand canal laborers fell disabled by an unidentified disease that apparently had its source in a thirty-mile stretch of swamp filled with the ―rankest vegetable luxuriance.‖ Most of these workers survived after a long recuperation, but a few died. The only consolation for poor working conditions was that they drove up wages. When another fatal illness struck along the , one of the lateral waterways connecting with the Erie, several of the contractors appealed to state officials for extra compensation. When these entrepreneurs had placed their bids to build their sections of the canal, they had not anticipated that disease would force them to raise wages and to bear other expenses related to their workers‘ sickness. ―In consequence of the sickness that prevailed in this section and vicinity,‖ one of them wrote, ―we were under the necessity of raising wages from twelve to fourteen and some as “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 25 high as seventeen dollars per month for common Labourers, and pay Physicians for atten[d]ing to the sick, purchase Coffins, and grave clothes, and attend with Hands to bury the Dead.‖ Sometimes nature still triumphed over art.

Note: Sheriff’s Use of the term “Art”. ―art‖ according to historian Paul Johnson, possessed at least two distinct meanings in the early 19th century, depending on the social class of the user. To artisans, ―art‖ was an ―identity-defining skill.‖ It included, ―the whole range of combined mental and manual performances through which trained men provided the wants and needs of their communities.‖ The stonemasons and blacksmiths who fashioned the Lockport locks would have had this meaning in mind when they joined the merchant Ira Blossum in applauding the astonishing feat they had accomplished. Meanwhile, to the emerging business classes, ―art referred to the works of technology and entrepreneurial vision that were transforming nature and the social order ..."‖Men like Ira Blossum, in other words, paid tribute to the visionaries who brought to fruition the project that would usher in a new commercial age.

Art also had its flaws. Gunpowder explosions – used to blast through the rock-solid landscape – blew up some workers as well, while rocks sent flying by those explosions struck others, killing or injuring them. Collapsing canal beds smothered yet others. Some workers fell to their deaths from those great technological wonders, locks and aqueducts. The same issue of the Lockport Observatory that reported how its citizens lavishly celebrated the Canal‘s completion also made note of the death of Orrin Harrison, a worker on the famed combined locks. Harrison ―was leaning against one of the balance beams, and from excessive fatigue fell asleep, and was precipitated into one of the locks, in about 8 feet of water.‖ His legs became caught in the lock‘s gates, and he drowned before he could be rescued.

Morganstein & Cregg on the hazards of canal life:

―The risk of drowning by accidentally falling into the canal was always a concern. In Syracuse, a volunteer lifesaving corps was established to come to the rescue of individuals accidentally falling into the canal …At the Syracuse Weighlock on July 5, 1866, the wife of Lewis Rushmore, captain of the ‗Union‘, lost her life when the tiller of the boat knocked her and another woman overboard. Mrs. Rushmore, who was forced under the weighlock cradle, drowned before she could be rescued.‖ (page 23)

In some ways, canal work did not differ so much from the tasks independent farmers performed when clearing unimproved land. Farmers, too, felled trees, dug ditches, diverted streams – all of which involved physical dangers. Their work, too, was hampered by upstate winters. Canal work, though, came with frustrations that farming did not share. Canal laborers had bosses and worked for wages. While some farmers also employed agricultural laborers for wages, those farm workers tended to live in a more genuinely paternalistic relationship with their employers. It that meant restrictions on their freedoms, they also usually came with better food and warmer beds than those hastily constructed shanties that sheltered dozens. While farm work was also seasonal, each year predictably brought a new season. Any particular job on the Canal endured for but a short period of time, sending workers from job to job, with the uncertainty of when and where they would next find work. In the long term, canal work was not ―steady‖ in the same way as farming. Even if workers moved on to other public works projects, those jobs would also provide neither independence nor security.

In many of the celebrations that occurred in 1825, contributions to the success of the Canal construction took on the narrowest terms possible. In his official memoir of the Canal project, for example, Cadwallader Colden bragged that ―every citizen deserves a share of the credit‖ for the new waterway. By way of explanation, he quoted the canal commissioner, who had written that ―their labors could not have been perfected without the support of a wise foresight, and just liberality, in several successive Legislatures.‖ Colden emphasized the labor of the commissioners, the foresight of the politicians, and the contribution of the citizens – who elected the politicians who had the foresight to support the commissioners. Such an interpretation was in keeping with ideal notions of how a representative republic should work. Virtuous citizens would protect the common good by electing their superiors to look after their interests. So even this mention of ―every citizen‖ offered no recognition of the largely disenfranchised men whose labor had bored through the New York landscape. At the 1825 Grand Celebrations, a Colonial Stone offered a toast to ―Genius and Enterprize – nature imposes no bounds to their march. They command mountains to move, and rivers to flow in dry places. The word is spoken, and it is done!‖ Had they been in attendance, the families of the workers who lost their lives blasting rocks or excavating canal beds could only have been puzzled by this explanation of how the artificial river came into being.

George Condon (Stars in the Water) supports Carol Sheriff‘s description of the Erie Canal worker when he writes:

―Those who were struck down and who died on the construction line of the Erie, were buried in the anonymous graves that so often are reserved for heroes. They were buried in the open meadows and in quiet glens, for there were few cemeteries, as such, on the frontier. The formalities and refinements of civilization hardly existed, either in life or in death, and perhaps it was more appropriate that the men whose lives became forfeit “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 26 during the building of the Grand Canal should have taken their place, in a quiet matter-of-fact way, with the other rugged men of the wilderness who already had gone to the ground, their work finished. No vertical slabs of stone marked their resting places, either; no chiseled inscriptions memorialized their deeds or gave their bones a name. In time there were not even any about who could remember where the heroes were at rest. Indians and explorers, trappers and hunters, scouts and soldiers, pioneer settlers and venturesome surveyors – and now the canal builders. So many; yet so few‖. [page 71]

The Irish Worker Story (Trying to Establish Fact from Fiction)

According to a canal commission report in 1819, the vast majority of the laborers along the canal were native New Yorkers, men recruited from the towns the canal crossed. However, canal labor was plentiful, and a language barrier didn‘t prevent a man from digging his share, so considerable number of immigrants flocked to New York. While laborers of every size, shape and color found work on the canal, the canal quickly gained a reputation as a project completed on the sweat of Irish immigrants. That perception was largely due to a one-time prizefighter from Tipperary by the name of J. J. McShane

McShane had been a contractor who had worked to build canals throughout England. McShane had emigrated to New York and with canal experience, motivated by the potential money to be made on the American frontier. He recruited a workforce of Irish immigrants from local jail cells and lobbied Clinton to pardon his men if the work was completed to help make his canal a reality. Clinton, with his professional career riding on the canal‘s success, agreed.

The Irish contingent was given an 11-mile section in Cayuga Marsh, near the Montezuma swamps. The swamp-like conditions made digging nearly impossible – every time a shovel full of earth was lifted from the ground, another shove full would slide into its place. Wooden retaining walls were driven into the ground to help support the canal‘s walls but work was slow and tedious. With poor supplies and constantly under attack from disease-bearing mosquitoes, dozens of laborers died with many others suffering from malaria and other illnesses. Many Irish laborers eventually deemed the food, lodging, and 40 to 80 cents a day wages McShane provided were hardly better than their jailhouse provisions and walked away from the site – only to get lost in the swamps and never return to civilization. So the majority of McShane‘s Irishmen kept working on the project.

Acknowledging his men‘s frustration with digging through the muck, McShane proposed to wait until wintertime. Once the ground froze, the men would be able to break the earth with a pickaxe and lift the earth from the marsh. The icy winter conditions were just as bad as the summer heat, but the workers‘ spirits were buoyed as they began to make headway.

Though he was a demanding taskmaster, McShane was admired by his workforce, and the feeling was mutual. Of his men, McShane once boasted, ―The Irish don‘t stop to catch their breath till they cough up blood‖.

Legend has it the Irish‘s efforts were rewarded in a unique manner. A barrel of whiskey was placed every mile along the canal line. If the crews exceeded their projected timeline, they would get their whiskey. Still, the most popular man on any canal workforce had to be the jigger-boss, a young boy who was responsible for dolling out half-gills of whiskey to each workman 16 times a day.

The sight of the ragtag, ex-convict Irish workforce, plugging away in the dead of winter, was a stunning sight for even the most jaded canallers. An observer who watched an Irish workcrew digging through the Niagara Escarpment to build the ―Flight of Five‖ locks in Lockport reported: ― (I) watched them walk leaning into a blinding snowstorm from the west. Their hunched shoulders and fluttering rags reminded (me) of Washington and his troops at Valley Forge drilling during a storm.‖

Notes on the Role of the Irish Immigrant with the Erie Canal. There does not seem to be any consistent body of documentation regarding this issue. After reviewing four or five sources, I have concluded (for now) that there is no distinctive line between the facts about the Irish immigrant and the legend that has been built upon over the . Here are some comments made by various authors on the subject of the Irish Immigrant:

From Carol Sheriff‘s book The Artificial River:

― … In the years after 1819, the numbers of foreign workers on the waterway continued to swell, so that by 1825 [completion of the Erie Canal] the number of American workers on the canal had dwindled even further; by the 1830s, the majority of canal diggers in North America would be Irish. The exact composition of the Erie‘s construction workforce of almost nine thousand remains in question. Contractors, rather than the government, hired most of the workers, and few of them kept any documentation on their employees. Our “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 27 strongest image of canal workers comes from folklore, which portrays the typical construction worker as a young Irishman recently off the boat.

Irish immigrants, however, may well have drawn attention beyond their numbers. While other foreigners in the region – those of English, Scottish, Welsh, and German origin – ordinarily arrived in family groups, the Irish tended to be single and male. Living together in large groups, the Irish attracted notice. As young men living away for the first time from paternalistic oversight, whether of their parents or of bosses, many Irish workers apparently showed a proclivity for heavy drinking and carousing, which drew the vocal scorn of other New Yorkers, Americans and foreigners alike.

To many residents of the corridor, Irish immigrants in particular appeared less than fully human in their desperate willingness to work for low wages and live in poverty … The idea that Irish immigrants hurt the prospects in general certainly contributed to the tensions between Irish and other ethnic groups, which occasionally erupted into brawls and even riots. Although tensions existed among Irish workers themselves, who divided along ethnic and religious lines, Irishmen of all backgrounds became the targets of violence. Despite the Protestant affiliations of many early Irish immigrants, other New Yorkers tended to assume that all Irish were Catholic, a religion they feared because of its adherence to hierarchical and seemingly superstitious practices …‖

From George Condon‘s book Stars in the Water:

― … It is estimated that by the early 1800s approximately 10,000 persons every year were leaving Ireland for a new life in the New World. That average jumped to 20,000 a year between 1825 and 1830 [after the Erie Canal was completed] and kept increasing in the years that followed until the peak mark was reached in 1851. A record total of 216,000 Irish fled to the United States in that mid-century year.

What made the Irish uniquely eligible for jobs as laborers on the Erie Canal was that their low social estate in America made them grateful for any kind of work at all. It is said that they were the first people in this country to be tagged as ‗foreigners‘ – even at that early date when hardly a family could trace residence in the united States back more than one or two generations, and wen, in fact, almost every other person was a foreigner.

The Irish, nevertheless, were looked upon as an inferior breed and they quickly became familiar with segregation and discrimination. It was an especially virulent form of discrimination, one that extended to employment as well as to the usual social exclusion. Advertisements in newspapers frequently specified ‗Irish Need Not Apply.‘

The Irish colonies in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were large and worrisome to the authorities and to the whites, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant establishment of the day. The arriving ships, meanwhile, were bringing thousands more of the rough-cut, bewildered Irish immigrants each year to complicate further the growing problem. The cold, unwelcoming attitude of the native population and the natural magnetic pull of like nationality and like culture in a strange land drew the newcomers into the already crowded Irish neighborhoods, giving America its first introduction to European-type ghettos. They were slum areas, in the main, natural breeding grounds for crime and violence, which further turned the communities against the Irish newcomers. Only a part of the problem was the Irish talent for putting away the poteen [sic] and brawling, but it was a conspicuously offensive part of the over-all picture. The drunk tanks in all the city jails resounded with the rich overtones of the brogue.

The principal source of Irish labor was in the cities, and when the call went out, hundreds of brawny, strapping young men responded willingly and were hustled into the front line in 1818 – a time when that part of the canal which had been under construction since the previous July looked, in the words of one historian, ‗like a dotted line of poorly dug, unfinished ditches‘.

… Hiring agents for the [canal] contractors were at the ship docks in New York in the spring of 1818 and many of the incoming Irish hardly had put foot on American soil before they found themselves on their way up the Hudson by sloop toward the interior and their jobs on the canal.

‗Wild Irish‘, the upstate folk called them. They looked it, and the language they spoke was strange to American ears. Frightened farmers got out their ‗scatterguns‘ and stood nightly guard over their homes … one upstate housewife wrote, ‗Mohawks and Senecas we have survived … but these strange folk [Irishmen] look fitter for crime than for honest work. I misdoubt that we shall find ourselves murdered in our beds one fine morning.‘ “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 28

The Irish proved to be law-abiding lot so far as their neighbors were concerned. If they fought among themselves of a Saturday night, that was their business. When it came to digging, they set the pace that made the Americans blink.

The truth was that the Irish diggers were mostly trying to make the best of things in the new land. The role of laborer actually was a strange one to most of them. The Irish at home had been farmers and field workers … But in the New World, fighting for a survival that no longer was possible at home, they had to adapt to the new role. The pay of 37.5 cent to 50 cents a day was not overly generous for the work demanded, perhaps, but the Irish laborers knew what a day‘s wages back home averaged about a dime. Besides, really industrious men could make even more money than the set daily-wage. They could, if they wished, elect to be paid not by the day, but by the amount of dirt they were able to excavate each day.

Working teams, which numbered three men, would be paid 12.5 cents per cubic yard of dirt. One team of Irishmen dug out three rods of canal in 5.5 day, a total of 250 cubic yards of dirt! The Canal Commission, noting the achievement in its report, marveled that the pay earned by the men in that particular team came to ‗the very liberal wage of $1.88 per day‘.‖

From Ronald Shaw‘s book Erie Water West:

―Nativist [sic] in outlook, the [canal] commissioners noted with pride that very few of the [canal] contractors were foreigners who had recently arrived in America and that the majority were ‗native farmers, mechanics, merchants, and professional men‘ who resided near the canal. Tradition has it that Irish immigrants built the Erie Canal and may sons of Erin may have been added to the labor force. But the commissioners reported in 1819 that three-fourths of the workers were ‗born among us‘, and the half million work reports now preserved in the in Albany show, for the period after 1828, most canal workers to have been recruited locally. It seems probable that the labor force on the Erie Canal reflected the national backgrounds, Irish and others, of the inhabitants who resided along the canal line.‖

From Peter Bernstein‘s book Wedding of the Waters:

―In the beginning, as the [canal] commissioners reported in 1819,most of the workers were ―born among us‖ including a few freed slaves. A large contingent of Irishmen has become a glowing part of the canal‘s folklore, but they did not come upon the scene until later…The building of the Irondequoit embankment was where the Irish immigrants – as many as three thousand of them – made one of their largest contributions to the canal … re: the Genesee aqueduct -- . In addition the local populace was too small to provide enough workers, so once again Irish immigrants were brought in to do the hard labor …re: the Niagara Escarpment –In January 1823, when the contracts had been let and the first digging had begun .. counting nearly 2000 laborers working on the construction of the locks and digging the channel – the Deep Cut – through the escarpment. Many of these men were Irish who would remain in Lockport and give it a distinct Irish flavor for a long time to come.‖

Engineering Characteristics of Canals

Before leaving the topic of constructing the Erie Canal, a resource was found on the internet that deserves attention here. Dr James B. Calvert, Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering at the University of Denver has written an exceptionally good article that covers (among other things) the engineering aspects of canal building. The section of his article that is specifically related to engineering considerations is presented next. No attempt is made to delete those examples of canals referred to in other parts of the world. What is important are the engineering techniques applied to the task of building a canal. The specific canal reference is inconsequential for the purpose of this paper. Dr. James B. Calvert on Canal Engineering Until the latter years of the Canal Age, all construction and maintenance was accomplished by the labour of men and animals, and all design was empirical, in the same way as had been done since Roman times. Only in the 19th century were steam engines used to pump water, or for motive power. This must constantly be kept in mind when considering 18th-century engineering and its remarkable achievements. The Water Budget and Puddling Canals may appear much simpler to engineer than they actually are, something that the unprepared promoter continually discovered in the Canal Age. The two most important requirements are: (1) an adequate supply of water for the summit level, and (2) the canal must hold water and not leak. Both of these requirements are almost automatically

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 29 met for sea-level canals in wet areas of high water table. They are with the greatest difficulty met for a canal that strikes out cross-country and ascends hills. Let us discuss these requirements first, since they influence everything else.

Every canal has a water budget. Water is lost by leakage and evaporation, and with every boat that passes a lock. This water is generally supplied from the summit level of the canal. The summit level can be supplied naturally by runoff from precipitation, or artificially by pumping. All available streams to supply a summit reservoir must be gauged, and the reservoir must be large enough to even out the cycles of supply and consumption. The supply of the summit level is the most important factor in canal design. If the summit level is made higher to avoid tunneling, water supply becomes more difficult. If the summit level is made lower to avoid water problems, the canal may be more circuitous or involve much tunneling. The canal itself must be rigorously separated from natural waters because of their variability.

On the , Rennie planned a long summit tunnel at Savernake, but Jessop convinced him to raise the summit elevation to shorten the tunnel, and to supply the necessary water by steam pumping at Crofton. A canal could bring coal, making steam pumping quite feasible. The reservoir to supply the pump is still to be seen, as is the pump house and pump. The railway passes between the pump house and the canal, and runs directly over the tunnel, whose eastern portal is easily visible to the south of the track.

One of the secrets to making a canal hold water is the use of puddling. This does not mean slathering on a layer of clay and letting it dry, like some kind of mortar. Strong clay, in fact, is useless for puddling, since it absorbs great quantities of water, then cracks on drying out. Topsoil is equally useless, since not only do plant roots in it decay, but earthworms chew it and moles eat holes in it. Puddle is a compacted semiliquid mixture of loamy subsoil and coarse sand or fine gravel (which renders it unpalatable) . Suitable puddling-stuff is worked with a spade, adding the correct limited amount of water, until it is homogeneous. This mixture is quite impermeable to water, but must never be allowed to dry out.

Puddle is used to separate the water of a canal from porous strata, and is placed in ditches to prevent water from spreading away from the canal, and to stabilize embankments. Any embankment must be treated as a porous stratum, and puddle ditches are required on both sides down to the water table. Canals may be lined with puddle when necessary. With a railway, the earth must only have sufficient bearing capacity, and some permeability is a definite asset. With a canal, the nature of the canal bed is much more significant, and must be carefully studied by the engineer. Locks The pound lock is an essential feature of cross-country canals. Without it, there would never be enough water to maintain the navigation. A natural stream, with a considerable flow, can be made navigable by building sluices or half- locks to divide the river into approximate levels and raising the water level sufficiently to allow boats to pass. These can be permanently open, or can be shut to conserve water and opened only when a boat desires to pass. The Thames, for example, had such sluices to a very late date, the boats being pulled through upstream by a winch and rope. A closed half-lock raised the water level enough that it could be used to power a mill, and the miller had to be paid for the lost water, or flash, that he gave to a navigator. Boats ascending the Severn to Gloucester had to tarry at shoals until the tide arrived to carry them over. Occasionally, the violence of the tide (the Bore) increased the dangers of navigation.

The pound lock consists of a chamber, the pound, that can be filled or emptied as desired so that the water level coincides with either the lower or the higher water levels of the reaches to either side of it. A sea lock can match the current height of the tide. The ends of the pound are closed off by water-tight gates that can be opened to admit a boat. These gates are mitered so that water pressure holds them tightly shut when the levels are different on the two sides. Water passages are made from the upper reach to the lock chamber, and from the lock chamber to the lower reach, with a gate, called a paddle, that is raised or lowered by a rack and pinion to open or close the passages. Openings can be made in the lower lock gates instead of in the chamber wall.

The procedure for passing a boat from the upper to the lower reach is as follows. The gates are closed, and the upper paddle is opened. When the chamber has filled to the level of the upper reach, the upper gates can be opened and the boat can enter the lock chamber. Then the upper gates, and the upper paddle are closed, and the lower paddle is raised to empty the lock into the lower reach. The boat sinks as the water is removed, until the water level is the same as that of the lower reach. Now the lower gates can be opened, and the boat can pass into the lower reach.

A boat that enters the lock from the lower reach sees the breast wall of the lock before it. The boat must be stopped before it strikes the breast wall, and damages it. A bumping-piece is provided to protect the breast wall. The gates are similarly defended from the canal boat. The breast wall and gate frames are often built on sturdy pile foundations.

The lock chamber is made as small as practicable, to save water. This also limits the capacity of the boats that can be used, so there is a trade-off. Another way to save water was by means of a side pond. When emptying a lock, the first

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 30 half of the water is run off into the side pond, not into the lower reach. If the next boat passes upstream, the first half of the lockful of water can be drawn from the side pond. The amount of water used per boat is halved. An equivalent method is to duplicate the locks, using one for ascent and the other for descent, so one can serve as side pond to the other. The amount of water required for the passage of one boat is determined by the largest lock, so the rise of the locks on a canal is made as uniform as possible.

The distinction between a 'broad' and a 'narrow' canal is in the size of the locks. The locks of a narrow canal will take one narrow boat, about 7 ft wide, while those of a broad canal will take a boat 14 ft wide (or more), or two narrow boats side by side. Away from the locks, the canals were wider to allow boats to pass easily, and perhaps to turn. Location Rees' description of the proper method for establishing the route of a canal already resembles very closely the later accepted practice for locating a railway. He emphasizes the importance of a careful assessment of possible traffic and revenues by the engineer. This, more than any other fact, shows why the profession of engineer had to be created to handle such projects rationally. The engineer has the knowledge and experience to manage the complete project, not simply one of its parts, however important individually, as was earlier within the limited purview of the millwright or mason. This effective means of management was well-developed when it was required for the building of railways. The creation of the modern profession of Civil Engineer is the greatest gift of the Canal Age to the Railway Age. In modern times, this lesson is apparently being forgotten, as large projects are more in the hands of lawyers and accountants who only know how to cream off profits, and are ignorant of the essential technical details. Engineers are again reduced to the status of hired workmen. [

When it comes to the detailed location, Rees recommends starting with the summit level, deciding its location and length, and assuring the supply of water. A long and low summit level makes water supply and operation easier, but may involve deep cuttings and long tunnels. A short and high summit level is faster and cheaper to construct, but at the expense of added lockage and difficult water supply. Rennie favored long summit levels, but Jessop knew that this meant extra expense and delay in opening, so he favored higher summit levels, which seems to have proved the better engineering choice. At each end of the summit level, at least two locks are recommended, a suitable distance apart but still close enough to be supervised by a single lockkeeper. It was economical to concentrate locks at a single location. The Duke of Bridgewater's canal, for example, was on a single level up to the flight of locks at Runcorn than led down to the Mersey. Rennie's unsuccessful was also mainly a single level, with inclined planes on its eastern end instead of locks. The long level of the Leeds and Liverpool canal between Skipton and Bingley, with the Bingley 5-rise staircase at its eastern end is another of many possible examples. This tendency survived into early railway engineering most distinctly, in the form of overcoming elevation by inclined planes, especially in the United States. It was always considered good practice to concentrate heavy gradients on one locomotive division, since the maximum gradient determined the weight of the trains, however short it might be.

Several times Rees mentions the importance of taking levels with a 'spirit level fitted with a telescope' in surveying a canal. The earliest American canals failed because of inaccurate levels, but the presence of English engineers with their telescopic levels demonstrated the necessity of careful work. There seems not to have been a single telescopic level or theodolite in the United States in 1800; land surveying was done exclusively with compass and chain, and there was no profession of Civil Engineer there until after the Erie Canal. Railways, even more than canals, demanded accurate surveying instruments.

A canal can either follow the contours of the land, or can strike out in a straight line. If it follow the contours, only slight earthworks will be necessary and there will be a minimum of lockage, but the route will be long and devious. A straight line demands heavy and expensive earthworks, and often much lockage. At the beginning of the Canal Age, there was little experience in tunneling and major earthworks, so canals tended to follow the contours or have frequent locks. The northern end of the is a typical example. The Grand Junction canal locked down into the valley of the Ouse, then locked back up again, and the high aqueduct was never built. Tunnels required a long time for completion, and were often temporarily bypassed with tramway links. Later canals, like the main line of the Shropshire Union, were straight and level wherever possible, since by this time earthworks were much easier to construct. There was a little late improvement of canals by straightening and elimination of locks, but most canals remained as they were built.

Rees also mentions the desirability of a balance in the amounts of cutting and embankment, so that excess material will not have to be piled, or pits left where fill was removed. On narrow canals, turning basins and passing places must be provided, and sufficiently frequently that no boat would have to be backed to a point where two boats could pass one another. One should compare the sizes of lock chambers with the width of the canal.

Bridges were another necessity, for roads that crossed the canal, to provide connections between lands severed by the canal, and for the towpath to cross to the other side. It was suggested at first that paved fords would do, and these are

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 31 much cheaper than stone bridges. However, the maximum depth of water in a ford could be only 2' 9", governed by the sizes of farm carts, so this expedient was seldom used. Rotating or swing bridges on roller bearings could be moved out of the way of canal traffic. These seemed to be more popular in England than lifting bridges. Bridges were built of stone, brick, or cast iron. The Chinese had stone pedestrian bridges over canals, elliptical arches with long axis vertical and crossed by steps. Canals and Railways Rees contemplates canals, rivers and railways as forming 'one great compound and connected System of Inland Communication' [italics his] even at this date, and gives particulars of railways along with those of canals in his survey. As early as 1819, therefore, railways were very well known and common adjuncts to canals. He gives the origin of railways as the wooden railways of Tyneside in 1680. He subjects them to the same discipline of rational location and traffic estimation as canals, and again recommends 'spirit levels with telescopic sights' for their layout.

Railways (what would now be called tramways or plateways) were used as branches and extensions of canals to mines in the hills, as means of overcoming heights without worrying about water, for access to traffic not sufficient to warrant the cost of a canal, and to bypass points where construction would be difficult or expensive, at least temporarily. The was in two parts, connected by a railway, for example. The Crompton and High Peak Railway, though not constructed until later, was projected to connect the Canal with the Canal and form a trans- pennine route.

A Gloucester Railway was proposed in 1804 to connect the Sodbury coal mines in Gloucestershire with the Avon at Bitton, below Bath, and eventually with the Kennet and Avon canal. The mines at on the were reached directly by water, since the canal even penetrated into the mine. This was quite unusual, of course.

Rees gives the usual gauge of railways as 4 feet, a figure supported by much other evidence. When steam railways arrived, the general tendency was to increase the track gauge, first to 4' 8-1/2", the wider gauge of Tyneside, then to 5', 5' 3", 5' 6" and finally to Brunel's 7'. There was no other significance to what became 'standard gauge' and it was never widespread previously. It was simply Stephenson's arbitrary choice, not a survival of any tradition, especially not of the gauge of Roman wagon wheels. For more information on tramways, see Tramway Engineering Inclined Planes It is evident from Rees that inclined planes are a well-known element, and simply a kind of railway that is operated by rope haulage. The power can be men or animals, water wheel, a counterbalance caisson that can be filled and emptied, a steam engine, or by the weight of descending loads, controlled by a brake wheel at the top of the incline (self-acting or gravity). Inclines overcome elevation in a limited horizontal distance. A vertical lift is simply an inclined plane taken to an extreme. Boats can be lifted bodily, as in China, but more usually in wheeled cradles or water-filled chambers. Sometimes boats could be separated into sections for this process.

One of the most fascinating uses of inclined planes in connection with canals appeared at the end of the Canal Age with the State of Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works (1834), between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh across the Allegheny Mountains. This system, proposed in the early 1820's as an answer to the Erie Canal, used steam railways and inclined planes operated by stationary engines to connect long canal segments, which were the principal component. See my web page on William Strickand for full details of the Main Line, which was successfully operated for twenty years. Enthusiasm for railways eclipsed it completely. It was nearly forgotten by 1876, and is still not properly appreciated by historians. The between the Hudson and the Delaware used planes with boat lifts, and the Delaware and Hudson Canal between the same rivers used a gravity railway to serve its mines in the Lackawanna Valley.

There were many inclined planes in England, on the Stockton and Darlington, for example, as well as in Cornwall and in Shropshire. The Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, had an incline famous for being worked by Blenkinsop's cog-wheel engines, although it was later worked in self-acting form in which empty wagons were drawn up by the loaded wagons and controlled by a large brake wheel at the top of the incline. The first railway signal (in a sense) was erected here to show when the empties had been attached to the rope, and the loads could be permitted to descend. Of course, this had nothing to do with later railway signals.

A certain Mr. Barnes, a coal viewer of Bywell on Tyneside, constructed a self-acting plane 864 yd long, rising 144 yd vertically. The counterweight, a plummet, weighed 16 cwt 2 qr. A loaded wagon could descend in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. The plummet, descending in a well, would then draw the empty wagon back to the top of the incline.

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 32 Towage River were usually towed by gangs of men in the exercise known as 'bow haulage' from the bows that the men seized. Towpaths could not easily be provided across the private land bordering rivers (though the tow gangs had right of way) and men were better able to deal with the conditions of the banks than animals.

Canal boats were sometimes towed by men, but more usually by a horse, mule, or pair of donkeys accompanied by a driver (usually a boy) on a towpath provided by the canal company on its own property. The single towpath made the passing of two boats an event in which one tow rope had to be passed over the other. Only later were some canals provided with two towpaths, which made the operation simple. At an overbridge where the towpath changed sides the tow rope had to be disconnected. This also had to be done when the towpath did not pass through the arch of a bridge.

There were often no towpaths in tunnels. Instead, the boats were propelled by men pressing against the top or sides with their feet. Sometimes men known as 'leggers' hired themselves out for this service.

There were early attempts to apply steam propulsion to canals, but steam never supplanted animal towage generally, until finally both were replaced by Diesel boats after about 1900. Steam towage gradually took over on the more important navigations (those which had retained some traffic) after about 1860. The main drawbacks to steam power were the large space required for the boiler, and the restrictions on speed necessary to prevent damage to the canal banks. Canal Difficulties People who expect trains to be on time and run every day would be sorely vexed by canal operations. There were sufficient human problems, such as boats going only when full, slow movement, danger to lock-keepers in lonely places, pilferage and other inconveniences well treated in social histories, but there were also problems of a more physical nature. The most important were water problems, either too little or too much. The droughts of summer could leave insufficient water for navigation, especially on summit levels, and drying out of the canal structure could damage the puddling and make cracks allowing what little water there was to escape. The floods of winter could wash away embankments, cover locks and make access difficult. If the water froze, navigation was definitely over. Even in Britain, this occasionally caused problems, but in places like the United States it was a regular occurrence. The uncertainty of canal traffic forced users to keep larger stocks than they would have done otherwise, and necessitated the provision of warehouses, which are frequently seen at canal ports.

There were a few cases of successful passenger operations on canals, such as the Paisley - Glasgow fly boats, but in general canals were an unpleasant way to travel, since they were very slow, and the passengers were at the mercy of concessionaires for food and accommodation. Some boats stopped overnight, like stage coaches, while others traveled night and day. For more information on canal services, social histories should be consulted.

[End of Dr. James B. Calvert’s Discussion of Canal Engineering]

Early Life on the Canal

George Condon (Stars in the Water) summarizes early life on and along the canal route:

―Life on the Erie Canal constituted a culture all its own – a way of existence that included its own vocabulary, its own dangers, and its own beauty.‖

―In the view of some, it was a hard demanding life -- and no doubt it was for many of the 50,000 or more human beings whose livelihood depended on it during its peak years. Yet if offered special regards that those same people found irresistible. The world of the canal was an escape from boredom; it had its own special excitement and its people breathed the exhilarating air of freedom.‖

The canallers had colorful vocabularies and were themselves among the most creative word-coiners in American history. Many of their expressions found a permanent place in America‘s speech, but most of them disappeared at the end of the canal era.

A ‗hoodledasher,‘ for example, was a hookup of two or more empty cargo boats to a full cargo boat so that one span of mules could pull all three at the same time. To ‗hit the logs‘ had the same meaning as today‘s ‗hit the road‘ – the roads then were mostly of the so-called ‗corduroy‘ type with a log base. ‗Long-eared robins‘ referred to mules; so did ‗hayburners.‘ A ‗hoggee‘ was the term for a boy driver, apparently an outgrowth of an English word, ‗hogler,‘ which meant a field laborer of the lowest class in early England.‖ “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 33

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) offers a brief description of the canal operation:

―The operation of this new water highway became a complex process. Down [easterly] canal traffic was given right of way over boats going west. When one boat passed another, the team of the first boat was checked, and its long towrope fell slack in the water and across the towpath. The overtaking boat then passed over the rope and on ahead. By the 1840s every boat was required to have a knife on its bow to cut any tow rope with which it might become fouled, and a semicircular bow was specified to lessen the damages from collision.‖

―Packets took precedence over freighters [line boats] at the locks. When boats waited at each side of a lock they entered alternately, so that each lock-full of water served one boat up and one down. A boat traveling from a higher level to a lower level entered the lock as soon as its forward gates had been swung closed. The lock gates behind the boat were then closed and water was let out of the lock through sluices. As the water level fell, the boat was lowered rapidly, the forward gates were then opened and the boat was drawn out at the lower level. A boat could pass a lock in as little as three minutes, and in the busiest season it was common for 250 boats to pass a lock each day.‖

―Cleverly devised ‗change-over‘ bridges made it possible for the team to follow the towpath as it changed from one side of the canal to the other. They were not unlike the modern cloverleaf highways. The team was unhitched from the boat, it moved up and over the bridge, and then turned down and under the bridge to walk parallel with the boat as it floated under the bridge and alongside.‖

―Feeders maintained the supply of water in the canal and waste weirs carried off the surplus, no easy matter when made a ‗raging canal‘. Guard gates could be closed to protect the canal from high water. At many locations the surplus waters of the canal were leased to private individuals and became a valuable source of power for milling or other manufacturers. These leases, however, were subject to gross abuses. More often than not, water was taken by the leaseholder that was needed for the canal. ‗The code of morals seems to prevail,‘ wrote Commissioner Frederick Follett of the leasing of the surplus waters in the early 1850s, ‗that the State is a public goose, and he who will has the right to pluck it.‘ ― [pp 236 – 237]

Packet boats and Line Boats. Canal boats used by the more affluent travelers were called packet boats. Packet boats were more colorful than the boats transporting freight (i.e., line boats). The packets carried thirty to fifty passengers and no freight, ranged from sixty to seventy feet in length, and were pulled by three horses or mules. The passenger cabin occupied most of the space, but the packets also provided a kitchen and a bar, with small outside areas in the bow and stern for handling the boat and for the steersman. Line boats were less luxurious than packets and hauled some freight as well as passengers. Although many line boats were as long as eighty feet, they were pulled by only two animals instead of three, which made them slower than the packets. Their passengers, as a result, were not ―so select a company‖ [P. L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, pp 331-332].

Morganstein & Cregg on canal boats approaching a lock:

―To stop boats pulled by animals, a boatman had to attach a short rope to the bow of the boat, jump ashore, and wrap the other end of the rope to a post or cleat on the shore. There were posts every 25 feet, allowing the boatman to move from post to post, slowing the boat. This process was known as ―snubbing‖.‖

Specific structures were built on the Canal for computing the toll to be charged to a boat. These structures were termed ―weighlock buildings‖. Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) describes the principle of hydrostatic pressure that was used to charge tolls:

At Utica, Syracuse and Troy, elaborate mechanisms to weigh boats and their cargoes were coming into operation. These ingenious devices, operating on what were known as hydrostatic locks, measured the water displaced by a boat, from which it was possible to compute the boat‘s weight and appropriate toll. The most handsome of these locks was at Syracuse, where the structure took the form of a classic Greek temple.

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) adds additional narrative regarding the use of weighlock stations on the canal:

The tolls were most often based on the weight of the cargo which was determined by hydraulic weighlocks located at Albany, West Troy, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester, and by calibrated metal scales placed at the waterline of the boat. Each year at the opening of the season, canal boats were weighed light [i.e., empty], in order to establish the toll to be paid on the boat for the season and to make possible the weighing of the cargo

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 34 in the weighlock. Captains would enter more than one weighlock to verify the weight of their cargoes, and an elaborate experiment was carried out each spring to keep the weighlocks in uniform accuracy. [page 243]

Along with the packet and line boats were the log rafts. According to George Condon (Stars in the Water), ―The log raft likely was the least popular at all the assorted floating objects on the canal waters. ― Condon gives the following description of these log rafts:

―As the tall trees of New York‘s forest were felled, many of them were floated by stream and river to a canal port, where they were bound together in sections. No section was longer or wider than the size of a lock. A single log raft would be made up of six to ten detachable sections of logs linked together and towed as a unit by two or three horses in tandem, or by a team of oxen. Each raft had a crew of four or five men, who helped keep the raft in line by the expert use of long poles. The crew ate and slept in a rough shanty set up on one of the sections.‖

―Boats had priority over log rafts, but passing a raft with many sections always was a tedious business that invariably slowed the stream of traffic. The crew of the raft was obliged to carry a passing boat‘s towlines over the log sections as their contribution to the operation. The temptation at such time to utter disparaging remarks couldn‘t always be repressed, and frequently the remarks bore physical fruit when the men came together later in a lock traffic jam. From all accounts, though, the battles between the canal crewmen at those places was all that kept the waiting periods from being unendurable.‖

―Log rafts had to be passed through the locks in piecemeal style, one section at a time. When a lineup of boats was waiting to go through, however, the locktender would alternate each section of the raft with a boat. After all the sections had been passed through, the raft had to be reassembled on the other side before it could resume its journey.‖

―No matter how efficiently this cumbersome operation was handled, the log rafts slowed the pace of the canal traffic and were viewed with the same distaste that is reserved today by motorists for slow-moving, broad- beamed trucks on narrow highways. They caused the worst tie-ups on the canal. One of the classic traffic jams they brought about was recorded at the Macedon Locks, where at one time 131 boats were brought to a stop as the harassed locktenders tried to pass through an especially long log raft with many sections. It finally occurred to the frantic tenders, as they sighted an unbroken line of boats in either direction and after they had listened thoughtfully to the cacophony of whistles, shouts and insults, that the situation was beyond solution.‖

―At that critical point, the tenders did what many traffic policemen caught up in hopeless automobile jams since have wanted to do. They walked out on the mess. They simply left the scene and went home, leaving the confusion behind them and abandoning everybody to his own devices. Three days and nights passed before the impasse at Macedon Lock was overcome and waterway traffic was able to resume. Locktenders the length of the canal, and those on other canals, always savored that walkout and thought of it as a victory for their side – which it undoubtedly was.‖

George Condon (Stars in the Water) refers to ―canawler‖ Richard G. Garrity‘s Recollections of the Erie Canal when explaining the complex operation of the early canal locks:

―Most of the old Erie Canal locks had two winging gates on each end of the lock which closed against a miter sill at the bottom of the lock,‖ wrote Garrity. ―The gate edges were also mitered to resist the pressure of the water when the lock was full.‖

―Each gate had two valves in it to empty and fill the lock. The valves were just flat boards, about 12 to 24 inches, pivoted in the middle and hand-operated by a 4-foot lever attached by bell cranks and linkage to the valves in the gates.‖

―When boats were lowered in the lock, the lower gates were opened along with the valves in the closed upper gates. This flushed the boat out of the lock because the water could not get around the boat in the lock. The early lock builders designated this type of valve built into the gate as a ‗paddle valve‘. Locktenders and canal men called the valves ‗paddles‘.‖

―Each gate on a lock had a long balance beam attached to it to balance the weight of the gate which hung on a sort of hinge. Many times as a boy, I put my back against the gates and balance beam and pushed with the locktender to open or close the gate. I was never allowed to touch the paddles, because of the danger of being injured when the lock was filled or emptied.‖ “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 35

―When the paddles, pivoted on center, reached a certain position, the water rushed through the opening with a force strong enough to tear the lever out of one‘s hands. No harm was done if this happened when one stood on the proper side. If the operator, however, stood on the wrong side of the lever, it usually knocked him into the canal. There were quite a number of injuries and drowning due to the improper operation of these lock paddles. This type of valve was built into the wooden lock gate and had to be operated from a foot plank about 12 inches wide which crossed each gate. The paddles were usually operated with one hand on the lever and one hand on the railing attached to the gate. This type of gate and valves for filling and emptying the locks was the most common in use on the 72 locks in the Erie Canal.‖

―Another system, used in a few of the locks, featured drop gates and a different valve arrangement.‖

―After this type lock was filled or emptied to allow a boat to enter or leave,‖ Garrity wrote, ―the gate was lowered and lay flat on the bottom. The boat then passed over it. The gate was raised or lowered by means of a chain attached to each corner of the gate and was motivated by a hand-cranked windlass on each side of the lock.‖

―The valves to empty or fill the lock were located ahead of each gate at the side of the lock and tunneled around the gate. Water entered the lock from the side instead of the end. The valves were also operated by a chain and hand-cranked windlass with the water entering from the side. This arrangement was not as efficient in swelling a boat out of the lock and it also required a man on each side to operate the windlass which raised and lowered the gate. In contrast, the swing gate locks could be operated by one man. At most locks, the canal men helped the locktender as it shortened the time required to get through the lock.‖

― Swelling‖ was a tricky technique that could be invoked to hasten a boat out of a lock. An expert locktender used it to good effect in expediting the movement of traffic.

―The swells,‖ explained Garrity, ―were caused by the opening of the paddle valves in the gates while the locks were being emptied, or by opening the paddle valves in the upper gates of the lock. The resulting rush of water ‗swelled‘ the loaded boats out of the lock after the boats were lowered.‖

―A slight swell always got the boats started faster and shortened the time going through the locks. If the locktender happened to be a good fellow, he gave the boats a swell when needed without being asked … Many of these fellows, however, would not give the boats a swell unless they were first given the price of a couple of beers, which in those days cost a nickel. For a dime, you were really speeded on your way… the practice of swelling the boats out of the locks was frowned upon by the canal authorities.‖

― … Swelling used too much water and lowered the water on the level above the lock which, at times, caused loaded boats to run aground… Swelling also raised the water on the level below the lock, causing cabins on light, or empty boats to strike the low bridges, thus causing considerable damage to the cabins.

As the canal opened for business additional employment was made available for those who would operate the boats and locks. All boats carrying passengers, line boats as well as packets, provided at the least, a steward, two helmsmen to take turns steering the boats (most of which kept going twenty-fours a day), two drivers to take turns on the animal team, and a captain. The crews on the canal boats, both passengers and freight, were known as ―canawlers‖, and for many years ―canal‖ itself was pronounced ―canawl‖. Day and night, one or another of these men or boys would toot the horn or blow the trumpet every time they approached a lock or identified another boat in the opposite direction. With the canal so crowded even in its earliest days, these precautions were extremely important. As an additional safety measure for night travel, the boats carried large reflecting lights on either side of the bow [P. L. Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, pp 331-332].

Morganstein & Cregg explain the tasks necessary when to boats are using the same tow path but moving in different directions:

―As the drawing below illustrates, the towpath was only on one side of the canal. Boats headed in different directions approached each other with care. The outside boat, shown in the background, pulled to the non- towpath side of the canal, stopped its team, and dropped its line, as indicated by the dotted line. The inside boat passed over the other boat‘s line, and then both boats continued on their way. Up-bound boats kept to the towpath side, and loaded boats kept to the heel path side. Loaded boats dropped their towline so that light boats crossed the line of heavy boats.‖ (page 73)

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 36 Boats Moving in Opposite Directions

While widely popular and even more wildly successful financially, the Erie Canal was not without its dark side. Just seven years after the ―Wedding of the Waters‖, a wholly unwanted visitor made its way across the canal – cholera.

The cholera outbreak began initially in Montreal and Quebec where it claimed about 3,000 lives in less than two weeks. The cause of the disease was unknown, and preventing its spread was impossible. The disease made its way down the Champlain Canal and spread across the Hudson before creeping westward toward Buffalo.

Canawlers who had left Albany in perfect health soon found themselves suffering from the intestinal disease as they headed toward Buffalo. The canal travelers who had been so warmly received in previous years were now shunned as they entered new towns.

Several canal-side authorities proposed new methods of fighting the fatal disease. Much like the AIDS epidemic many believed cholera only victimized the immoral—in this case, the drunks and shady characters who had come to dominate the canal trade. A Utica newspaper blamed the malady on contaminated soil carried on the shoes of the canawlers and proposed everyone wear wooden shoes to protect themselves. Other towns burned barrels of tar, hoping the heavy black smoke would somehow kill off the disease. Still others hung hunks of meat on poles over the canal hoping the beef would soak up the contamination.

Every available space along the canal became makeshift hospitals where the afflicted were treated and nursed. By the end of the summer, the cholera outbreak had passed just as mysteriously as it had arrived. The experience dimmed the romantic character the canal had prior to the cholera outbreak. Who knew when the next European mystery disease would move through town, borne on the backs of derelicts shipping their wares by way of the canal. Immunization didn‘t exist, and anyone with a boat and a mule could lay over in any canal town. The canal did more than open the frontier – it exposed the state to every conceivable disease and accelerated the manner in which it could be spread across the state.

While the canal brought opportunities for trade and profit, it also brought crime and decadence. The men who made their living on the canal tended to be loners with an affinity for alcohol and prostitutes. After all, a typical trip across the state would take seven days, followed by a seven-day return trip. The faster the canawlers transported their goods to their final destination, the more they were paid. Many carried jugs of whiskey on board which they used to tip the lockmasters for speedier trips up and down the locks.

Competition along the canal was fierce. Canawlers were looked down upon by regular sailors who openly questioned their courage for working a shallow inland canal instead of braving the open waters of the seas. Partly due to the cholera epidemic and largely due to their reputations as hard-nosed scoundrels, the locals avoided the canawlers. Taverns frequented exclusively by canawlers sprouted along the canal, and fistfights were a nightly occurrence.

In an amusing side note, Lockport is said to have taken its name from such a tavern. Since the canal crossed the Niagara Escarpment in Lockport (the same rock formation which constitutes Niagara Falls) it was apparent from the very beginning that locks would be needed in town to overcome the 50-foot differential between ―Upper Town‖ and ―Lower Town‖. A local businessman decided to open a bar in town to capitalize on the canal traffic. He traveled to Buffalo to fill out the necessary paperwork, but when he signed the forms he was required to fill in the name of his tavern. The entrepreneur had wanted to name his tavern after the town, but the town had not yet been named. In exasperation, he decided to name his establishment ―The Lockport Pub‖. Crestfallen, he returned home and opened his tavern. The tavern quickly became popular among those laborers building the locks (including many of J. J.

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 37 McShane‘s thirsty Irishmen, presumably) and when it came time to name the new canal town, it was decided to name the town after the pub – Lockport.

The voyage to Buffalo was long and tedious. Outside of a handful to taverns the canal was mostly a dull ride through the wilderness. By the time the canawlers reached Tonawanda, they were only a day away from reaching Buffalo. For some, arriving in Buffalo was the end of the journey, an opportunity for a lonely canawler to relax, find companionship, enjoy a few drinks, and unwind after a long journey. For others, arrival in Buffalo meant being pressed to work unloading their cargo and collecting payments. For those canawlers, Tonawanda represented the last opportunity to live it up before getting to Buffalo. Hence, the blossoming of Buffalo’s Canal Street and its little brother, Tonawanda’s Goose Island.

In the 1860s, a two-mile stretch of dirt and stone road in Buffalo had earned the distinction of being ―the wickedest street in the world‖. This distinction was worn by the folks around Canal Street as a badge of honor. Prostitutes walked the streets, and whiskey was downed from dawn to all hours of the night.

Canal Street was laid out in 1829 and named Cross Street. However, by the 1850s, the street was the exclusive domain of the canawlers who re-named it Canal Street. The area was a frequent battleground between the canawlers and the Lake Erie seaman who looked down upon them.

During its peak, Canal Street was home to more than 93 saloons, most with sawdust-covered floors, brass spittoons, and gaslights. The street boasted 15 flourishing dance halls and hundreds of ―dance hall girls” [Dance Hall Girls ?]. Violent arguments, often beginning in the taverns where they were fueled by ale or whiskey, would spill out unto the streets. Spectators would surround the combatants forming a makeshift boxing ring. In these fights, lonely and frustrated canawlers let off steam. The winner of the fight was usually bought a round of drinks; the loser ended up taking a dip in the canal.

Willard Dittmar, City of Tonawanda Historian wrote:

―It was common for two men to fight to the death after a night drinking on Canal Street. They‘d throw the loser‘s body into the canal and a day or two later it would show up at Goose Island. There, they‘d fish it out and see if anybody in town recognized it. If no one claimed it, it was tossed back into the canal. Then it was Lockport‘s problem‖.

In another testimony provided by a Buffalo newspaper reports on a fight between two women on Canal Street:

―Two young women from Canal Street were brought up for fighting. Officer Harris found them in the cellar of one of the vile dens of that street, engaged in fierce combat within a ring formed by a crowd of beastly, brutal spectators of both sexes who incited the rage of the poor degraded girls against each other by heartless cheers and jibes. It seems they had been taunted by their worst associates into testing their physical prowess against each other in a deliberately planned encounter, and were in the midst of it when the officer got wind of it and made a descent upon them. He brought the two combatants into court and they received immediate trial.‖ [George E. Condon, Stars In The Water, p 263]

The excesses of Canal Street were widely tolerated by the police and people of Buffalo. Those who knew better simply stayed clear of the area. Those who wanted some thrills were assured anonymity and a wild night out.

Canal Street thrived for about 20 years before a fire ravaged the street, destroying most of the wooden taverns, dance halls and bordellos. It makes one wonder just how quick firefighters were to respond to the blaze. Though parts of the street were rebuilt, the ―wickedest street in the world‖ never truly recovered from the fire. At the end of the 19th century, it was a shell of its former self.

In 1907, the Reverend John J. McMahon – the newly installed pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church – launched a personal crusade to cleanup Canal Street once and for all. This was, after all, the height of the Victorian Era. McMahon applied pressure to Buffalo Mayor James N. Adam to remediate Canal Street. With the passing of prohibition, Adam was able to close down all the taverns left in the area, and the dancehalls were made respectable. Adam – at McMahon‘s insistence – then led a purge of the police department, dismissing all officers who had turned a blind eye to the activities on Canal Street over the past years. By 1910, Canal Street was dead, a virtual ghost town.

Goose Island in Tonawanda never received the notoriety that its counterpart upstream did. Tonawanda historian Willard Dittmar says the reason why is that no self-respecting writer would ever admit to being present in such an undesirable area. ―There‘s no need to write about Goose Island,‖ Dittmar says simply. Like Canal Street, Goose “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 38 Island was home to its share of taverns and dance halls. However, unlike Canal Street, Goose Island was shut down by the police in its prime. Buildings were closed and boarded up by orders of the sheriff in the 1930s [1930s ??] and police patrolled the area heavily. When the canal was expanded, the buildings on Goose Island were torn down and used as fill along the Niagara River.

While Goose Island may have died a quick death, the City of Tonawanda soon became known as the ―roughest town on the canal‖, beating out such other notable tough towns of Little Falls and Oneida for the ―honor‘.

From Ronald Shaw‘s book Erie Water West:

―The canal was a place of combat, to be sure, and it was respectfully regarded as a place of danger, or even death. Robbery was common, and piracy was not unknown. In 1854, a captain of a freighter escaped from an overtaking piratical scow by throwing oats on the tow path which the pursuers‘ horses stopped to eat. Fatalities to passengers most often happened when they failed to avoid the low bridges or when the fell into the canal. Although the water was shallow at most points, there were reports of even boatmen themselves drowning as they fell into the canal or the canal basins. Boats caught fire, they sank, and men and horses drowned with them. Children playing near the canal were often accidentally drowned. Sometimes, too, bodies were discovered in the canal, their identities unknown, their deaths unexplained.‖

The Erie Canal became a vital stop on the in the 1850s as escaped slaves sought to escape north into Canada. Blacks were considered free men in the north and many found work in the horse barns along the canal. Despite their status as free men, discrimination was rampant. The mix of freed slaves and grizzled canawler co-existing on the canal was a volatile situation, one that came to a head in Tonawanda in 1859.

On a summer night in 1859, Commodore Charles Grant arrived in Tonawanda. Known as a fearless sailor, Grant had earned worldwide acclaim as being the first man to take a powered boat around Cape Horn in South America, an area known for its fierce and unpredictable storms. Upon arrival in Tonawanda, Grant sent his towpath driver, John Mason, to the Tonawanda Horse Barns to change the ‘s horses. Mason returned and informed Grant that the barns were manned exclusively by Negroes and that they drunkenly refused to change Grant‘s horses. Grant indignantly accompanied Mason as they returned to the barn.

Predictably, a fight broke out, one that the Tonawanda News called ―probably the bitterest and bloodiest battle in the history of the Tonawandas‖. Clubs, knives, and razor blades were used, and when the dust cleared, Mason and two Negroes had been killed. Grant had survived but had had the tops of both of his ears bitten off. The surviving three barnkeepers fled the scene.

When the carnage got out, the townspeople sided with the famed – and conveniently white – Commodore. An enraged posse was formed and combed the town. Every black man, woman, and child was rounded up and run out of the city, with untold numbers beaten or killed by the mob. That night, a sign was posted on the canal banks on the outskirts of Tonawanda. The sign read, ―Negro don‘t let the sun set upon you in the Tonawandas.‖ Some reports have it that a black man was hanged from a bridge over the canal as a grim reminder for those disobeying the edict.

Remarkably, that racist and inflammatory edict remained in place – an observed – for another 42 years, before being withdrawn in 1901.

Child labor was an accepted part of the national scene in America of the 19th century. George Condon (Stars in the Water) illustrates this situation with regard to the Erie Canal:

―Young boys found ready employment on the [Erie] Canal. The glamour of canal life naturally had a great attraction for youth – as much, say, as going to sea or joining the circus – even for a future President of the United States. Among the children of the canal era was James A. Garfield, who at the age of sixteen became a boatdriver on the . His father had been one of the workers in the construction of the canal and of him it was said ‗he could take a barrel of whiskey by the chime and drink out of the bung-hole, and no man dared call him a coward‘ .―

―A missionary report in 1848 claimed that some 10,000 boys were employed on the canals of New York. Nearly all of them worked as drivers; that is, they walked the towpath with the mules and horses, keeping them in line and moving at the necessary speed. It was not as easy job, nor were the employers generous in the scale of remuneration they provided the youngsters. Boy drivers made from $8 to $10 a month – the bottom of the financial scale in the canal table of organization. Many of the boys never even received that pitiful pittance due

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 39 them – the boys customarily were paid wages in full at the end of each navigation season, but it was non uncommon for unscrupulous captains to cheat the youngsters out of part or all of their earnings.‖

―Some of the boys eventually found a good deal more on the canal than employment, encountering every form of vice and corruption. The exposure of youth in large numbers to such adult depravity eventually became something of a national scandal.‖

―Evil travels a two-way street, of curse. It seeks out some and by others is sought out. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of the boys who worked on the canal came to overtake their elders in the matter of immortality – no easy accomplishment if we can believe the allegations constrained in some of the eyewitness reports of the time. The Rochester ‗Observer‘, for instance, once made the write editorial observation that, in light of the ‗prostitution, gambling, and all species of vice practiced on our canals; the Erie Canal should be called ‗Big Ditch of Iniquity‘‖. [

Carol Sheriff (The Artificial River) speaks to the issue of child labor:

―Most disturbing of all to the middle classes, children (mostly boys) made up more than a quarter of the workforce. In an era when Northern communities placed increasing emphasis on schooling as a supplement to moral education in the home, these boys – sometimes as young as six, though on average eleven or twelve years old – found themselves separated from their homes and without access to formal education. Most of them worked as drivers, handling the horses that pulled the boats. Even those who worked as boat hands, scrubbing decks or keeping towing ropes untangled, learned few skills that they could later apply to a trade. What sort of men – and citizens – would these boys grow up to be ? And what sort of mothers would cabin girls grow up to be, given that, by reputation at least, they were often maids or cooks during the day and prostitutes at night? How could such girls be expected to instill virtue in the following generation ?‖

Sheriff (The Artificial River), speaks about the issue of working on the Sabbath:

If the middle classes, from farmers to merchants, were joined together I their quest to maintain social order, they did not agree on strategies for doing so. When, for example, the New York State Legislature received thirty-three petitions in 1825 asking for a law prohibiting Sunday travel on the Canal, some citizens replied in a counterpetition that less harm would come from violating the Sabbath than from having boatmen congregate onshore during an idle day. The legislature ultimately agreed. Members of the committee investigating the issue argued that the Canal should remain open on Sundays, in part because:

― ‗… the boats on the canals are numerous, and should the locks be closed on the Sabbath, vast numbers would throng the canal above and below, and many persons from on board would resort to the taverns, grog shops and houses of ill fame, that would soon abound in the vicinity of the locks, and most of the vices which degrade and debase mankind would no doubt be encreased [sic] to a much greater extent than if the boats were permitted to pass‘ ― [p 144]

Some canal workers, it seems, intentionally cultivated images of themselves as morally and physically dangerous. Herman Melville, who had traveled on the Canal and who may have briefly worked on it in the 1840s, described boat workers through the voice of one of his characters in Moby-Dick: ‗the brigandish guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat between his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages through which he floats; his swarthy visage and bold swagger are not unshunned in cities.‘ As Melville suggests, some boat workers proudly adhered to their canaller ways. Drinking, swearing, and fighting were part of their culture, a way of life they had no desire to shed. Many boys came to the canal in search of wages, adventure, and freedom from family restraints; they did not invest their work with any larger social aspirations. Rather than signing on as apprentices learning a trade, these boys took up jobs that offered them few skills and little fatherly oversight from their bosses. When these boat workers hurled curses at ―ladies‖ on passing boats or tore down fences on surrounding farms, they flouted middle-class notions of propriety and respect for property― [pp 144 – 145]

Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) speaks to the issue of working on the Sabbath:

―Heated controversies broke out over what was called sabbatarianism, or the movement to prohibit traffic movement on the Erie Canal on Sundays. The American Seaman‘s Friend Society took a practical view of the importance of temperance and Sunday closings by pointing out that a sinful set of crews on the canal would be bad for business. Without ‗steady, honest, and respectable persons, of both sexes,‘ working on the canal, they argued, ‗the dregs of the community‘ would be working there and no respectable citizen would want to make “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 40 use of it. The tending that Sunday closing would back up boats all along the length of the canal, and, even worse, it would be a prescription for the canawlers to take advantage of twenty-four hours of idleness to get drunk and stay drunk, and goodness only knows what other depravity might take over to fill the idle hours. The canal remained open around the clock despite the brouhaha, which lasted well into the 1840s, even though a few lines sought customers by boasting of their closing down on Sundays.‖ [page 338].

With the opening of the Erie Canal, sprung up on its banks. In an effort to recoup the cost of the building of the canal, a toll of one penny per mile was put in place. It was a small price to pay for businessmen who were now able to ship their wares in a fraction of the time, as well as New Yorkers curious to see the rest of the state. Homemade boats billed the canal and a tourism industry of sorts began. On the Erie Canal, there was little danger of sinking (and even if a boat sunk, the people would just wade to the shore) and it was impossible to get lost, making the canal inviting prospect for travelers. The cost to ship goods by canal dropped to about $10 per ton, compared to $100 per ton by road. In some cases, the canal cut shipping costs by up to 94%, and in just 7 years time, the modest canal tolls recouped the entire cost of construction.

Western New York staples such as furs, lumber, staves, pot and pearl ashes, wheat, flour, barley, beef, pork, butter, cheese, and whiskey were loaded onto barges and shipped east, while merchandise, furniture, and salt were shipped from New York City back towards Buffalo.

The completion of the canal drastically reduced shipping costs. In the days before the canal, a 62.5-cent bushel of wheat from the Genesee Valley would cost up to $2.15 in Albany and would take about 20 days to make the 230 mile trip by wagon. On the canal, it took less than 10 days to travel all the way across the state, from Buffalo to New York City. The cost of moving wheat dropped from $100 a ton to $5.

In addition to the commercial boom, passenger-bearing packet boats offered travelers a chance to leisurely explore the state. The earliest packets could carry between 40 to 50 passengers, providing them with rudimentary dining facilities and sleeping quarters. The packets offered a romantic trip, taking in the scenery of the state at a leisurely pace of about four miles an hour. However, passengers had to remember to take heed when the boatman called, ―Bridge!‖ Several low bridges crossed the canal, often connecting a farmer‘s field that the canal now divided. These bridges didn‘t fall under state or federal regulations, and as a result, may were built as sparingly as possible, often forcing passengers on a packet boat to duck low as the packet passed under the bridge. While the ―Low bridge, everybody down‖ refrain has since been romanticized in song, the actual practice could get old quickly.

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) cites the experience of one woman on the canal:

―During a brief journey on the canal in the mid-thirties Harriet Martineau and her companions were so repulsed by the appearance of the berths in the ladies‘ cabin that they sat on deck until the rain left them no choice but to go below. For her, none of the advantages of canalling could make up for the horrors she found I spending a night on board a packet boat:‖

― ‗I would never advise ladies to travel by canal, unless the boats are quite new and clean; or at least, far better than any that I saw or heard of on this canal. One fine days it is pleasant enough sitting outside (except for having to duck under the bridges every quarter of an hour, under penalty of having one‘s head crushed to atoms), and in dark evenings the approach of the boatlights on the water is a pretty sight; but the horrors of night and of wet days more than compensate for all the advantages these vehicles can boast. The heat and noise, the known vicinity of a compressed crowd, lying packed like herrings in a barrel, the bumping against the sides of the locks, and the hissing of water therein like an inundation, startling one from sleep, these things are very disagreeable. We suffered under an additional annoyance in the presence of sixteen Presbyterian clergymen, some of the most unprepossessing of their class‘ ― [pp 209-10]

The canal accounted for a remarkable population boom in the western end of the state. Between 1820 and 1850, Rochester increased from 1,502 residents to 36,403, and Buffalo increased from 2,095 to 42,261, largely due to the burgeoning wheat and flour industries. Rochester quickly asserted itself as the canal's premier packet boat builder, creating lighter and more elegant vessels that quickly became the envy of the canal. The first packets usually weighed 15 to 20 tons, but the newer Rochester models could weigh as little as 10 tons.

All a man needed to make money on the canal was a boat to work on, a team of mules (or dogs if horses or mules proved to be too expensive) to tow the boat, and a destination. Canal life could be a lonely life, always on the move from town to town and through stretches of dark forests. It could take weeks before a canawler was able to return home, sometimes a month or so for the trippers, long-haul canawlers who regularly traveled from Buffalo to Albany and “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 41 back. The canawler was responsible for the welfare of the goods he shipped as well as changing the team of mules roughly every 15 miles so his team wouldn‘t tire out. New towns were created about every 15 miles as thirsty canawlers took a break to change their mules. Generally, on vessels manned by several canawlers, the low man on the totem pole was assigned the job of hoggee. The hoggee, or mule driver, walked behind the mules on the towpath, making sure the team moved at a steady pace.

Compared to the canawlers, the lockmaster [also lock tenders] had an easy life. The lockmaster was responsible for opening and closing the lock gates whenever a boat needed its service. As a state employee, the lockmaster didn‘t have to worry about competition for his job and was provided with a small shanty for a home and office on the lock site. Lockmasters were paid a salary of $25 a month, though canawlers quickly learned that greasing the lockmaster‘s palms with a jug of whiskey could mysteriously decrease the amount of time spent in the locks. But the lockmaster‘s job wasn‘t all cushy pay and free whiskey. The canal was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the lockmaster was expected to be prepared to raise and lower the locks on demand. [NOTE: What about the winter months ?] The locks were the lockmaster‘s life.

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) comments on the lock tender:

―Lock tenders were appointed, one to a lock, even though twenty-four-hour service was required. They were paid from $20 to $60 a month depending upon the average number of boats passing each day. With this salary the lock tender was expected to hire an assistant to serve curing the hours when he wished to be off duty, a practice which often left the locks poorly manned for part of the day or night.‖ [p 247]

In many ways, life in a canal town was similar to life in a busy train station. Vessels were coming and going at all times, and with each boat loaded with canawlers, visitors, or goods, was the opportunity to make money. On hot summer days, young girls sold fresh vegetables from the farm and refreshing chunks of ice. Competing boat crews tried to out-yell one another as they shouted their rates at all those passing by, a situation which often degenerated into a wild fistfight, or worse. Runners and scalpers, often young boys, were hired to secure passengers or cargo for the crew.

There was no shortage of colorful characters in the early days of the canal. While the industrious pursued opportunities on the canal, the complacent spent their time heckling canawlers from the shore, prompting more than a few heated altercations. In several towns, canawlers related stories of untrusting locals who sat along the towpath with their rifles squarely pointed at any boat coming by – just in case a canawler was thinking about snatching some fruit from the farmer‘s orchard. Canawlers could be shifty folks, and they were closely watched.

While the Erie Canal may have been America‘s first superhighway, the speed limit was considerably lower than one might expect. Vessels generally traveled at about three to four miles per hour. While it was faster to travel at slightly higher speeds, the speed limit was strictly enforced. A vessel traveling at higher speeds and pushing a bigger wake jeopardized the canal banks. By 1840, competitive racing had become a major fad along the canal. Newspapers were quick to condemn the practice.

―Every day we expect to hear of some accident or outrage growing out of the excitement which prevails along the canal in relation to the Rochester packets,‖ wrote one outraged editorialist in the Rochester Daily Democrat. ―This morning the feeling was more intense than ever. Both boats left the docks together at a furious rate, and before they reached the first bridge were cheek-by-jowl striving for the lead, while the poor horses were at the top of their speed, under the lash, and the feelings of the respective crews and passengers wrought up to the highest pitch. Fair competition is laudable, but excesses of every kind should be strenuously guarded against."

Even in the 1840s, faster meant better. The less time it took for cargo to be moved, the more quickly a new shipment could be sent out, and the more lucrative the business opportunities. While ―road rage‖ may be a common buzzword today, it was very much alive on the canal as well. Fights would often start between frustrated canawlers in a rush and those packet boat Sunday drivers, and while the delicate ladies of the day may have cherished the opportunity to take a little ride on one of the fancy Rochester packets, they would do doubt be mortified by the type of language they were likely to hear if their packet dawdled.

Charles Hadfield (The Canal Age) relates the experience of a woman traveling on a packet boat from Schenectady to Utica:

―The accommodation being greatly restricted, every body, from the moment of entering the boat, acts upon a system of unshrinking egotism. The library of a dozen books, the back-gammon board, the tiny berths, the shady side of the cabin, are all jostled for in a manner to make one greatly envy the power of the snail; at the “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 42 moment I would willingly have given up some of human dignity for the privilege of creeping into a shell of my own … In such trying moments as that of fixing themselves on board a packet boat, the men are prompt, determined, and will compromise any body‘s convenience, except their own. The women are doggedly steadfast in their will, and, till matters are settled, look like hedgehogs, with every quill raised, and firmly set, as if to forbid the approach of any one who might wish to rule them down.‖

―With a very delightful party of one‘s own choosing, fine temperate weather, and a strong breeze to chase the mosquitoes, this mode of traveling might be very agreeable, but I can hardly imagine any motive of convenience powerful enough to induce me again to imprison myself in a canal boat under ordinary circumstances.‖

George Condon (Stars in the Water) describes ―long levels‖ on the canal:

―Rain or shine, boatmen and passengers alike looked forward to those parts of the canal known as the ―long levels‖. The designation was reserved for several extraordinary sections that were free of locks and where the canal ran uninterrupted through nice, flat, no-nonsense country in which the crews could relax and the boats had the kind of clear sailing that enabled them to make up lost time.‖

―The long levels provided the most restful phases of any canal journey – no stops, except to change horses, and no vexations – just the steady reassuring sound of the hoofs thudding on the towpath, splendid scenery to look at, the sibilant sound of the water shearing away from the prow, and always somewhere the lowing of cattle.‖

―The most famous of the long levels was in the middle section of the canal. The Rome Level (also known as the Utica Level) extended from Frankfort to Syracuse, a record distance of 69.5 miles without a lock. Just west of this admirable section was the Rochester Level, sixty five miles of uninterrupted waterway between Rochester and Lockport. When the Erie was reconstructed in later years, the Rome Level was shortened to some fifty-six miles by an alteration of route, thus allowing the Rochester Level to take top honors as the longest of the clear runs.‖

The state employed several canal walkers to inspect segments of the canal daily and check for damage to the banks cause by excessive wakes, erosion, or burrowing animals. If a trouble spot was found, the state would dispatch ―hurry- up‖ boats to the scene and hastily make repairs before a leak developed.

Unfortunately, the hurry-up boats weren‘t always on time. The first major collapse occurred in 1850, just 25 years after the opening of the canal, at the Great Embankment (the Irondequoit Creek Valley near Rochester). More than a quarter-mile of the north embankment was swept away sending water cascading into the valley below, taking a slaughterhouse and a warehouse with it.

Morganstein & Cregg on leaks:

―Leaks were the enemy of the canal. Even the smallest leak in the canal‘s earthen wall could enlarge and wash out an entire section. Muskrats tunneling into the banks were a common cause of leaks. A towpath master was responsible for a 10-mile section of canal and towpath. He carried a sack of manure and hay to plug holes and small leaks. It was the responsibility of every one using the canal to keep repair crews informed of problems.‖ (page 108)

Another break in the embankment occurred in 1912. However, the worst break in Erie Canal history came years later, in October of 1974 – again, at the Great Embankment. Workmen building a new sewer tunnel began to notice water leaking into the tunnel. Before guard gates could be dropped on either side of the embankment to isolate the leak, the concrete canal floor gave way, spilling more than 100 million gallons of water into the valley below. The ensuing tidal wave destroyed 41 homes and caused millions of dollars of damage, but due to quick action by the workmen, there were no serious injuries. That leak caused the canal to be closed for a full year while repairs were made.

Winter – The Canal’sGreatest Impediment (Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River, pp 75-78)

The frigid temperatures in shut down the canal for up to five months every year. From the canal‘s earliest years of operation, businessmen from around the country wrote to canal officials offering their fail-safe inventions for keeping the canal free from ice. But nothing could keep the canal open between mid-December and April. The canal‘s annual wintertime closing disappointed settlers who for much of the year built their daily lives

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 43 around the canal‘s rapid conveyance of goods, people and news. While they had been used to natural rivers freezing, New Yorkers expected more from their artificial river.

The onset of winter could be dramatic. Sudden freezes trapped boats mid-journey, along with their workers and freight. Sometimes the canal would temporarily thaw, allowing boats to advance. The merchant Horace Wheeler spent two weeks on the canal in December 1825 creeping along the canal between Schenectady and Albany, a journey that normally would have taken one day. Without a thaw, merchants had either to transport their stranded goods by costly land routes or to abandon their freight until spring. Silas Marks, a Lockport merchant, expressed relief in 1842 when all his good arrived before the canal‘s freezing. ―Most of our merchants‖, he wrote, ―had theirs freeze up on the canal from 60 to 100 miles east and it was quite expensive getting them by land‖. Since merchants passed along at least part of those expenses to customers, virtually all upstate New Yorker suffered materially when the canal froze, often literally overnight.

A sudden thaw of the canal in spring could have even more devastating consequences than the troublesome and expensive wintertime freezes. Thaws sent huge quantities of melted snow into the rivers and streams that fed the canal. Although some excess water could be released through the canal‘s waste weirs (gates that emptied water into tributary creeks), severe freshets could overflow or sweep away the canal bed. Sometimes they took canal-side property with them. In a particularly bad flood in 1832, one upstate resident reported that raging water took a ―large quantity of lumber and buildings off the pier at Albany … people went to stores on the wharf at Albany in boats and landed in the second stories‖. Nature could undo human efforts to make the physical landscape more accessible and dependable

But nature primarily influenced the canal‘s operation with its regular closing of the waterway for four or five months of the year. Nothing – and nobody – moved on the canal during its closed season. Although few tourists would have found upstate New York an appealing wintertime destination, emigrants would have liked to plan their journeys to arrive in time to be ready for the spring planting. But as Joseph and Ann Webb counseled their family and friends in England, ―If anyone two three or more should feel inclined to come [we] should advise you not to start before March or April for the canal will not be thawd [sic] before May and it would be expensive traveling by land …‖ Men and women in the upstate region had to plan their visits with friends and relatives around the canal‘s open season. When corresponding about visits, New Yorkers and their families often qualified their plans with phrases like ―if navigation permits‖.

Morganstein & Cregg on winter operations:

―Winter was a time when the canal could be drained and necessary repairs could be made. In some areas enough water was left in the canal to enable residents to enjoy ice-skating… There are stories of people who would skate for several hours along the canal and cover distances of many miles... Boats not in dry dock ran the risk of becoming grounded in the mud until the spring reopening. Boats left in such a manner were referred to as ―mud-lark‖ boats… Since the canal was closed during the winter months, hoggees were generally unemployed during the season. There is a story about two young hoggees who walked into a canal town court early in December 1870 and asked to be sent to jail until the canal reopened in the spring. As far as we know, the court obliged.‖

The canal‘s closed season also slowed down mail between upstate New York and the eastern seaboard. The canal had encouraged upstaters to become impatient, to expect mail to arrive quickly. Abigail Marks also found the canal‘s wintertime closing frustrating. On Christmas Day 1840, she wrote to her family: ―Let me urge you … to be more punctual in writing me often for our mails this season of the year are detained which will make intercourse more irregular and difficult and for friends so distantly separated is I think extremely unpleasant.‖

New Yorkers conceded that nature held more power than humanity when it came to regulating the canal‘s season of operation. A Rochester newspaper reported in 1842 that canal workers had been making very slow progress in clearing paths for ice-bound boats. Then ―the weather last evening, bid fair to do what of uninterrupted navigation.‖ But nature‘s malevolent side provoked more frequent – and strident – commentary. The New York Times, for example, reported in 1832 that ―forty thousand barrels of flour, on their way to this city, have stopt [on the canal] by the recent embargo placed on them by the relentless despot, Jack Frost.‖ American inventiveness could not outsmart the despotic ice that interrupted commerce, travel, and communications.

The canal had raised people‘s expectations. They hoped to travel easily and quickly, to ship and buy goods inexpensively, and to communicate at will with their distant relatives and friends. They grew impatient when goods stalled on the canal or when the exchange of visits and mail grew irregular. New Yorkers‘ most persistent complaints about the canal stemmed from the irregularity of the compression of distance, from the failures to triumph over nature. Their ambivalence about progress arose from their inability to take full advantage of the ways it promised to improve their lives. “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 44

The canal‘s weaknesses would ultimately lead many New Yorkers to embrace railroads, which succeeded where the canal could not: at running all year round. But in the meantime, New Yorkers continued to emphasize the ―artificial‖ aspects of their artificial river. People had built the canal, and – within the limits set by nature – people should still be able to control it. They should be able to use this work of progress to satisfy their goals and values, even if those aspirations differed from those of the canal‘s sponsors. With this same sense of power, different groups of New Yorkers would look to their government to further their own interests within the expanding commercial economy.

Canal Expansion

With the canal‘s widespread success, it quickly became apparent that the canal needed to be expanded. By 1836, there were already more than 3,000 boats using the waterway on a regular basis, and citizens were clamoring for expansion and the elimination of some of the locks that were slowing traffic and giving so many people headaches. Surveys were ordered to examine potential routes for new canals, and the Oswego Canal connecting Syracuse to Oswego was completed in 1828. Several other canals sprung up across the state over the next five years, and with each new transportation opportunity came new boaters. In less than 10 years, the Erie Canal had outgrown its 40-foot wide by four-feet deep dimensions.

In 1835, lawmakers opened discussion on enlarging the canal. The New York State Legislature proposed deepening the canal to seven feet and widening it to 70 feet across. This expansion, they argued, would allow triple the traffic as the original canal. The locks would be widened to accommodate more vessels and to eliminate canal gridlock.

The proposal met with overwhelming support. The canal had already become outdated and needed extensive rebuilding. Work to enlarge the canal began as early as 1836, but while it only took seven years to build the original canal, it would take 26 years to complete the expansion (i.e., 1862)

In 1882, the canal commission voted to eliminate all tolls on the canal. As rail lines began to criss-cross the state, it was clear the canal‘s future relied upon heavy industry – more tonnage needed to be transported on the canal‘s waters. With the evolution of the steam engine, larger barges and tugboats could put the canal to use. That meant that another expansion was needed to facilitate travel by vessels with larger drafts.

In 1895, the state launched the second enlargement of the canal. Dubbed ―The Nine Million Dollar Improvement,‖ the canal was to be deepened to nine feet while the banks would remain 70 feet apart. After just three years, the funds allocated to the project ran out and work came to a halt. New York State commissioned a study to see if the canal system was worth making further investments. The committee on canals completed their study and returned with their recommendation: to build an entirely new Barge Canal System. Between 1905 and 1918, the Erie Barge Canal System was created to accommodate the large barges and steam-powered ships.

Today‘s Erie Barge Canal System consists of the Erie Barge Canal and three major branches, the Champlain Barge Canal, the Oswego Barge Canal, and the Cayuga-Seneca Barge Canal. Together, these canals connect the waters of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, the , and Lake Champlain, 524 miles of waterways. The Mohawk, Hudson, Oswego, Seneca, Clyde and Genesee rivers were each canalized by the construction of the Barge Canal through a system of fixed and movable dams, locks, reservoirs, and dredged canals.

In 1918 all branches of the new canal system were finished and the Barge Canal System opened for traffic. The Erie Barge Canal made it possible to travel from Albany to Buffalo in as little as five days. The canal spans 16 counties throughout New York State, and every major city in New York falls upon the Barge Canal System or the Hudson River Valley.

Peter Bernstein (Wedding of the Waters) reflects on the evolution of the Erie Canal when he writes:

It was no coincidence that the Erie Canal inspired the route of the very first steam railroad in the United States, the Mohawk & Albany, which opened for business in 1831 between Albany and Schenectady, pulled by a locomotive sporting the name De Witt Clinton on its coal car. Although only sixteen miles long, the Mohawk & Albany took passengers in one hour past the twenty-seven locks and a full day‘s travel needed to cover this distance by the canal.

In time, the railroads would eclipse the Erie Canal and the complex network of canals it inspired across the country from to the eastern seaboard, but it would be a long time. Steam mattered more in powering boats on the Great Lakes, which brought population to the lake ports and enhanced the connection between the Erie Canal and the lands farther west. And well before the railroads could make a difference, a major “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 45 innovation in networking would arrive: Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph lines, which began to weave their way across the nation in 1844, along the Erie Canal and along the new railroad lines as well. The flood of information pouring at breathtaking speed across those telegraph wires radically collapsed both time and distance.

However, as late as 1852, thirteen times more freight tonnage was carried on an enlarged Erie Canal than on all the railroads in New York State. This huge disparity reflects the mix of business in the early years of the railroads, which was only incidentally to carry merchandise and primarily to transport passengers under more comfortable conditions than the crowded and often disagreeable conditions aboard the packets. The railroad system in its early days was not sturdy enough to carry the heavy bulk of grain and timber that sailed with so little effort on the waters of the Erie Canal.

Consequently, the canal continued to put up stiff competition even as the railroads matured. When tolls were abolished in 1882, the Erie Canal was serving over twenty million people annually and had produced revenues of $121 million since 1825, more than quadruple its operating costs. And it was still going strong.

After a significant enlargement in the 1840s, the canal went through a second and far more impressive enlargement at the turn of the century, when total freight traffic exceeded six million tons – triple the volume in 1860. The moving spirit in this massive project was none other than George Clinton, grandson of De Witt Clinton and the namesake of De Witt‘s beloved uncle. This George earned the title of ―Father of the Barge Canal‖ for his contribution.

Carol Sheriff (The Artificial River) talks about the success of the Erie Canal:

The Erie Canal proved an immediate and extraordinary success. Before the waterway had been completed, politicians began discussing its enlargement to accommodate the immense volume of traffic. Horse-drawn boats, stacked high with bushels of wheat, barrels of oats, and piles of logs, streamed steadily eastward toward the New York City market. In the Canal‘s first year of official operation, tolls collected on freight more than met the interest on the state‘s construction debt; by 1837, the entire loan on the original Canal was paid. Although the politicians and engineers who envisioned and designed the Canal imagined it primarily as a commercial channel for freight boats, passengers also traveled on the Canal‘s long narrow boats, lured by the affordability, smoothness, and convenience of canal travel. In 1825, the year that New Yorkers celebrated the Erie Canal so fervently, more than forty thousand passengers traveled on the new waterway, even though it had not yet gone into full service. Other states, inspired by the success of New York‘s Erie and Champlain canals, rushed to construct their own. The financial accomplishments of the Erie, as well as the failures of subsequent projects in other states, have been recounted in detail by previous scholars.

What remains to be told is what happened after residents of the Canal corridor breathed a collective sigh of hope that their transient workforce would head off to other states. Only then did they begin to appreciate fully the ways in which the artificial river would reshape their daily lives. Although they had joined DeWitt Clinton in praising the ways in which the Canal promised to keep the nation united, by 1825 their concerns were unabashedly personal. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had removed the divisive issue of slavery from national politics at least for a time. As a result, New Yorkers were free to refocus their attention on what their state had hoped to do when it undertook Clinton‘s grand scheme: to defy nature by compressing distance and time.

Editor‘s Note on the Missouri Compromise. In February 1819, the territory of Missouri petitioned Congress to be admitted as a state. At the time, there were 11 slave and 11 free states. So the question was whether Missouri, with 10,000 slaves and more on the way, should be admitted as a slave state, or forced to free its slaves as a condition for being allowed in. Debate on the issue raged all across the country. Finally, a compromise crafted by Henry Clay was reached in March 1820. Under it, Missouri was admitted as a slave state and the territory of Maine as a free state, keeping balance of 12 slave and 12 free. Congress also deemed that slavery would be excluded from any new states or territories above the 36 degree 30 minute line of latitude.

Pro-slavery forces grumbled that Congress had no constitutional right to say where slavery could and could not occur. Anti-slavery forces complained that the compromise was an admission that slavery was acceptable. But the compromise held for the next three decades, giving the country a little more time to try to find a better solution. [Page 126, Steve Wiegand, US History for Dummies]

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 46 In the decades after the Canal opened for business, millions of men, women, and children would flock through upstate New York. The artificial river provided inexpensive transportation for passengers whose journeys could not have been anticipated by its sponsors. Evangelical preachers made their circuits of the upstate region on the Erie Canal, exhorting residents, tourists, emigrants, and workers to seek salvation. In this period of evangelical reform, the Canal also served as the last leg of the underground railroad, ferrying runaway slaves from Syracuse to Buffalo, near the Canadian border. While some boat passengers sought to save souls or win freedom, others found canal boats to be convenient for running businesses. Entrepreneurs bought boats and outfitted them as groceries or, in the case of the ‗Encyclopedia‘, as a museum and bookstore featuring ―natural and artificial curiosities.‖ Aspiring merchants of more modest means moved from boat to boat, peddling small items such as books, watches, and fruit. Confidence men, meanwhile, preyed on passengers, selling remedies for foot corns or offering counterfeit bills in exchange for items of value.

None of these endeavors would have been possible without the Canal‘s steady flow of tourists, businessmen, and settlers. Together these travelers made up the vast majority of passengers on canal boats. The Canal‘s luxurious packet boats carried tourists on the ―Northern Tour‖, a travel circuit that ultimately led to Niagara Falls, just north of Buffalo. Merchants used these same passenger boats for short trips to nearby towns or rode the waterway on their way to conduct affairs in New York City. Men and women living in the Canal corridor boarded packets to visit friends or relatives, to attend to business in other towns, or simply to have a relaxing excursion. Emigrants from Europe and New England, meanwhile, took passage on westbound freight boats, on which they also loaded their trunks and furniture. In exchange for cheap passage, they camped on deck or on top of crates. The Canal drew such a large number of passengers that a 19th century observer remarked, ‖For about ten years after the opening of the Hudson and Erie Canal, in 1825, the man who had not voyaged upon those tranquil waters was considered a decided home body.‖

Very few of these people would have ventured to western New York or points farther west had the Erie Canal not greatly eased transportation and communication between regions of the country that had just recently seemed extremely remote from one another. The Canal made distances seem short not so much with speed as with efficiency. Pulled by teams of horses, canal boats still moved relatively slowly, though methodically. Those catering exclusively to passengers reached speeds of up to five miles an hour, while freight boats moved at about two miles an hour. Yet canal boats cut nearly in half the travel time between Albany and Buffalo – a journey that now took between five and seven days – by offering what horse-drawn stages and wagons did not: a nonstop, smooth method of transportation.

Canal boats could move day and night, and they ran at much more frequent intervals than stages. While passengers might wait days to catch the next stage, boats left even the most sleepy of towns at least several times a day. Moreover, because a single team of horses could pull much more freight over water than over land, the Canal dramatically reduced the cost of transporting goods; before the Canal, The difficulty of carrying commodities by wagon from Buffalo to Albany often increased their costs five or six times the values of the goods themselves, which made the New York City market seem a world apart. Alleviating this obstacle to the nation‘s commercial development and westward expansion had been what DeWitt Clinton and others had stressed when they promoted the waterway. For reasons they did not anticipate, though, their artificial river would evoke feelings of ambivalence among many of the same people who celebrated the efficiency with which the Canal moved people and goods.

George Condon (Stars in the Water) reflects on the success of the Erie Canal:

Out of the canal sprang an entire family of communities whose genealogy was usually apparent in their names. It is possible to trace the Erie Canal across much of New York State simply by looking for the towns whose names begin or end with ―port‖ or ―basin‖. Enthusiasm for the new canal and eagerness to be plainly identified with it probably accounted for the plethora of ports – Loclport, Brickport, Middleport, Fairport, Weedsport, Gasport, Wayneport, Spencerport, Port Byron, and Port Gibson. The same kind of inspiration went into places like Bushnell Basin, Shelby Basin, and Adams Basin. They were simple, no-nonsense, functional names, and they meant something, usually honoring pioneer settlers and achievers.

The tide of humanity that surged through Clinton‘s Ditch in its first ten years of use was, in the main, the pent- up population of New England, the old-line Yankee families who had been so long frustrated by their own rocky soil and who had had speculative eyes on the untilled but plainly fertile West beyond the Mohawk Gap and even further, in the Great Lakes country.

The migratory flood of Yankees from New England and eastern New York had lasting effects on future events and the shaping of the nation. These forerunners set the political, social and moral tone that would prevail in “Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 47 the new cities and the new states of the for generations. In , for example, of the state‘s first fourteen governors, six were from New York and six were from New England.

A mere thirty-six years separated the opening of the Erie Canal and the beginning of the Civil War, but time enough for the newly opened territory to become part of the abolitionist alliance, part of the opposition to the South and its stand on slavery.

There is a lot of room for speculation over what might have been. Had Clinton failed in his drive for a canal or if the project had been further delayed, as President Jefferson and Madison had wanted it to be, the Civil War likely would have had a different ending. Prior to the arrival of the New Englanders and the New Yorkers by canal in the western country, the pioneers who lived on the far side of the mountains – in the land that became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and – had found their strongest relationships, Political and commercial, with the people of the South. Their trade routes went southward, mainly, by way of the rivers – down the Illinois River and the into the Mississippi River.

The movement of population from the East, and later from foreign lands, followed a skipping pattern. Many of the newcomers paused in western New York long enough to savor the air, break the land, and build rude homes before they succumbed to the seductive stories of what lay on the other side of the mountains and moved on. Directories of the time in cities like Rochester and Buffalo showed a fantastic turnover in population during those early years.

Ronald Shaw (Erie Water West) speaks specifically of the impact of the Erie Canal on the eastern terminus:

For all the phenomenal changes produced by the trade of the Erie Canal in western New York, the press of western goods was greatest as traffic approached the eastern terminus at the Hudson. Congestion here made the eastern section of the canal the first to be enlarged and fitted with double locks. The descent of the Erie Canal through the Mohawk Valley was dramatic. At Little Falls, nearly 400 feet above the Hudson, the valley narrowed to a gorge; steep escarpments rose on either side, and the canal followed the descending valley plain through the villages of Fort Plain, Canajoharie, Yatesville, and Fultonville. When was reached, canal boats first crossed the stream using ropes and windlasses behind a dam, but after 1845, they used a beautiful aqueduct of 624 feet, supported by fourteen majestic Romanesque arches. Twenty miles farther, the canal passed through the city of Schenectady, long the lower terminus of river trade on the Mohawk. Just below Schenectady, an aqueduct led the canal across the Mohawk to the north side of the river, which it followed for twelve miles until it turned south across the river again on a second aqueduct at Crescent, immediately above Cohoes Falls. The canal then began its descent through the famous nineteen locks, past Cohoes Falls, Through ‗Juncta‘, where the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal joined, to West Troy or Watervliet on the Hudson. At West Troy the captain of a canal boat could lock into the Hudson and terminate his journey at the at Troy, which received about one-third of the commerce of the canal. Otherwise, the captain turned south with the canal, passed under the shadow of the United States Arsenal, and continued with the Hudson close on his left five miles farther to the Albany basin.

… The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 by no means ended the political struggles over the fortunes of this successful water way. For a period far beyond the scope of this volume, rival attitudes toward internal improvements and conflicts over canal patronage kept the canal embroiled in state and local politics.

… The Erie Canal was the work of the State of New York, constructed after the failure of its efforts to secure national aid. Yet the spirit of enterprise with which it was built was the spirit of nationalism. The summation of this spirit is found in William Henry Seward‘s last gubernatorial address to the legislature in 1842, just twenty-five years after the passage of the Canal Bill of 1817, as he declared that the state was required to go on with its canals and other internal improvements ‗by every consideration of duty to ourselves, to posterity, to our country, and to mankind‘.

Ralph Andrist (The Erie Canal) reflects on the Canal Era in general:

The heyday of the canals lasted no more than thirty years. The era spans no definite period of time but runs from the digging of the Erie Canal to the middle of the century, approximately 1820 – 1850. By the end of that time hardly a shovel was being turned on new waterways. Many of the existing ones soon fell into neglect and were abandoned. (If tombstones had later been placed beside the miles of empty ditches and rotting clocks, their epitaphs would read: Here lies a great canal, done to death by the steam locomotive.)

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 48 Locking Through on the Erie Canal

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 49 Erie Canal Research References

Andrist, Ralph, Erie Canal, American Heritage Collection, 1964

Bailey, Russell D. & Associates, A Report On Historic Sites & Buildings in the Hudson River Valley, 1965

Bernstein, Peter L., Wedding of the Waters, 2005

Calvert, J.B., ―Notes on Canal History & Engineering‖, www.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/canhist.htm, July 2000

Clemence, S. and E. Kahl, The Erie Canal, url: www-fcms.syr.edu/showcase/SPClemence/ErieCnl/, 1999

Condon, George E., Stars in the Water: The Story of the Erie Canal, 1974

Doherty, Craig A. & Katherine M. Doherty, The Erie Canal, 1997

Ellis, D.M., et al, A Short History of New York State, 1957

Erie Canal Centennial Commission, The Erie Canal Centennial Celebration 1926, 1928

Hadfield, Charles, The Canal Age, 1968

Hahn, T. et al, , Towpaths to Tugboats – A History of American Canal Engineering, 1982

Hamilton, C. (Helen) King, ―The Erie Canal in Perinton‖, Internet resource (Rochester, NY vicinity)

Harlow, Alvin F., When Horses Pulled Boats – A Story of Early Canals, 1983

Harness, Cheryl, The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal, 1995, (children‘s book)

Hill, Henry Wayland, Historical Review of Waterway & Canal Construction in New York State, 1908

James, Leonard F., Following the Frontier, 1968

Larkin, F. Daniel, New York State Canals: A Short History, 1998

Lawson, Dorris Moore, Nathan Roberts: Erie Canal Engineer, 1998

Levy, Janey, The Erie Canal: The Canal That Changed America, 2003

Maier, P., M.R. Smith, A. Keyssar & D.J. Kevles, Inventing America – A History of the United States, 2003

McFee, Michele A., A Long Haul: The Story of the New York State Barge Canal, 1998

Morganstein, M. & J.H. Cregg, Images of America: Erie Canal, , 2001

Mulligan, Kate L., Towns Along the Towpath, 1997

Murphy, Dan, The Erie Canal: The Ditch That Opened a Nation, 2001, seminal document

Nirgiotis, Nicholas, Erie Canal: Gateway to the West, 1993

Olenick, Andy & R.O. Reisem, Erie Canal Legacy: Architectural Treasures of the , 2000

Percy, John W., The Erie Canal: From Lockport to Buffalo, 2002, internet resource

Phelan, Mary Kay, Waterway West: The Story of the Erie Canal, 1977

Powell, Stephen (ed), excerpts from: Municipality of Buffalo, New York: A History 1720-1923 by Henry Wayland Hill, url: www.buffalonian.com/history/industry/waterways/waterways1.html

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 50 Raphael, A.C., ―Canvass White‖, , internet resource, 1996

Rapp, Marvin A., Canal Water & Whiskey, 1992

Reilly, Marie H., ―Erie Canal Recollections‖, August 19, 1983, unidentified Tonawanda, NY newspaper

Reisem, Richard O., Erie Canal Legacy: Architectural Treasures of the Empire State, 2000

Shaw, Ronald E., Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal 1792-1854, 1966

Sheriff, Carol, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal & the Paradox of Progress, 1817 – 1862, 1996

Stack, D.D., Cruising America‘s Waterways: The Erie Canal, 2001

Swerdlow, Joel L., ―Erie Canal: Living Link to Our Past‖, National Geographic, November 1990

Whitford, Noble, The History of the Canal Systems of the State Of New York, 1906; available from University of Rochester, url: www.history.rochester.edu/canal/bib/whitford/old1906, or Troy Library

Wiegand, Steve, U.S. History for Dummies, 2001

Willis, N.P., American Scenery, 1971, drawings by W.H. Bartlett

Wyld, Lionel D., Low Bridge! Folklore & The Erie Canal, 1962

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 51 INDEX

Andrist, 5, 9, 50, 52 lock tender, 43 lockmaster, 43 Bernstein, 4, 11, 12, 14, 18, 19, 31, 36, 38, 42, 47, 52 long level, 20, 33, 44, 45 Black Rock, 2, 7, 8, 19, 21, 22 Buffalo Creek, 8, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 Madison, 5, 8, 13, 49 McShane, J.J., 28, 29, 39 cabin girls, 42 Melville, 42 Calvert, 31, 35, 52 Montezuma Swamp, 9, 10, 28 Canal Street, 39, 40 Morganstein & Cregg, 27, 36, 38, 45, 46 cataract, 14, 15, 21 Morse, Samuel F. B., 47 cholera, 19, 38, 39 mud-lark, 46 Condon, 10, 13, 18, 28, 29, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 44, 49, Murphy, 4, 52 52 Niagara escarpment, 18 Dittmar, 40 Du Pont blasting powder, 18 paddle, 32, 37, 38 Porter, 7, 8, 21 Ellicott, 8, 10, 19, 24 prostitution, 41 puddling, 12, 31, 35 Fulton, Robert,4 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 24 Garfield, 41 Roberts, 21, 24, 52 Geddes, 7, 16, 19, 24 Goose Island, 39, 40 Shaw, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19, 22, 30, 35, 36, 40, 43, 50, 53 grubbing, 10, 11 Sheriff, 24, 27, 28, 29, 41, 42, 45, 48, 53 gun (black) powder, 18 slaves, 31, 40, 48 speed limit, 44 Hadfield, 12, 44, 52 swelling, 37, 38 Hawley, 2, 6, 7, 22 Hercules, 6, 7, 22 Tompkins, 6 Hill, Henry Wayland, 22, 52 towpath master, 45 hoggee, 35, 43 trippers, 43 hurry-up boats, 45 tunneling, 17, 31, 33, 45 hydraulic cement, 13 Washington, 4, 29 ice-skating, 46 weighlock, 27 inclined planes, 33, 34 White, 13, 14, 15, 16, 53 Whitford, Noble, 15, 17, 53 Jefferson, 4, 7, 49 Wilkeson, 8, 22, 23, 24 jigger-boss, 29 Wright, 7, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 24

“Low Bridge; Everybody Down!” 52