SHAWSHEEN AQUEDUCT, LOOKING NORTHEAST, MIDDLESEX CANAL, WILMINGTON-BILLERICA, MASSACHUSETTS OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND d ’ Quarter/y magazine Devoted to the cffncient Buildings, Household Furnishings, Domestic A-ts, 5l4anner.s and Customs, and Minor cffntipuities of L?Wqew England Teop/e BULLETIN OFTHE SOCIETYFOR THE PRESERVATIONOF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUITIES Volume LVIII, No. 4 April-June I 968 Serial No. 212 Comparison of The Blackstone and Middlesex Canals By BRENTON H. DICKSON HREE major canals were com- granting the Blackstone its charter. The pleted in Massachusetts in the idea of a canal connecting Boston with T first twenty-odd years of the the Merrimack River and diverting the nineteenth century : the Middlesex, that great natural resources of New Hamp- went from Boston to Lowell, or more shire away from Newburyport and into correctly, from Charlestown to Middle- Boston met with wholehearted approval sex Village in the outskirts of Lowell; the in the capital city; however, the idea of Blackstone that went from Worcester to the landlocked treasures of Worcester Providence ; and the Hampshire and County making their way to the market Hampden, or Farmington, that went by way of Rhode Island, and seeing Prov- from Northampton to New Haven. To- idence benefit from business that rightly day we will just concern ourselves with belonged to Boston, was unthinkable. the first two of these. When the Blackstone Canal finally got They were both conceived about the its charter in 1823, Bostonians dreaded same time in the early 1790’s. The more than ever the evil effects of such a Middlesex began operating in 1803 but waterway. A few months before it was the Blackstone didn’t get going until completed, the Boston Centinal issued a twenty-five years later, a delay that stern warning: “If the canal is not coun- proved disastrous. The reason for the teracted by some similar enterprise in this delay was lack of cooperation on the part town, Boston will be, in a very few years, of the Massachusetts Legislature in reduced to a fishing village.” The situation was somewhat allevi- EDITORIALNOTE: This paper was read at ated, three years after the canal went in- the first of the eighteenthseries of Three Mem- to operation, when the Boston and bers’ Afternoons, and is published here with the kind permission of the lecturer for the benefit Worcester Railroad received its charter. of those members who could not be present. The president of the House of Represen- 89 Old-Time New England tatives who signed the enacted bills was a greatest natural prosperity. I say natural gentleman by the name of Leverett Sal- because its biggest money-making days tonstall. had an unnatural impulse behind them, But we’re getting a little ahead of our- namely construction of the Boston and selves. During the first twenty years of Lowell Railroad. It has been said that the nineteenth century a number of the Middlesex Canal, “like an accusing canals were proposed to keep Boston ghost . seldom strays far from the from becoming commercially stagnant, Boston and Lowell Railroad to which it among them one from Boston to Worces- owes its untimely end.” Rails, ties and ter to counteract the Blackstone, an- other building materials were transported other from Boston to the Connecticut to their respective destinations on canal River to divert traffic away from the boats, and finally, the British-built loco- Farmington, and another from Boston motive traveled by boat to Lowell to be to Troy, New York, to get a share of assembled in the machine shops there. the Erie Canal business for Massachu- The Middlesex Canal operated nearly setts. It is interesting to note that the thirty-two years unharassed by railroad route surveyed for this last project is competition, the poor Blackstone, only very much the same as the route of the seven. An original investor in the Mid- Boston and Maine Railroad. The sur- dlesex Canal, by retaining his interest, veyors recognized the necessity of tun- would have recovered 75 per cent of his neling through the Berkshires. To get money; a Blackstone investor, $2.75 and over them would require 120 locks. the privilege of subscribing to stock in the These would not only consume an enor- Blackstone Canal Bank. The canal has mous quantity of water but it would take been called the “greatest financial fiasco a boat two days to get through them, in the history of Providence.” while a four-mile tunnel would only take The Blackstone was beset with other an hour and twenty minutes. The loca- difficulties that did not effect the Mid- tion they chose was where the Hoosac dlesex. For water it depended on a Tunnel was bored many years later. The source that was already earmarked for canal surveyors estimated the cost at less manufacturing. Many establishments than a million dollars; actually it cost over had sprung up along the line during the ten million, which would have been the years of delay and in order to assure an financial ruin of any canal company. All adequate water supply for the canal reser- sorts of unforeseen obstacles kept cropping voirs had to be provided. Unfortunately up, more and more money had to be the increase in supply fell far short of raised and each raising was accompanied requirements, especially as more and more by the usual legal complications. At one mills began using the water. The Middle- point some frustrated party remarked sex, on the other hand, had its own that he knew a way of finishing that millpond in North Billerica, formed by tunnel in no time-just put a group of a dam in the Concord River. There was lawyers at one end and a large fee at the no competition with industrial establish- other. ments on the sluggish Concord. For Getting back to our original subject, twenty-one miles upstream from the mill- when the Blackstone was finally com- pond the rise was only three and a half pleted the Middlesex was a well-estab- feet. According to Henry Thoreau, the lished institution and enjoying its era of only bridge ever washed away on this Blackstone and Middlesex Canals section was blown upstream by the wind. tained. The Blackstone used slack water Now compare this head of less than navigation in the river for about one two inches per mile with the Blackstone’s tenth of its distance. This involved enter- ten feet per mile and you can see why ing and leaving sixteen times. During the water-power potentials of the latter periods of low water the boats would get were early recognized and utilized. stranded on the river shoals and during Though “a very Tom Thumb of a river, periods of flood the river sections were as rivers go in America,” according to too swift to be navigated. This meant that the Technical World, the Blackstone is, clients had to wait for days or even weeks SHAWSHEEN AQUEDUCT, MIDDLESEX CANAL, WILMINGTON- BILLERICA, MASSACHUSETTS “the hardest working . the one most at a time for delivery or pickup of harnessed to the millwheels of labor in freight. Worcester warehouses bulged the United States, probably the busiest with stranded merchandise. As time went in the world.” on merchants got more and more dis- The Middlesex Canal, except for gusted with these interruptions to serv- where it crossed the Concord River in jts ice and, with the canal being closed four North Billerica reservoir, was confined or five months in winter on account of to its own ditch for its entire length. Ex- ice, they naturally sought more reliable cept for months when it was frozen over, means of transportation. uninterrupted service could be main- However, none of these difficulties 92 Old-Time New England were anticipated. When the canal stock enter it. Actually it was twenty-five feet was offered in Providence there was a higher, or an error of forty-one feet in six wild scramble for it and within three miles! hours it was oversubscribed IOO per cent. Perhaps the best thing that came out Messengers were quickly dispatched to of this original survey was the Baldwin Worcester to see if any additional stock apple. While working in Wilmington could be picked up there, but when they the surveyors noticed an unusual num- arrived they found that the Worcester ber of woodpeckers all, apparently, flying quota had also been oversubscribed. towards a certain spot. On investigation Those who were not alloted any stock they found a wild apple tree with un- little realized, at the time, how fortunate usually good fruit. Baldwin, the engi- they were! neer, did much to propagate and pro- There was no wild scramble for Mid- mote this apple. At first it was called the dlesex Canal stock. In those days Ameri- pecker apple on account of the wood- can canaling was in its infancy and the peckers. stock had a speculative flavor. But by the The directors realized that an ac- Blackstone’s time, canals had proved curate survey would be necessary before themselves to be a growing and reliable proceeding with the construction of the form of transportation and the shares a canal and they sent Baldwin to Pennsyl- promising investment. The Middlesex vania to consult an Englishman named was a pioneering enterprise and a cour- Mr. Weston who was surveying for ageous undertaking. It penetrated a canals there. Mr. Weston consented to countryside of sparse population-Med- come to Massachusetts and survey for ford, Woburn and Chelmsford, all small the Middlesex. Baldwin wrote back that villages, with Lowell nonexistant and “Mrs. Weston has more than once ex- Boston itself a town of only 20,000.