An Organization for Canal Advocates and Researchers
We don’t have an image of the Herkimer yet.
Contract 20 was the longest of all the contracts let for the construction of the Barge Canal, and it was divided into 4 parts, each identified with a A,B,C or D. The contracts ran between Schenectady west to Little Falls. It was purely a dredging contract to canalize the Mohawk River. Oddly, the construction photos doesn’t have any images from 20A.
So far I have found six dredges used by the two contractors, the S. Pearson and Son, and the American Pipe and Construction companies. We also find an unusual hydraulic dredge at work on this section. The Canajoharie was called a “hydraulic disposal boat,” or a “floating screening plant,” and it was featured in the January, 1911 issue of the Barge Canal Bulletin. The dipper dredges would work alongside the Canajoharie and dump their spoil into hoppers located on the bow of the boat. The spoil was then run through a series of screen that would separate out the stones by size. The stones were deposited in a scow and the lighter material was pumped to the shore by floating pipes. It was written that a second of these boats was in use on Contract 30, but I have not found a photo of it.
The material being excavated was certainly different from the mud, sand and muck that was being removed along the Seneca River. The material in the bed of the river was stony and not totally suited for hydraulic dredges. However, when the spoils were sorted and separated, the larger stones were useful as bank armoring.
The contracts for the construction of the Barge Canal were let as they were completed by the engineering forces of the state, so, as we see here, contract 15 was along the Champlain Canal in the Comstock area, and contract 19 was far out west along the Tonawanda Creek. It helps to have a map of the contracts.
So far, I have only found one dredge working this contract. This was the hydraulic dredge Champlain, owned by the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific engineering firm. It was launched in 1907, which means this dredge is quite new when this photo was taken.
Great Lakes Construction was the contractor for contract 19, and they had four dredges at work; one hydraulic, one dipper and two clam shells.
Contract 12 of the New York State Barge Canal (1905-1918) was for dredging the Oneida and Seneca rivers from Oneida Lake west to Montezuma. It was held by the Stewart-Kerbaugh-Shanley company and five dredges were built for the project.
All the photos used are from the New York State Archives, Barge Canal Construction, collection series 11833.
So far, I have identified nearly 40 dredges of various types that were used to build the NYS Barge Canal between 1905 – 1918. Most of these were given a name, but not all. So here is a roll call.
There were two sister dredges built for Contract 1 on the Hudson River, dredge No. 1 and No. 2. They were also given the names Peconic and Pontiac, but so far I have not been able to say which was which.
The Oneida and Ontario were steel-hulled hydraulic dredges designed by Lindon Wallace Bates, either the senior or junior. Both were well know Civil Engineers of the period. Lindon Bates Jr., was in charge of the engineering firm that held the contract.
The dredges were designed to fit through the Enlarged Erie Canal locks so they could move from place to place, however the dredges were found to be too tipsy, so side pontoons were added to help with the stability.
The dual cutter-heads were quite unique for the project and the photographer took a lot of images of them. The cutters proved not to be suitable for the work and the dredges were refitted in 1909.
Lindon Wallace Bates Jr., died in the sinking of the Lusitania.
The Owego was a smaller hydraulic dredge used for softer materials. This is the only image I have found so far.
This small “orange-peel” dredge is only seen in silhouette. The name orange-peel describes the bucket in use. These would be used for small tasks around docks and piers.
Note- I have found well over 120 photos showing the dredges used on the construction of the NYS Barge Canal. Addition posts with more photos will follow.
The 1900s New York State Barge Canal was one of a number of “modern day” canal projects that included the Hennepin (Illinois and Mississippi), the Chicago Sanitary, the Panama, and the New York State canals. The construction of the Panama placed it in “competition” with the Barge Canal, at least in the eyes of the engineering forces working on New York’s project. So over the course of construction from 1905 to 1918, we see a very active PR campaign on the part of New York as they try not to get lost in the excitement of the isthmus canal. Thus, we have a wealth of journal articles, reports and photographs to help us understand the construction and machinery used. The engineers were very keen on getting articles in the engineering journals for all to read, and these articles went into great details about the machinery, tools, techniques, and innovations being used and developed. New York even went as far to publish a monthly Barge Canal Bulletin that chronicles the project.
And the engineer’s pride was not too far off as this large project was noteworthy for many innovations. This passage in the February 1915 issue of The Contractor gives a bit of context; “Just as the excavation of the Chicago Drainage Canal caused a great improvement in steam shovel construction, so the New York Barge Canal, with its great variety of material encountered stimulated the builders of hydraulic dredges to develop a machine capable of digging material before considered beyond the ability of this type of dredge. As a result of the experience gained in this work a great advance has been made in cutter construction.“
This look at dredges is a continuation of a series that has been examining the machinery used to construct the New York State Barge Canal between 1906 and 1918. As this project built on the machines and technologies being developed in the other canal projects of the day, what we see here would have been used on those works.
The steam powered dredge was about 30 years old when it was put to use in the various construction contracts along the NYS Barge Canal. Human and animal powered dredges had been in use as early as 1718 in Europe, but it was the development of the small “portable” steam engine that really brought them into use in earth removal.
The construction of the Barge Canal was broken up and let out as many contracts that companies could bid on. The low bidder won the bid and then set about setting up his plant. The contract might be for dredging a river, lake, or cutting a completely new channel. The machines use reflected what the contractor thought they would be excavating.
The dredge had to be suited to the materials (spoils) to be removed. “Soft” homogeneous materials such as organic muck, marl, sand, ooze, quicksand, and so on, could be removed in a steady continuous manner. Thus we find the “continuous dredge” type being used. These fall into two types; the ladder/bucket/elevator dredge, and the suction/hydraulic dredge. These dredges could remove, transport and deposit the spoils fairly quickly, making them the preferred dredge to use whenever possible. Although these machines could handle small rocks, they were not suited to removing harder materials like rock, large stone, boulders, conglomerate soils. In many cases these materials had to be drilled and blasted so that they could be removed. If possible, it was better to use a track mounted steam shovel and carry out the removal in dry conditions. However, in many cases the rock was found under softer material in a watered channel. In these cases, the steam shovel was still used, except it was mounted to a barge. As the spoil was removed scoop by scoop, this type of dredge was called an intermittent dredge. The dipper dredge and the cable operated grapple dredge fall into this type.
We will begin with the continuous types.
The oldest dredge type was the ladder/elevator/bucket dredge dating back to the 1700s. The name(s) comes from the design, where a long boom fitted with a endless chain of buckets. When the boom is lowered into the materials to be removed, the buckets scoop up the spoil and carry it to the top of the boom, dump it onto a system of belt conveyors, and the return as the chain revolves. The belt conveyor then carries dredging spoils to a dump scow or deposit them onto land. Since the material is removed in a continuous manner, it is considered to be a continuous dredge type.
Ladder dredges were better suited for to a dryer environment as if the materials being removed is too loose, it could easily wash out of the bucket before it got to the conveyor. However, they are more robust in what they could handle. Ladder dredges were often seen in mining operations as they can work in dry material. By using a series of screens along the conveyor, the materials could be easily separated into various piles of different sizes. In the images we often see the ladder dredges being used to build up banks and dikes since they could pile the spoils.
The working depth depended on the length of the boom and the size of the engines. In the machines we see used on the Barge Canal, each bucket weights over 2000 pounds and could scoop up 8.5-cubic-feet of materials.
Ladder dredges were extensively used on the construction of the Suez Canal, and it was what the French used in their attempt to dig the Panama Canal. When they left the project, they left behind nearly 20 of the large machines to rot in the jungle.
The first suction dredge was designed in 1867 in Europe and the first suction dredge in America followed shortly after in 1872. These machines used a large centrifugal pump to create a suction that basically vacuumed up the earth and rock. A long suction tube extended out from the bow of the dredge and was lowered into the work area. At the stern, hundreds, or even thousands, of feet of discharge pipes carried the spoil and water mix to a dump scow, landside containment area, or even dumped into non-navigation area in the river or lake. As with the ladder dredge, these are called continuous dredges.
An improvement was made to the dredge in 1878 when a revolving cutter head was fitted to the suction tube. The cutter-head could loosen harder materials and cut through organic matter. It is like the beater head on a home vacuum. To differentiate between the two types, the dredge without the cutter-head was called a suction dredge, while the one with the cutter-head was called a hydraulic dredge. Most of the machines we see in use on canal projects were hydraulic dredges, although at least one suction dredge was used to mine a sand bank for a concrete plant.
The hydraulic dredge was so important to the project that a 1913 article in the Engineering News begins with this synopsis. The excavation required for enlarging the new York State Canals to form the 12-foot Barge Canal across the state amounts to 110,000,000 cubic yards. A large amount of this material is being removed by hydraulic suction dredges, which have been specially designed for the work. The record of the performances of these dredges will be of interest to every contractor and engineer who deals with earth handling.
The hydraulic dredge was remarkably robust and the spoil piles show rather large stone being removed, although this caused quiet a bit of damage to the pumps. However in the rivers and lakes, these dredges were the only option to the contractors and they had to deal with the damage.
The major difficulty in using the hydraulic dredge was the handling of the spoil and water. Low areas near the project site would be selected and perimeter dikes would be built. As the slurry was pumped into the disposal area, the water was allowed to escape and (hopefully) return to the river. But as the dikes were often hastily constructed, they could break and cause the surrounding area to be flooded with the muddy mess.
Although the hydraulic dredge was the principle tool in the contractors toolbox, it was not suited to all materials. In places were rock ledge, hardpan, or conglomerate materials had to be removed, the dipper or grapple dredge was placed in service.
The dipper dredge was basically a steam shovel mounted on a barge and like its land bound cousin, it’s large bucket could lift large pieces of blasted rock, boulders, or scoop gravels. Since the spoil was removed one bucket at a time, these fall into the intermittent type. In the photos, these are often seen working along with drilling rigs and blasting teams. The spoils were placed into dump scows or landside dump trains, or simply cast aside if space allowed. The working depth was limited by the length of the boom and the stability of the boat.
The grapple dredge was a cable crane mounted on a barge and outfitted with a clamshell or orange-peel bucket. (The orange-peel was a round bucket with 4 sections that was very good at sinking into soft materials.) This was the slowest of all the dredge types and was used in small projects. The clamshell was good for lifting large rock and stone, whereas the orange-peel was used to remove softer materials.
These dredges were large machines with steam engines, pumps, electrical generators, winches and so on. Unlike the steam shovel that could be moved to the work site by rail, the dredge was typically built on site, used, and then disassembled. Depending on the size of the work fleet, the contractor might have set up a drydock, such as what Stewart, Kerbaugh and Shenley constructed at Brewerton, west of Oneida Lake.(3) Many of the dredges were built by well known companies such as Bucyrus, Marion, Morris, American Locomotive, and sent to the project site as a pre-built kit. As each dredge was custom built, each has its own unique appearance. Some dredges were handsome boats while other had a more “rustic” look. The dredge was typically given a name that reflected the region of their work. Thus we see the Clyde near Clyde, Niagara in the west, Canajoharie in the Mohawk River, etc.
Each dredge was staffed with a crew that could number up to 15 men per shift. These included a captain or foreman, assistant, operator, fireman for the steam engine, mechanics, line handlers, men to shift the pipes, and others. If the crew ran 24-hours, the total crew could easily number around 40. To feed and house all these men, a floating crew quarters was used.
None of the dredges were self-propelled and had to be moved by tug boat. At the work site, long spuds would be lowered to anchor the dredge in place and to help steady it as it worked. The boom of the ladder and hydraulic dredge could only be raised and lowered, so to move the boom through the earth, the entire boat would be “swept” from side to side. To do this, cables would be attached to anchor points, one spud would be raised, and by winching the cable in, the dredge could be moved to that side. Then the process was reversed for the other side. As the spuds were raised and lowered, the dredge would “walk” forward.
This is just an introduction to the topic of dredges and dredging. But the photos tell the real story.
All the photos used here are from – Barge Canal Construction Photos, Series 11833, New York State Archives, Albany, NY.
Barge Canal Bulletin, New York State, 1908-1918.
Hydraulic Dredging on the New York Barge Canal, Engineering News, Vol 69, No 15. page 710.
Prelini, Charles. Dredges and Dredging. D.Van Nostrand Company, NY , 1911
Engineering News- July 29, 1909 The Excavating and Dredging Outfit on the Oneida River Section, Contract No. 12 of the New York State Barge Canal. Page 111
Lanyon, Richard. Building The Canal To Save Chicago, 2012
Gigantic Feats For Engineers. The Syracuse Herald, April 18, 1909.
Breaks World’s Record. Baldwinsville Gazette and Farmer, November 18, 1909.
Big Dredge Is Built. The Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 20, 1895.
Report of Organizer Whitcraft, Steam Shovel and Dredge, Chicago, Illinois, August, 1908. Page 581.
Allen, Jean M. The Hydraulic Dredge; Its Value as a Contractor’s Tool, The Contractor, Vol 21, No. 4, February 15, 1915, page 26.
It is likely that if you are a history enthusiast or a genealogist, you have a collection. It might be books, photos, slides, documents, artifacts, maps, (or whatever), but I bet that you have a pile of it somewhere. Perhaps in many rooms? Have you added rooms for your collection? And, I will bet that at some point you, or your loved ones, will want to dispose of said collection. It happens. It is a fact of life. So why talk about it? Well sadly, we seem to be going through a point of time when the baby-boomers are passing on and many of these collections are looking for new homes.
As a amateur historian who serves as a town historian and the president of a couple historical groups, I have a rule of thumb when it comes to personal collections. Your stuff has deep meaning to you. You recall finding and acquiring it, studying it, showing it off and boring your friends and family with it. Your kids might have some memory of going off with you on your explorations, or recall the folks in the photos, or even have picked up your hobby. But, it is not their stuff. They might hold onto it, but it isn’t theirs. And if they happen to hold onto it, by the time your grandkids inherit it, it is simply stuff and clutter. At that point it will go to the nearest auction site, Ebay, or garage sale. Or, in some tragic cases, it all gets chucked in the trash bin as no one wants to deal with it.
Over the past few years I have been involved with packing up and removing a few personal collections after the death of the owner. It is a sad thing to see a lifetime of collecting, preservation and study reduced to a few (or many) boxes. And yet, that is what it becomes. So, the question for you, dear reader, is, “do you care what happens to it?” Or, “Do your loved ones know what you want to do with it?”
And let me be very honest. Sadly, death often brings out the worst in every family as relatives begin circling around estimating the value of this and that, and how much money they will be receiving. If you don’t want that to happen, begin your planning now.
So what is of value? And as this is a canal organization, I will focus on canals, but it applies to all collections. Unless you are a collector of rare books and maps, your library of canal titles may be of little value as most organizations already have them. Books can be of some value if they can be sold on the used market and the money used to aid the organization, but, make certain that your will specifies that things can be sold if not needed.
So what else might be important? Have you conducted research, written articles or books, or taken photos throughout the years? If so, all these original manuscript materials might be of value to an organization. Those old slides can be wonderful treasures. And now that we are 30 years into digital cameras, make sure that your list includes your hard-drives or at least a copy of your electronic canal photos.
So what to do? Well, let me say first to check with your family to see if they want it. And if they do, well then all is good. If they don’t want it and you don’t care, then tell them to have a sale and split the money. However, if you want it to be donated, then say this in your will and tell your family! Then speak with your lawyer to make sure that whatever the decision is, that it is spelled out it your will.
But before saying that you want the so-and-so historical society to be the new owner, be sure to ask the intended recipient if they would enjoy being the benefactor of your good intentions. Some groups don’t have the desire, room, money or manpower to deal with a collection. For instance, at my local historical society we often get donations of “old things,” and unless they fit into our mission, they are either given away or sold. We will try to find homes for items that we feel have value, but there are plenty of old Sad irons out there, and believe me, we have enough!
When you ask about possible donations, the organization will likely want to know what you have, so make an inventory and catalog your collection. It makes it so much easier to use when you are alive, and when you are gone, the inventory can be useful in deciding what goes where. Also remember to include any documentation that might go with a rare or important item, and include the provenance if you know it.
Once the physical stuff is set and safe, turn your thoughts to your computer and digital presence. Do you have a list of user names and passwords? If you are running an organization, can others find the legal forms? In one case I had to write letters and send death certificates to gain access to a website, whereas a simple password would have made things very easy. Plus, if you are active on the internet and run a website, do you care what happens once you stop writing and paying for the website? If you do, look into a service that will host your inactive website. With an upfront payment, you can ensure a number of years of continued web presence.
It is never easy or fun to think about what happens after you are gone. But, it isn’t really fair to leave it up to your loved ones to decide what happens with all your stuff. Make plans now.
The history of a canal doesn’t stop when the canal is abandoned. As long as the canal, or parts of it are present, what happens after maintenance stops becomes part of the story.
Canal historians have been aware of this and have been keeping track of the changing landscapes. By finding a vantage point and returning year after year to document the site, the changes to the landscape can be recorded. And if the canal or lock or aqueduct is gone one year, well then, at least it was documented for the future generations.
Terry Woods worked in Akron and was able to document the changes to Lock 2, mostly from West State Street, between 1964 and 1986. He also wandered down to the locks and took a couple shots of what was to the north.
This last one is from Google Maps. I “drove” over West State and looked south. The changes are remarkable.
If I run across any more in the Woods collection I will be sure to add them to this post.
Terry’s introduction- Last Saturday the Canal Society of Ohio held its annual spring tour of a portion of Ohio Canal Land. This tour ran from Newcomerstown on the Ohio & Erie to Coshocton then up the Walhonding Canal to the Muskingum Conservancy’s 1935 “answer” to the 1913 flood – The Mohawk Dam.
The first portion of the tour went from Coshocton along the River Route (there is a shorter Hill Route) through Canal Lewisville to Newcomerstown. As luck would have it, I recently ran across something I’ve had in my files for many years, an account of a motor tour from Coshocton to Newcomerstown in 1907! Apparently I had never read it thoroughly before as, buried in its contents, was reference to a mill at Wild Turkey Lock (No. 25) and another one, probably at Lock 24.
Anyway, I thought you might like to have a look at the Ohio Canal, the roads, and the Tuscarawas River in the wild (then and still little bit now) section of Coshocton County.
UP THE TUSCARAWAS – 1907.i
John promised to meet us at the corner Main and Forth Streets at 7am sharp, but we knew that was to avoid contention. Seven is not on his day trick. His folks have no knowledge of his ever having seen the sun as early as seven. If he had his way he’d have it rise at 9 instead of 5.
By an extraordinary struggle with the bed covers, he managed to turn the corner at 8:15, but not with that dash and exuberance of spirits characteristic of him when a party of the other sex awaits him. His look seemed to say that this thing is going to be mighty monotonous with nothing but men. And he began to recite his fears as to one of the tires, a leak in the water tank, the weather, the obstinacy of the sparker and other vicissitudes of autoing; but to no avail, for we insisted on going at all hazards.
We started up the River Road for West Lafayette. The Hill Road is the shorter; but the camera whispered something about the river, the canal and the old locks – the picturesque things.
John held the throttle. Ed puffed clouds of smoke from his two-fors, with nothing on his mind but a derby, while C. M. and the writer kept a sharp lookout for the pretty spots.
We dashed across the Tuscarawas river bridge into that uncertain triangular piece of land between Coshocton and Roscoe and the Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers, known as “The Forks.” Circling around the mill, we started up the river bottoms along the fields of corn, but not without a look back over our shoulders at picturesque Roscoe, holding on to the steep hillside.
Roscoe is the quaint old canal metropolis of Coshocton county, now more of a residential adjunct to Coshocton.
The water power from the Walhonding canal rolls the wheels of two flouring mills and a planning mill only, but is being harnessed by the State for greater things. The Coshocton Electric Light Company will build a mammoth power plant where the water spills over into the river below.ii
Roscoe always appeals to the artist, with its quaint, old early-canal-day buildings backed up against the canal. Much oil and water-color has been spread over its scenes; and being stuck up on a hillside, it affords some remarkable birdseye views of three rivers, two canals, three basins, an aqueduct and a railway trestle, to say nothing of the hills and valleys leading out in various directions, and the busy city of Coshocton across the two rivers.
The Forks is rich in Indian history. The two races met here in the early days, but did not always harmonize and go off together as peacefully as the Walhonding and the Tuscarawas into the Muskingum below. Much blood was shed in the primeval forests of this neighborhood.
The Forks is near the site of the capital of the Delawares. Here it was the objective point of the Bouquet treaty in 1764 and the scene of the famous Bouquet expedition of the War of the Revolution, sometimes known as the Coshocton Campaign. While up along the valleys of the Walhonding, Tuscarawas and Muskingum are many other points of interest in Indian history, as well as several evidences of the Mound Builders time.
A few explosions of gasoline and we were in Canal Lewisville, a little canal hamlet with enough of the ramshackle to make a good picture. We stopped the automobile just right for a flock of geese on the towing path to pose beautifully and kept their eyes on Ed as they were requested.
The run from Canal Lewisville to the West Lafayette bridge is a delightful one. First the road is on one side of the canal, and then the other while the river whips up close one minute and the next shies off around that big bend then disappears among the Sycamores. Among the refreshing local places that marked our progress up the canal are McGuire’s Grove, Wild Turkey lock, Rush Island Pond and Shaw’s Bottoms.
Wild Turkey Lock was once the seat of a flouring mill. The writer remembers in his boyhood some delightful trips to the mill with the “hired hand.” The turtles slipped into the water so interestingly, and the canal boats in those days pointed their prows around the bend more majestically than a big ship breaks over the horizon into New York harbor now, from the standpoint of the same observer.
Leaving the canal bank and turning south at the river bridge, near the mouth of White Eyes creek, we made a bee line for West Lafayette, passing Plain Hill – an eminence set out on the plain like a long mound, from which peculiarity it gets its name.
West Lafayette is a thriving town of a thousand people, and has two enamel and two wooden novelty factories. Besides, it is a college town, the seat of West Lafayette College, a well known, but youthful institution of higher learning. West Lafayette has a splendid location – a high gravelly plain, surrounded by a beautiful framework of gentle hills about a mile away, both north and south, and without a “wash” or other harsh lines on them to mar the land-scape. To the writer, it has another charm. It is his home – the effulgence which does not depend upon rural beauty or commercial progress.
Going directly east from West Lafayette we went through that part of the Tuscarawas valley known as White Eyes Plains, a valley from a mile to nearly two miles wide, fine farm land and thickly settled.
But for the picturesque we turned off at Waggoner’s Corner for the river and the canal, and more particularly to the old canal town of Orange, which now has but eight families. In fact it never had a metropolitan population. As a post office, the town of Orange was first known as White Eyes Plain, and later Evansburgh. But now a rural route has invaded the place and made it unnecessary to dignify some citizen with the title of postmaster. Here we saw signs of the revival of the old canal, in the building of a new swing bridge. Up the canal farther the improvements are more frequent. The little canal towns expect to see more of the mules again.
The West Lafayette to Orange trip could be made by another route, passing the famous Blue Hole, The Falls, the lock where once stood the Emerson mill and other picturesque delights of the eye along a popular stretch of river for fishermen and campers.
A little east of Orange is the site of a much older town, Evansburg, long since obliterated by old age and a cyclone – once quite a busy place, whither farmers brought their wheat to be shipped out on the canal.
From Orange we turned back on The Plains, passing the old “Rock Fort,” a small stone building with rifle portholes through its walls, now very old and crumbling. It has received a good deal of attention in recent years from the photographers and historically inclined. It is said by some to have been built by the Evanses, the first settlers; yet the scions of that family seem to know nothing about it. Its mystery is its charm, and we have no disposition to investigate too far for fear that no Indians were ever shot from its portholes and that its purpose was more mill than blood.
Passing Isleta, a neat one-store hamlet on the Pennsylvania railroad, we flew up the Plains through clouds of dust towards Newcomerstown.
West of Newcomerstown we struck the Antietem of river destruction known as the Miskimen Bottoms. Here the river has changed its course every time it looked like rain, and keeps the Coshocton county commissioners perplexed almost as much as their second terms. The first mark of it is the long double-barreled Miskimen wooden bridge, spanning a pasture field. It is a Puckingham Truss and was built by the Hagertys of Nashport, in the fifties.
From this bridge we follow a big “fill” where some adjoining farms have been hauled in to put the road above high water. Next we strike the iron bridge, the second built on this spot, the first going down in the flood of 1903. Here the river makes angry swipes at both ends of the bridge and has drained all Central Ohio of piling and sandstone, and is still whipping her tail in her violent demands for more appropriations. At this point there are in operation several teams. Making a short cut in the river and at the same time making a road above high water for nearly a half mile at the other end of the bridge. And an abutment for another span of the bridge is now being built.
A little further east we cross a fill through a pool of deep blue water. This marks the spot of another old wooden bridge, which spanned the Tuscarawas in one of its fickle moods in the Miskimen Bottoms.
Newcomerstown is a growing town of nearly four thousand people. It has one immense factory, the Clew & Company pipe works, which employ several hundred men and a file factory, some brick factories and other smaller concerns. It has two newspapers, two banks, a new park donated by George Mulvane and many other city airs.
This town gets its name from a tradition. The old chief of the Indian village at the upper end of the present site of the town brought home from one of his expeditions a white wife, number two who was called the “newcomer.” Wife number one was not pleased with the situation and effectively used a tomahawk on the newcomer, thus establishing a good healthy tradition.
Three or four miles east of Newcomerstown is the site of a depopulated mining town called Glasgow, a little off the Port Washington Road. It was a settlement in connection with an iron mine which was opened there by a Scotch company along in the seventies. The mine proved a failure. It is said the iron cost $2.50 per ton more than it brought. The young men in charge were sons of the rich Scotch owners and spent money lavishly. One of them was a Coates, of the Coates thread manufacturing people of Glasgow. A well known Newcomerstown man tells of them paying him five dollars for holding their horses while they called on some friends. In time the rich fathers grew tired of the way things were going and stopped the flow of gold, which, it is said, had reached nearly three millions of dollars. At one time this little village of Glasgow had one thousand people.
Just this side of Port Washington, a mile or so, we passed the site of the little Norman settlement of Salem, where some authorities claim was born the first white child in Ohio. There is nothing left to mark the place.
Port Washington is another little Tuscarawas valley town of about five hundred people. It has a nicely shaded one-hundred-feet main street and an open square. It did have two woodwork factories. Both are now in ashes. It is a canal “port,” but the Pennsylvania railroad is nowadays getting the most travel.
Leaving Port Washington, we continued up the valley, the road keeping north of the canal, on the opposite side from the river. There is no special mark of industry before reaching Lock 17, except the Buchler Bro’s tile works, which is as isolated from any town as a sheep barn. The drive is just rural scenery – corn, wheat, canal, river, hills, wild flox, elderberries, cat tails, cattle and pond lilies.
Lock 17 is a hamlet with a mill, a store and a railroad station, and barely enough people to keep the village storekeeper from getting lonesome rainy days and Saturday nights. Here the general farming is varied somewhat by tomatoes and the like, and there is a big glass covered house on the hillside for the early growth of tomato plants and lettuce.
One mile farther, we reach our destination, Ganadenhutten, and dinner, which latter function was delayed because of so much photography en route and an hour and a half’s perplexity near Newcomerstown over the loss of a bolt. When one loses a bolt of an automobile he has a much greater respect for horses and other beasts of burden.
Leaving the village hotel we stopped at the local cemetery and the monuments to the over 90 ‘converted’ Christian Indians who were massacred by Pittsburgh militiamen.
Our return trip was almost as refreshing as the first. Up the Tuscarawas and down the Tuscarawas are two different panoramas. Either is charming in its variety. You pass the vestibule train and the weary canal boat. You pass the palatial home and the log cabin, covered with the wild trumpet vine. You ride along broad sweeps of waving corn and you hug some hillside under the shade of the oaks and the projecting coal chutes and berry bushes.
Variety – charming variety, everywhere. No moment do you know the full charm of the scene that will greet you around the turn as you fly along the Tuscarawas Valley.
As we ran down the Plains it was nearing sunset. The rabbits were bolder, and the lovers, too. The latter sat closer as the sun was going down. Some of the worsted had a continuous effect over the buggy seat, which situation had to be readjusted when the horse began to recognize the automobile, but the love of one young swain near Port Washington was sufficient to hold his horse with only one hand.
As the evening shades were growing deep, we reached “the Experimental Farm,” the home of the writer, and John, Ed, and C. M. went on their last eight miles by the Hill Road to our starting point, Coshocton.
i Up The Tuscarawas, by Harry Ferguson. OHIO MAGAZINE, March, 1907 Pgs 422-427.
ii The water from the Walhonding Canal emptied into Roscoe Basin.
Editor’s note- The late Dr. Karen Grey coined a phrase called “Zombie History,” where incorrect history is handed down through the generations, and it is accepted and repeated as truth. Terry does a bit of Zombie History killing in this Canal Comments about the “last” boatman on the Miami and Erie Canal. Here is his article with his own introduction.
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A week or so ago I ran across an item on the Internet titled, the Last Ohio Canal Boat. I copied it in the hope of using it as a column. BUT, the history was so inaccurate that I thought it might have been written as a “joke”. In this account the number of locks mentioned between Akron and Cleveland were wrong. And it stated the first boat on the Ohio Canal left Akron on July 1st, when it is well documented that it left Akron the day before the opening ceremonies of that first stretch of the Ohio Canal on July 4th.
AND, the author of that “joke piece” stated that “the clarinet became the instrument of the canal.” I, personally can’t imagine a canal boatman giving up his Banjo or Violin for a clarinet, or even recognizing one.
But. subsequent browsing through the Internet produced a couple of articles that contained a bit on “The last Boatman on the Miami & Erie Canal”. So. I’ve written today’s column using that topic and the information from those two articles, plus a bit of general knowledge about the Miami & Erie Canal.
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THE LAST OHIO CANAL BOATMAN ON THE MIAMI & ERIE CANALi
There was no ceremony and little notice when the last canal boat pulled out of Hamilton over 100 years ago. In fact, the man who claimed to have been the captain on that final run, later, wasn’t entirely sure of the exact date when he, Bertus Havens, tried to recall that unheralded experience on the Miami & Erie Canal.
“She was the LADY HAMILTON, built at a boat yard in Hamilton” (now considered a suburb of Cincinnati) as was stated in a letter Bertus wrote in 1974, recalling what he believed to be that last trip from Hamilton.
In a later interview Haven’s stated that, “I pulled her from what is now the intersection of High Street and Erie Highway here in Hamilton, . . . down to Lockland’s Collector’s Locks. There, another crew took her down to Cincinnati, just below 12th. Street.” After her cargo was unloaded, wheels were placed under the LADY HAMILTON and she was towed the short distance to the Ohio River. From there she was transported to Chicago for service on the Illinois & Michigan Canal.
Havens, who rather enjoyed his self-proclaimed title of the “last boatman on the Miami & Erie Canal” was born on January 27, 1882 in Hamilton, when the canal was already in decline. It had been opened from Middletown south to Hamilton by August of 1827, and later extended to Cincinnati. Eventually, through a series of extensions, the canal connected the Ohio River at Cincinnati to Lake Erie at Toledo.
The Miami Canal was begun with a ground-breaking on July 21, 1825 on Daniel Doty’s farm, then south of Middletown. By August 1827, trips between Hamilton and Middletown were possible. The canal reached Cincinnati later that year. Eventually, through two expansion projects, the canal connected the Ohio River at Cincinnati with Lake Erie at Toledo. In January, 1849, the Ohio State Legislature renamed the Miam Canal and the various extensions, as the Miami & Erie Canal.
The Miami & Erie Canal experienced a great “run of traffic” both freight and passengers for a number of years. But in 1851, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad was completed and the bulk of passengers and freight in the area soon were being transferred from the canal to the railroad, and traffic on 249 mile long Miami & Erie Canal fell off drastically.
There was an attempted rebuild of the Miami & Erie and the northern section of the Ohio & Erie from 1905 through 1909. But the appropriations, and public support ran out at the end of the 1909 construction season and the rebuild was not continued. Then the devastating March 1913 flood ended all hopes of resuming long distance traffic on Ohio’s towpath canals.
Havens, at age 21, was in Troop H, 8th U.S. Cavalry, at Jefferson Barracks, south of St. Louis, about to begin an 18 month tour in the Philippines. Later, he was a mounted policeman in Cheyenne, Wyoming, before returning to Hamilton to work on the Miami & Erie Canal in its final years.
That portion of the canal Havens worked on was near the end of its lifetime when he worked on it. “The traffic was light and about to end”, he said. “Drivers were being paid $18.00 a month, plus board, while I was employed on the canal.
“I worked for awhile with what they called the ‘Electric Mule’, which was a failure,” he recalled. “They tried to pull two and three boats at a time, which was O.K. if they went slow, each boat behind the other.”
“But when they would try to go fast, it would push all the water ahead of the boats, and then the rear boats slid on the muddy bottom and the tow line would break. Then the boats would stop, the water would rush back, and the boats would just bob around.”
The Electric Mules were small electric-powered railway locomotives used in an attempt to replace horses and mules to pull canal boats. This new system also required the installation of rails and overhead trolley wires along the towpath. The rails also interfered with the easy passing of standard horses and mules.
Havens apparently left the canal after his “Last Canal Boatman“ trip and was later employed by the U.S. Navy as an instrument maker for 30 years, working at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from 1940 to 1952.
Bertus Garfield Havens died on November 12, 1981 in Campbell California, less than three months before his 100th birthday. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton under a tombstone that proudly proclaims the he was the “Last of the Canal Boatmen” on the Miami & Erie Canal!
BUT! I can’t wonder about the men that “took over” the LADY HAMILTON” on those final few miles into Cincinnati back in 1907 or 08.
AND! Additional research has uncovered a small paragraph in a piece put on the Internet by the Butler County Lane Library that states, in part, “Freight boats disappeared from the canal by the early 1900s, and long-distance passenger service vanished before that. And then the 1913 flood demolished a number of upstream locks and destroyed miles of the canal’s channel. It is believed that a final excursion boat on the Cincinnati section of the canal was made hosting a party for a gathering of the “Free Settlers,” a society made up exclusively of men, and apparently dedicated to “the proposition” of beer drinking. That voyage began, on July 27, 1917, “fittingly”, at the Gerke Brewery on the canal’s Plumb Street Bend, and ended at Bruckman’s, near the Ludlow Aqueduct”.
But since the names of the boatmen who took the LADY HAMILTON down to Cincinnati, and any captain of the beer drinker’s craft is lost in antiquity, let’s all say that Bertus Garfield Haven was the “Last Boatmen on the Miami & Erie Canal”. After all, it says so on his tombstone!
i Much of the information for this column came from, “Last Miami-Erie Canal Boatman”, By Jim Blount, and “MIAMI-ERIE CANAL” – The Lane Library, Butler County, both copied from the internet on February 1, 2022.
