News - Page 6 of 11 - The American Canal Society

Barge Canal Construction Equipment, The Steam Shovel

Steam shovel on Contract 1. This might be a Marion model improved A.

The steam shovel was perhaps the most ubiquitous machine on construction and mining sites between 1880 and 1930. The earliest steam shovel dates back to 1835 when William Otis designed what was called a railroad shovel. The machine, which included a steam boiler, various steam engines, dipper arm assembly, fuel and water, weighed several tons.(1) At the time the only large construction projects that could use such a machine were in railroad construction so the shovel was mounted to a flatcar and set on standard gauge railroad wheels. The shovel could also be mounted to a barge and used as a dredge but that came later.

This shovel loads a train on Contract 12.

The Otis patent ran out in the 1870s, and this allowed many companies to begin the manufacture of their own machines. Well known brands were the Osgood, Marion, Bucyrus, Barnhart, and American steam shovels. Osgood shovels were produced in Troy, NY, while Marion, Bucyrus and Barnhart were all Ohio companies. Improvements were made to the shovels as they got sturdier, heavier and more powerful.

A Vulcan is working at Lock 8 in Rotterdam on Contract 8. This contractor would late abandon this project due to the quicksand.

Shovels were soon at work on railroad projects, canal construction, mining and quarrying, basically anywhere large quantities of materials had to be excavated. But as this is about canal construction, lets take a look at how they were used.

The crew of the Model 60 and the steam trail pose for the photographer at Cranesville.

Because the shovels were mounted to railroad trucks and moved on rails, the shovel could only cut level swaths. The shovel would be moved around the site by men laying out temporary rails. Once at the cut, the shovel would extend it’s outriggers for stability then begin excavate to its front and sides. The machine could cut about three times it’s width. All spoils had to be loaded into hopper cars that were set on a narrow gauge railroad. Once the area was cleared to its front, the track team would lay out a new section of tracks and the shovel would slowly crawl forward. If the job was large enough to warrant more than one machine, a second machine would begin to remove earth on a lower terrace, following behind the first. The tracks also helped to distribute the weight of the machine allowing them to work in wetter areas, however as they were not easy or quick to move, there are many photographs of shovels sitting in flooded work sites.

We get a good look at the bottom of the shovel after this one turned over. Note the chain drive.

Shovels could also be mounted to barges and used as dipper dredges. Many of these were site built with the machinery being shipped to the job site and the barge being constructed from locally sourced lumber. Once the job was done the machinery was removed and the barge discarded. (2)

This Bucyrus shovel is being used to move blasted rock. Not the men loading the skips in the foreground.

Although good at handling gravel, sand and other aggregate materials, they were not good at moving larger rock. Many times you will find the shovel being used to load skips that were moved by cranes or cable ways.

On Contract 6. The shovel is loading an inclined tipple.

As they were developed, steam shovels were fitted out with crawler tracks. The only existing shovel of this configuration can be seen in Leroy, NY where a Marion Model 91 sits in a field. Once the internal combustion engine and hydraulic drives began to be used in construction machinery, the days of the steam shovel numbered. One man could do the work of 4 or 5, and once mounted to crawler tracks instead of railroad tracks, the mobility of the machine made it more useful. Today the hydraulic excavator, a distant cousin of the steam shovel, can be found on almost every job site.

If you are interested in seeing these machines at work, check out the videos of construction of the Panama Canal. Bucyrus and Marion both supplied shovels to this work and were certain to make movies about it. With the clouds and steam and smoke, they make for interesting viewing. Of course the most famous steam shovel might be the Bucyrus in which President Roosevelt posed along the Cublra Cut in the Panama Canal.

There is a very good history of steam shovels at Heritage Machines.

Steam shovels were slow to move and were often caught in flooded situations.

This was a year after the flooded shovel. Note the dredge and steam pumps. The Marion Model 60 appears to be cold.

(1) A handy hint is that the model number refers to the weight of the shovel, thus a Marion 60 weighed about 60 tons.

Note the young girl sitting on the chair used by the man who operates the dipper.

(2) The images used in this post are from the New York State Archives, Barge Canal Construction Photos, 11833.

Canal Comments- The Ohio Canal and the 1918 Flu Epidemic

by Terry K Woods.

Today’s column is another one taken from personal interviews. This one was taken by me and the interview has first hand information. Still, I had to take many of the statements ‘out of context.’ Waldo Streby, the man I interviewed, would change the subject, get back to it, then sometimes talk about something else. This column is made up of bits Waldo told me on two different occasions.

I think it came out well. And it tells us something that not many know, that the canal between the feeder above Canal Fulton down to Navarre was repaired after the 1913 flood for hydraulic purposes. That is one of the reasons part of that section was chosen in 1938 to become Ohio’s first State Canal Park – it had been repaired just 20 years previously.

I REMEMBER THE OHIO CANAL; THE OHIO CANAL AND THE 1918 FLU EPIDEMIC^ⁱ

“During the 1918 Flu Epidemic, they closed the Canal Fulton schools. As I remember it, it was for two weeks. A lot of people were die’n, ya know. It was a real terrible mess. So, ah, they closed the schools down and this Johnny Moore^ⁱⁱ who was one of our neighbors – he was Superintendent of the Canal in the area right south of Akron, to, a, . . Navarre – down ta Navarre – took care of the canal – lived just a few houses up from where we lived, stopped and asked whether one of the boys could help him out – – work for him since the schools were gonna be shut down. Well, sure, I was available. My brother was available. He had a paper route, but I was available. Johnny McGee, Moore’s Grandson, lived just across the street from where we lived. Then there was several other boys. Fella name of Greenhole, – and I just forget who the rest of em were. Anyway, my brother, my next oldest brother, Lowell, we all went ta work for him down at Navarre. He had a job down there.

“Ya see, immediately after the 1913 flood, just within a year or so, these, these companies that wanted the water, the Steel Mills down ta Massillon, especially, wanted some fresh water, clean water. So they offered to pay so much to the County – er, the State – to fix up the banks, ya see and get the water down to em.^ⁱⁱⁱ So that was, – they had ta repair the banks all along where it was needed ta get the water down to where it was needed.

“They had ta even . . They even had ta repair some of the banks down by the lock there at Canal Fulton. But all that was done with some of Johnny Moore’s regular help – his crew. Then he had a crew. Well, as they finished it, they put water in the canal, see, and a, they, a, as they went down the line, there was a small leak at Massillon. And that was done. Now in 1918, the only leak was down – back in, in Navarre, ya see.

“When we were kids, we’d help Johnny Moore lots of times. Rode the State Boat down there ta below Massillon, out there by the Asylum. Remember there was a, – along the Canal, – of course it used ta be, before that, – when we were kids, Johnny McKee and I, we used ta go down there a lot of times, ride on the State Boat to cut grass and things, cutten grass and stuff. And, these guys, from the Asylum, used ta come down and talk to us, ya know – interesting people.

“But that leak at Navarre, during the 1918 Flue Epidemic, was the only time we worked at as part of Johnny Moore’s crew, right back of where the bakery, -where the bakery is down there now. Course its all filled with dirt now. You can’t see where the canal was. But, anyhow, there was a, a, lock there and a, a drain – – so the flood had washed, washed away part of the bank away, right bank of the canal. And Johnny Moore hired a, a, fellow – with a team and a slip-scraper. Moore didn’t have many, much equipment then. He hired him, with a team, ta go down ‘n drag in this dirt, ya know, ta rebuild the dike, – towpath bank. They always called it the dike, ya know. The dike. And of course we had a couple weeks work there.

“That was some of the last alterations of the canal done by, – the State. Now, after that, ya know, , that most of the alterations around the canal was done by a contractor or by a, a, someone – – a, for instance, up around Akron, – was a lot of changes made, but, in most cases, it was done by someone what was goin ta benefit by the changes. For instance, the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company made a lot of changes back around where they had their Golf Course. And a down at a, where the road usta cross over – the canal. That’s now route #93 that goes up through there. There’s where some of the water, well, all of the water came out of Portage Lakes. Came out there, – out of Long Lake, and a, they changed the canal, or the river, that went through the Firestone properties.

“Oh, I’m, oh yeah. Navarre. Whole canal’s filled in down there by Navarre now. That’s where we worked, cleaning it out. About two weeks. Took us down in a car, and back ta Fulton each night. Wouldn’t, we didn’t go down ta Navarre on the boat. He took us back and forth with a car. Eh, we could park, park up there above the hill there, back of the bakery, see. Then we had ta go down the hill, on back ta the lock. Couldn’t get the boat much past – -. They parked it up there where the old cemetery is in Massillon. There was a lot of water come down Cemetery Run. Build up a bar. You couldn’t get the boat past that, ya see, so they pulled the thing out and put the boat back of where, not the Hull farm, I guess it was the Cole Farm.

“After we fixed that last leak, the canal had water all the way down. Filled up, but just a, like a ditch. Water came down like through a ditch. So after we did that work in Navarre there was water in the canal clear down ta Navarre. But no boats.”

i From two taped interviews (1989 and 1990) with Waldo Streby at his home in North Canton Ohio by Terry K Woods.

ii John Moore was the last State Boat Captain in the Canal Fulton area. He maintained this position as late as 1927.

iii More than likely, these steel companies south of the Canal Fulton Feeder had water power leases with the State, so wherever these leases were of enough importance, the State repaired the canal sufficiently after the 1913 flood to maintain the leases requirements.

Barge Canal Construction Equipment- The Cable Way

Of the many machines we see in the construction of the “modern era” canals, the cable way (it is also seen as one word, cableway) is likely the least noticed. However it is one of the few machines that has survived the through the years and is still in use today. The cable way was the true multi-tasker of the construction site.

A cable way is a very basic machine with two towers, a hoisting engine with a steam plant to power it, wire rope (cable), and a traveling carriage that ran along the cables.

The cableway in use at the construction of Lock 32, Oct 1910. All the construction images are from the NYS Archives, Barge Canal Construction collection 11833.

Depending on what work needed to be completed, the contractor would build tall wooden towers so that the cable spanned the construction site. If the bases were mounted on flanged wheels on rails, the cableway could have movement in all three dimensions; side to side, back and forth, and up and down.

The Lidgerwood cable way carriage. As the carriage traveled away from the tower, the long pieces on the right would deploy and support the smaller cables. You can see these on the first image. As the carriage returned, the horn (with the point) would pick them up and store them.

Cable ways were very good at spanning deep cuts such as along the Chicago Sanitary Canal or in Lockport on the NYS Barge Canal.

All we see of the cable way is the carriage and large rock skip that is being returned to the work site to be loaded by the steam shovel. Many times multiple skips would be in use and they would simply unhook the empty and hook onto the full one.

They were useful on sites with soft soils such as along the Hennepin Canal for dredging out muck and quicksand. They were useful on lock and dam sites that spanned deep or wide rivers and would “fly” in building materials and buckets of concrete. They were also very useful on sites where there might be blasting as the cable wouldn’t be damaged and could be left in place unlike a steam shovel or other large equipment. Depending on the diameter of the main cable, the cable way could lift and move tons of materials at one time.

The Cable way is used to move materials across the Mohawk River at Lock 9, Dam 5 in Rotterdam Junction. Work has just begun in 1909.

Much of the lock is complete and work has moved to the piers of the dam, June 1910.

Work is basically complete and the work site has been cleaned up, Dec 1911.

Many manufacturers made cable way equipment as most of it consisted of the basic steam engine and hoisting machine that were used in many applications. In the Barge Canal photos you often see it described as the Lidgerwood cable way, but other manufacturers were Flory and Mundy.

Here the cable way is being used to shape the canal banks. It has been fitted with a clam-shell type dredging bucket. Note the caption says “Lidgerwood Cable Way.” Also note the piles of field stone on the base of the tower that was used as ballast.

A typical construction site with the cable way, a steam shovel in the cut, and a jib pole is seen west of Lockport at the site of a guard gate, Nov 1910.

Changes to the Website

Over the past year, I have been struggling with how to make the website useful for those who are looking for information about North America’s historic and present day canals and navigations. Certainly the site has a wealth of information if you can find it. I recently updated the stock of the American Canals newsletters with all the issues between 1972 and 2020. I updated the index so now you can simply search for a word or author and have an answer to which issue has what you need. We have been playing with the canal sites and the canal boat rides maps for a couple years and I find them very helpful, especially when I am visiting a new place and I want to know what might be nearby. And we have the canal index pages, which even with the odd name, can be very useful in their documentation of a site or canal.

The biggest hurdle is the website itself. I adopted the site from David Barber (the previous president) and have been trying to work within the confines of the sites architecture. There is so much information here and so many links that redoing it all is a daunting task that I don’t wish to take on. So each change has to work within what we have.

Then I got to thinking about a map of North America with each state/province “clickable.” When you click on the state you would be presented with a updated page that would have information about the current and abandoned canals, what state, local, or regional groups might be working to preserve the canals or canal sites, and of course the canal index pages.

So you will now see a map of North America on the home page.

When you click on a state you will open a page about the state. Hopefully this helps to stream-line things for everyone and improves the functionality of the site. As I update the state pages, they will be linked to the map and the state will turn green. If it is light-blue it has yet to be completed. States with no canals will be grey. When all the state pages have been revised, the clunky drop-down menu will go away.

Let me know what you think. And if you can, check your state’s page to see what and who should be added.

The Earl Giles Collection – The Speeceville Lock

Earl took these photos of the Speeceville lock in May of 1970. I had to look up Speeceville and I found it just south of the confluence of the Juniata and Susquehanna rivers. It’s not even marked on the map, but it is about half way between Dauphin and Clark Ferry. It is where you see the word Pennsylvania along the river. You could zoom by on Rt 22 and never realize that it was there.

Earl had made this copy of the lock. As you can see it is dated 1954.

In May 1970 the lock was is in fair condition.

I am not certain that this was the lock or if Earl was taking a photo of the rock wall. It is labeled as Speeceville.

I tried to find this lock on Google Maps but didn’t see it. However there is a fair amount of the old canal to be seen here are Speeceville along Towpath Road.

At Clark Ferry (or is it Clark’s) the Main Line canal crossed from the east to the west side of the river and crossed over (through?) Duncan Island then headed north up the west bank from there. The Juniata Division of the canal began at this point and continued to follow the Juniata River west. We have seen Earl’s photos from Amity Hall which is just upstream from this river confluence in prior posts.

Although the canal was abandoned and shown as a dashed blue line when this map was made, it does show the routes as they divided at the head of Duncan Island.

By the time Earl was taking photos the old covered bridge at Clark Ferry had been replaced, so the best he could do was to make copies. I am certain better copies can be found now days.

The Longest Covered Bridge in the World!

Looking west at the confluence of the two rivers. The bridge on the right crosses the Susquehanna and the bridge on the left crosses the Juniata. The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal can be seen in the foreground. Up bound boats would have crossed the Susquehanna River just upstream of here on the slackwater created by the dam and then headed north or west. The bit of land between the two bridges is Duncan Island.

If anyone knows if the old lock is still intact drop us a line.

Historical Roadside Markers

There has been a renewed interest in the use of roadside markers that note a historical place or event. These markers were first installed in the 1920s to help motorists identify historic sites and frankly, give them something to read as they slowly drove on by. Today it can be difficult and dangerous to try to read the signs as you zip by at 60 mph, or as you try to park on the shoulder of a busy highway. So many states have websites to help you find, read and understand the signs. Here are some that we have used to find canal sites and add them to our canal sites and parks map.

Be aware that some people will see these markers as a sign of a different time and this is true. As the way we view and understand history changes over the years, while these markers remain trapped in the period in which they were crafted. For instance New York State is littered with numerous signs noting the Clinton and Sullivan Campaign. But if viewed with this context in mind, they can help bring history to light and they might be the one remaining artifact that marks a long lost site.

The William G. Pomeroy Foundation has been offering a funding program since 2005 to help local municipalities and not-for-profits install new and replacement markers. They are now offering markers that will highlight food, legends, the national register, patriot burials, and historic canals. The process is fairly extensive yet very accessible to everyone. They also maintain a listing of markers.

The Historical Marker Database covers all the states, and at the time of this post in 2022, it shows 145,435 listings. It is a great place to start your search.

OHIO – Start with the Ohio History Connection, and then click on “Search Markers.” In the Keyword Search box on the right side, enter the keyword “canal”.

INDIANA – Start with the Indiana Historical Bureau. Either do a search by way of the four options listed, or search under in the various categories listed, or chose Category, and the Transportation.

MICHIGAN – Start with the Michigan History Center. Use the word “Transportation” in the search box, or use the filters to play around and see what you can find.

NEW YORK- Start with the New York State Museum to find information and the background history on the New York State roadside marker program. Use the Pomeroy site to find the markers.

VIRGINIA – Start with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources / Historical Highway Markers. Use the Marker Online Database Search, click on the agree button and then enter a search term.

PENNSYLVANIA – Start with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Scroll down and click on the Marker Search button. Enter canal in the keyword search box.

NEW JERSEY – I could not find a database of markers in New Jersey. However there was a report titled; Assessment of State Historical Marker Programs. Use the Historical Marker Database to search for New Jersey markers.

Researching The Canal and Family Genealogy

Are you setting out on your journey to find your canal family tree? We are often asked how to find people who worked or lived on the canals, and sadly, there is no magic place where all canal based records are kept. A lot depends on how your state ran the canal. Was the canal government controlled, or was it all hired out? New York State has run its canals since 1817 and has great canal records when it comes to the construction and operation, but employees not so much. States like Pennsylvania and Ohio built their canals but hired out their operations to private firms. The Delaware and Hudson Canal was all privately owned and operated. If your ancestor was a state employee they might be mentioned in passing. If they were a boat owner or worked for someone on a boat, it is unlikely you will find them mentioned in any official records. If they were born on a boat, you might find a birth notice in the local town or county, but not often. So what to do? Well don’t despair. If you live down the street or on the other side of the world, there are many resources to help you find your ancestors and here are some of our favorite places to look.

First off, although subscription services such as Ancestry.com or Family Search can seem expensive, the amount of materials available will be well worth any money spent. These services have millions of records available and if you add up what you can find on their sites, and what it would cost to drive to each site to hunt and peck, you will find it worth the cost. Plus if you do a DNA test, it will tie into your tree. If you are new to these services, check out some of the genealogical how-to videos on You Tube. If you can’t afford them, or just wish to see what they offer, many libraries have access to a free Ancestry.com account, so ask!

But maybe you don’t want to do that, so try these sites.

Check with the state’s canal society. Most are all volunteer run groups but many maintain an archives or at the very least, know where the records are kept. The Canal Society of New York State, the Canal Society of Ohio, the Canal Society of New Jersey, the Canal Society of Indiana, the Virginia Canals and Navigations Society, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Society, the Pennsylvania Canal Society, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Association, as well as many smaller groups.

A Caution- All these sites use OCR (optical character recognition) technology. if you don’t find what you are looking for, try a different search term or way to word it. You will be surprised!

Internet Search engines, or just “Google it.” Don’t overlook the simple tool of simply typing in your name and seeing what comes up. The search engines that power the internet are constantly crawling about content and updating. Local historical societies will write up articles, newspapers will run history based articles, and of course those of us who write blogs, are constantly adding new information to the web. The search engines will typically pick it up.

There are rules that will help your searching, such as adding “quotes” around your search terms. I go into this a bit further down in this post, but in short, searching for Bob Smith and then “Bob Smith” will return different results. The quotes turn the two words into one phrase. However if Bob Smith used the middle name Tom, using the quotes will rule out any returns if he was called Bob Tom Smith, or Bob T. Smith.

Google Books. Make a direct search in the Google Books search engine. Sometimes Google Books will pop up in your broad internet search, but not always. This is a overlooked resource. Search for; Bob Smith Lock 34 canal, and see what comes up. Be fancy and add the quotes to search “Bob Smith” “Lock 34” canal.

See if there is a local historical society. Many towns and villages will have a small volunteer run historical society, but every state is different. For instance, New York has village, town and county governments, whereas Pennsylvania has townships and county. Some states have county and city governments only. If you can’t find a local resource then take a wider look. Is there a county or city historical society? Check for a state archives or state library. Then check with the Library of Congress! Use a website like Cyndi’s List and/or Linkpendium to help you find these resources.

Be warned. While many small organizations will be happy (delighted!) to answer your questions, many will charge a fee upfront just take a look. If the organization has paid staff, then expect to pay for any information.

Check digital newspapers. Newspapers.com is a paid service but might be worth a month’s service if you can find something. The site called Old Fulton Postcards is free. It has over 51 million newspaper pages (as of March 2022) from all across the United States and Canada. As you might expect, it is a very busy site and at times, you will find the results very slow to load. I will open a few tabs and have many searches going at once so I am not waiting for a page to open.

If you use Old Fulton, take some time to learn how to use the sites search engine, and specifically, how to do Boolean searches. If you were searching for Oliver Tanner who ran a dry dock in Port Byron NY, you could simply type in the word Tanner, and chose the All The Words search option, your results will show every time the name Tanner, or the word tanner, as in tanning leather, was used. You could try to focus a bit more by entering, Tanner Port Byron, and then chose All The Words, and you will find every time Tanner, tanner, Port, and Byron, was used. So your results might show articles about the poems of Lord Byron next to a leather maker in Port Jacobs. You could try the Exact Phrase option to find all the articles about Port Byron, but that will return all the mentions of such as the Port Byron Chronicle, Port Byron schools, Port Byron Illinois, and so on.

Instead, use the Boolean search function and use the w/? function. Boolean allows you to enter the words, Tanner AND Port AND Byron, however it is much easier to enter Tanner w/10 “Port Byron.” This change has done a couple things. First notice that Port Byron is in quotes. This turns the two words into one word/phrase. So instead of getting every time Port and Byron is used, you will find only Port Byron. The w/10 tells the search engine to search for each time the word Tanner is used within 10 words of “Port Byron” And the number is up to you. If you wish to find all the times Oliver is used near Tanner, such as any of Oliver Tanner that might include his middle name, enter Oliver w/5 Tanner. You could do Tanner AND “Port Byron”, and you will find each time Tanner was on the same page as “Port Byron.” This is very helpful for finding those little articles in a far away newspaper that notes that “Mrs. Tanner of Port Byron, NY was visiting her niece last week.”

While Old Fulton is great, it is not easy to turn the page if your article is continued on …(page 4). What you need to do is to copy the page address that you are currently on, take a guess at how many pages to add, paste that into the search box, enter the Exact Phrase option, and then adjust from there. So if you find an article on page 8 of the Port Byron Chronicle 1905 Oct-0788.pdf, and your article continues on page 12, you will need to adjust the address to -0792.pdf. And go from there.

There are many other newspaper resources. The Advantage Archives are working with smaller organizations with digitizing their collections and then hosting the pages. Check their website for a directory map to see what might be available near your relatives. Advantage Archives has a nice feature where you can simply turn the page to find that continued on article. Many times if I know the date I am looking for I will focus on that date and then search the entire paper for the name, just in case the OCR missed it. Note- I find that the Community History Archive Directory works better for me in Firefox then Chrome.

NYS Historic Newspapers. This is another organization that has made newspapers available on the internet. Their search engine is a little different but you can search by county, dates, names and so on.

Be sure to check out the US GenWeb project. GenWeb is not what it used to be but it can be helpful and should be checked. Some county pages are great while others are very basic.

Don’t overlook Find A Grave, and Billion Graves. Both of these sites post cemetery information and have local volunteers that will search for a headstone and photograph it for you. Many of the bios are quite full of information.

Finding Their Routes; Family History and Genealogy -(Pamela Vittorio) specifically focuses on canal based family research. This is a fee based service but might be worth it if you are really stuck. Here is a guide Pamela has for finding records in New York State. if you want to hear Pamela talk about the canal and records, here she is on The Forget-Me-Not-Hour in 2016. (audio) The first 30 minutes is mostly a canal overview and history. The second half gets into what records are available.

Feel free to drop us a note and we will be happy to try to guide you along.

Construction Equipment on the NYS Barge Canal, 1905-1920

The New York State Archives has a wonderful collection of Barge Canal Construction photographs that show the progress of construction of the new waterway throughout the years of 1903 to 1920. In these you might find images of what the area looked like prior to construction, the first shovelful of work, progress through the years, work that was disqualified due to poor construction, damage from floods and ice, and then the finished projects (and more). You can find these in collection 11833 (Barge Canal Construction Photos).

These images also provide a remarkable record of the early days of heavy earth moving construction machinery. In the early 1900s, the steam shovel was only about 25 years old, and once they “perfected” that versatile machine, the possibilities were endless. Do you need to shape a bank? The cantilevered conveyor is the machine you need. Need to move rocks from a deep channel cut? How about the double boom crane? Do you have soft soils? How about a cable-way? If there was a job to do, some inventor had a machine to do it. And many of these machines were used to dig the new Barge Canal.

The Barge Canal was not the first use of these machines. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was built in the 1890s, used many of the same machines. And it appears that some also were used on the Hennepin Canal construction.

Beginning with the Winter 2022 issue of the American Canals newsletter we have begun to look at these early machines. We will post the the same images from the articles, plus a few more, so you have the ability to enlarge and get a better look at their use and workings.

We start with Contract 40 which was the area of the big cut. This was the 5-mile section west of Lockport where the canal had to be cut through bedrock in order to reach the level of Lake Erie. This area was famous for its work during the construction of the original Erie Canal, and it posed the same challenges in 1900 with how to remove the massive quantities of rock from the channel.

The Brown Hoisting and Conveying Machine Company built this cantilevered conveyor. The machine was designed to remove spoils from the bank and deposit them directly behind the machine.

A close up of the Brown cantilevered excavator. A drag-line bucket runs along the arms and can be used to shape the banks. This machine was able to work in the navigation season. The machine sits of railroad style trucks.

You get a sense of the work with the shaped bank in the foreground and the vegetated bank behind it. A boat can be seen in the distance. The machine could also be used to lift skips of material that had been loaded by hand or team-shovel.

The Browning double-boom crane was designed to allow one boom to be working while the opposite one was dumping. This machine was used mostly to lift skips of rock out of the cut. Multiple skips would be in the work area either being loaded by men or using a steam-shovel.

You get a good sense of the scale of the work. The steam-shovel alone could never remove the rock so the double-boom crane is used to lift the rock out of the cut. The shovel would load a large skip and the crane would lift it clear. The machine would rotate 180-degrees and dump it’s load onto the spoils pile. At the same time, the boom over the canal would be lowering a empty skip into the cut.

Here you can see the skips, basically large baskets. This was July 1910 and the canal is in use. The canal cut is being widened down to the water level and the rest will be removed in the winter.

The Browning double-boom could also function as a drag-line by using only one of the booms and fitting it with a drag bucket. The machine sat on skids and would use it’s engines and capstans to drag itself around.

This view gives us a nice look at many of the machines used on the Barge Canal. The Brown Hoisting cantilever can be seen in the distance, which a Bucyrus steam-shovel loads skips on the Browning incline conveyor. The skips will run along the top of the track and then tip it’s load at the high end onto the spoils pile. A Lidgerwood cable-way flies over along the top of the photo.

Details on all these machines are featured in the Winter 2022 issue of American Canals. In upcoming issues we will take a look at more equipment used of the Barge Canal.

Canal Comments – Kelly’s Canal

By Terry K Woods

I was given a copy of Kelly’s articles by Lew Richardson who I deem to be, by far, the best editor of the many who worked on Towpaths, the quarterly historical publication the Canal Society of Ohio. I never met Lew, who had retired and moved to Georgia to live before I became editor, but whenever I contacted him, I could always count upon him answering my letter of inquiry and dire need quickly and concisely.

This Kelly isn’t Alfred, the Acting Canal Commissioner for the Northern Division of the Ohio Canal back in the beginning. The is S.J. Kelly who wrote two very short, very informative columns about the Ohio Canal back in 1943 for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. There is an error or two here and there, and I’m not sure if he wasn’t describing early Erie boats rather than early Ohio boats, as Ohio’s boat’s stables were in the center of the craft while those on the Erie had bow placed stables. Anyway, there is some good stuff in this piece. Here, then, is S.J. Kelly – on the Ohio Canal.

“Gazing west, down Superior Avenue you sight the heavy B & O Railroad bridge poised in air. Some 165 feet above the street level. At its base, east of the Cuyahoga, about 300 feet south of Superior Hill, the old Erie and Ohio Canal entered the river through big Ship Lock (No. 44). Eastward along the tracks you can almost locate Merwin’s Basin, 225 by 150 feet, between West and James Streets. You can picture, too, the busy scene when gaily painted canal boats lay up beside Brigantines, Schooners and other craft and passenger packets moored to the slip in the northwest corner.

“The STATE OF OHIO was the first boat to descend the canal. Leaving Akron on July 3, 1827, it stopped at Boston, about half way to Cleveland for the night. Aboard were Ohio Governor Trimble, State Officials, and Canal Commissioners. The ALLEN TRIMBLE joined them later and on the Fourth the Governor reported in his annual message: “The boats were cheered by thousands assembled from the adjacent country at different points to witness the novel and interesting sight.”

“The PIONEER is said to have been purchased at Buffalo and towed to Cleveland for the celebration, and some distance up the Cuyahoga it was hauled across and launched in a cut through the towpath. This is wrong.

“Records show the PIONEER was built at Peninsula. On the Fourth, loaded with passengers and a band, the boat met the other two some six miles up the canal. A salute was exchanged and the three journeyed on together. (1)

“Cleveland histories fail to report that the three boats stopped some distance outside the village or to locate the spot. When the waterway was started in 1825 its terminal and which side of the Cuyahoga it would follow were left undecided. An estimate of 1825 showed it would cost $6,000 less for the canal to remain on the left bank. Judge David Bates of New York, chief engineer, arriving at that time, picked the east side and Cleveland Village donated $5,000 to the Canal Fund.(2)

“Where those first three boats stopped that Fourth is of historic importance. Investigation shows that not until April 1828, was water let into the long Cleveland Bends from Four Mile Lock (N0. 42) nor was Sloop Lock (No. 43), at the foot of south Water Street hill, completed until July 29. Then boats entered Merwin’s Basin for the first time, reaching the river by a temporary cut and unloaded. Ship Lock (NO. 44) was completed months later.

“Research leads me to believe that Lock 41 at the foot of Harvard Avenue, often referred to as “Five Mile lock, was the stopping place. I believe, also, that “Weight Lock”, 1,000 feet south of the Old Grasselli chemical plant on Independence road, must have been Lock 42.(3) Some may remember the drydock at the foot of Seneca (West 3d) Street hill, long used by canal boats.

“A canal trip is better understood if one knows something about canal boats. The first (on the Ohio Canal) were from 50 to 60 feet long and rather sharp at bow and stern, resembling river keel boats in their hulls, They were narrow with small cabins, sleeping bunks for passengers and crew, and a “galley” for the cook.

“These first boats were built for freight, and perhaps a half dozen passengers. Bulky cargoes of coal stone (4), flour, grain, whiskey, merchandise and produce (usually carried in barrels or other wooden containers) were the rule.

“ But sharp bows damaged bridges, locks and other structures as well as a careless ramming of a canal bank. In the early 1840s regulations were imposed that required rounded bows and iron bars or straps on the bow edge were prohibited.

“As the Ohio Canal was completed through to the Ohio River and a branch to Columbus, a demand was created for long distance accommodations, By 1835 a number of passenger/freight Lines were answering this demand and the design of boats was altered to accommodate this freight/passenger trade. Boats particularly designed to carry both passengers and freight called Line Boats) appeared and, by 1837, true “Passenger Packets” carrying exclusively passengers were making through, scheduled trips between Cleveland and Portsmouth.

“The traveling public could be divided into two classes. One included families, persons going west, permanently, to resettle, and individuals wanting dependable travel (at least more travel than the current roads could promise) for required travel and conduct business or seeing to other important matters away from their normal habitats. These used Line Boats (two-deckers) that carried both passengers and freight.

“The other class, with money enough to travel a bit classier or swifter or purely for pleasure, would engage passage on packet-boats after they were introduced onto Ohio’s canal in the late 1830s.

“An early Line Boat was often 65 or so feet long by 7 ½ feet wide. In the bow were stables for horses, three of which were taken aboard at the end of each shift. Across a passageway was the crew’s cabin with bunks for six men, Projecting above the deck over four feet. This gave a ceiling clearance of about eight feet. Passengers on a Line Boat were not generally provided with a cabin, but slept in the hold, frequently without bunks. No bedding was supplied. They brought their own provisions and were advised to bring a cook stove if they wanted warm meals.(5)

“At the stern of an was the Captain’s cabin and the cook’s quarters. Here was stationed the steersman. The white cabins had slightly slanted walls and fairly flat roofs with shuttered windows. The crew included two steersmen, two boy drivers, and a cook. The Captain sometimes owned the boat and lived on it year round. Almost the entire craft was given over to freight, often with deck loads of lumber. The speed of a Line Boat was from 2 to 2 ½ miles an hour. Cost of passage varied. Sometimes it was as low as 50 cents a day for a distance of 50 to 60 miles. Again, it could be as high as 3 cents a mile.

“A standard line of Packet Boats was soon built with far more luxurious interior fittings and arrangements.(6) A typical Packet Boat was 75 feet long by 11 wide, its cabin extending above the boat proper some six feet or more. Along each side ran a row of about 20 neatly framed windows. With curtains drawn and green window shutters, these gave the packet an elegant appearance.

“Near the bow the crew quarters had berths for 10 men. This was separated from the rest of the main cabin by a partition. Nearly all the rest of the cabin space aft was devoted to the passengers. First came the woman’s dressing room and the ladies cabin. The largest compartment, the full width of the packet, was usually about 45 feet long with a ceiling 9 feet above the floor. It became a long, rather narrow, gentleman’s sleeping apartment at night, a dining room three times daily, and between those periods, a gathering place for men, a place to write letters, play checkers and backgammon or discuss politics.

“At 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. the Captain appeared with stewards and quickly cleared the room, setting up a large table at the center. Fares on a packet boat included meals and all passengers, ladies gentlemen, and children, dined at the same table. With dusk, the younger children romped through the cabin. If the night was clear, older passengers gathered on the roof which served as a deck. No packet made the trip without some travelers who brought their flutes, fiddles and accordions”.

(1) I always assumed that, if the PIONEER was built in Peninsula, it was the GOVERNOR TRIMBLE that was brought from the Erie and slid from the Cuyahoga to the canal.

(2) This is just a bit garbled, David Bates from New York ran the initial surveys in 1822 and 1823, but was not involved in the final route selection. That was finalized by the Ohio Board of Public Works at a meeting in February 1825, though rumor insists the decision (of the Cleveland terminus over the Black & Killbuck Route and the west Cuyahoga) had been made long before, but not announced in hopes of obtaining “donations” from interested localities.

(3) The “Weight Lock” mentioned was built in the 1870s after Cleveland obtained the northern-most three miles of canal and leased it to a railroad. I believe the actual stopping point for the first three craft on the Ohio Canal was at Lock 42 (Four Mile Lock) which was about a mile further south and removed in 1838 and the canal banks raised for flood control.

(4) Stone coal doesn’t appear to have been commonly used, or transported, during the first seven or eight years of the Ohio Canal’s life.

(5) I have a lot of trouble with this entire paragraph. I have seen no authenticated description of Ohio Line Boats, but I believe they were similar to the design of early Ohio Freight Boats, with the addition of “amenities” for a few passengers .Early Ohio Lines experimented with using way stations to provide fresh teams, but found the practice too expensive and converted to carrying a spare team in a center-mounted stable in the early 1840s.

(6) By 1835 or 36 Packets were making scheduled runs between Cleveland, Columbus and Portsmouth. By mid 1837 a ‘through’ line was established between Cleveland and Portsmouth. This through line’s last year was 1842, but passenger packet travel on the northern section of the Ohio Canal lasted through 1852 and on the southern division into the 1870s.

Earl Giles Collection – The Packsaddle

Many of Earl’s slides are in groups of one or a few. The topic with the most slides was those of the Packsaddle. If you don’t know (I didn’t), the Packsaddle was a valley through the Chestnut Ridge cut by the Conemaugh River. It is located between Robinson / Bolivar to the east and Blairsville on the west.

A post by Coke Oven Mike on his Old Industry of Southwestern Pennsylvania blog tells us that the Packsaddle Gap is very isolated and only accessible by walking the along the railroad or by boat. Compare some of his images to those of Earl. The website of the Pittsburgh to Harrisburg Main Line Canal Greenway tells us that it is possible to see the remains of Lock 5 and 2 miles of revetment wall.

Aside from that, I don’t know much about these. These were all taken between 1968 and 1972.

This is a postcard that Earl had copied.

Maybe he compared the postcard to this view?

This was from the shore. It says from the dam. If Lock 5 was a guard lock, then it would make sense that there would be some sort of dam nearby.

It is difficult to see, but there is a bit of wall in the bank. Earl notes that this is the site of the dam and outlet.

This says lock at Packsaddle. No date, but early 1970s.

This slides says that the men were excavating at the Lockhouse. The men are not identified.

There are a few more like this showing various rocks and such.

This one is labeled canal in the Packsaddle and it is dated March 1968.

It is clear that Earl and his friends walked along the railroad rather then boating in.

If you have walked into the Packsaddle and have info to share, leave us a comment.