The Canal Index project was begun in the in the early days of the American Canal Society. It is kind of a wonky title, but the goal was to create a file or index of all the remaining canal structures, or to document the traces of canals that were disappearing under construction projects.
To learn more about it I went back into the ACS archives. In American Canals issue number 3, dated November 1972, the leadership of the society introduced the idea of a Canal Index Committee, where canals and structures would be inventoried and recorded on 5 by 8 index cards. In the next issue of American Canals a blank form was included with the hopes that the membership would be willing to contribute to the project. The article states that “in coordinating the vast amount of work done by individuals and canal societies throughout North America, it will serve, in published form, as basis for further research (archaeological or otherwise), for restoration/preservation activities, or simply as a form of brief guide for an enthusiast on a days outing.” You can tell that the founders were engineers.
The committee did create hundreds of records. In issue 14, they reported that the group had indexed all the submissions received so far on IBM keypunch cards and that they could generate a list nearly six feet in length. The next mention I could find was in issue 54, August 1985, where committee-chair Terry Woods notes that most of the Ohio and Pennsylvania canals had been surveyed and recorded, but New York and New Jersey had not.
The records that were generated are all available on the ACS website as pdf files. Look under the By States, and Other Countries drop down tabs. Although little has been done with the sheets since the late 80s, they do provide a remarkable record of what was there at the time. Over the years many of these sites have degraded or been lost.
It has been almost fifty years since the project was started and certainly there have been changes. I have long thought that it would be a nice project to add to the files and update what we have. We have a fillable-pdf form to make the recording of information a bit easier, and you can find this under the By State tab. So if you enjoy researching old canal structures, think about recording some information about them so that canal historians in the future can benefit from your explorations and discoveries.
I wrote this article for the Canal Society of New York State’s journal Bottoming Out, some years ago. It is wordy, full of facts, and not really suited to the typical blog post. In all, it ran 17-pages. If you would prefer to download and print it, you can find a pdf version here. I hope you find it useful. Mike Riley, Feb, 2021.
Introduction
I think everyone understands that the Erie Canal has gone through many changes between the time it was first built in 1817-1825 and the building of the Barge Canal 1905-1918. When the canal was opened from Albany to Buffalo in 1825 it suffered from many imperfections that made the day to day operation and it’s use by the boaters difficult at times. The manner in how the canal was constructed following contours of the land made for many twists and turns. In 1834 the State decided to enlarge the canal from the four by forty feet dimensions to seven by seventy feet between Albany and Syracuse, and then in 1835, the State had decided to enlarge the full length of the canal from Albany to Buffalo. The goals were many but mostly centered around getting bigger boats on the canal. The locks were enlarged and doubled (two locks side by side), and new aqueducts were built. Since a larger canal needed more water, more reservoirs and feeders were constructed. This process of enlargement would last for the next twenty-seven years. Before the first enlargement had been completed, there were calls for a still larger canal which would allow for larger loads. In time this would be called the second enlargement, and that in turn would lead to the building of the Barge Canal. This article began its life as a look at the Second Enlargement of the Erie Canal. It has turned out to be an examination as to what factors led up to the second enlargement. As with everything about the canal, the more I dug into the history, the less clear things became.
A crop of the 1853 town of Mentz map showing the line of both the first (as dashed line) and the enlarged Erie Canal between Port Byron and Montezuma.
When did the Second Enlargement Begin?
We can flip the question about the beginning of the second enlargement to read, “when did the first enlargement conclude?” I am finding that an answer to this question is not as clear as one might think. For help, we might look to Whitford and his order of chapters. He places the beginning of the second enlargement at the same time as the Nine Million Dollar Act of 1895 since that is when the enlargement was written into the law. Another person might look to at when the shipper could move more tons of goods as an enlargement. So I set out to find a time when someone who had the power and the influence to make a call for a deeper canal made that call. Certainly demands for a deeper canal are not the same as actual digging, but other things did take place as a result of these calls, and these increased the capacity. As a result of this study, I decided to use the beginning of steam on the canal as my benchmark in a timeline of enlargement projects.
1858- The Steam Boat and a Deeper Canal
It is difficult to pinpoint the date of the first steam powered canal boat as many seem to claim the honor. It tends to circle around; “who built the first boat?”, and “who built the first successful boat?” In early August 1858, a trip was taken by New York State Governor King, Canal Commissioners Ruggles and Jaycox, and many others, to attend a celebration of steam on the canal. From Rochester to Buffalo they took part in a flotilla of steam boats that included the PS Sternberg, the Charles Wack, the Governor King, and the SS Whallon.i In one of the many speeches he gave, Governor King told the crowds that the Sternberg was the first successful steam boat and that the ongoing experiments with her and the others would show that steam was practical for use on the canals. He also said that it only remained for the State to, “Enlarge and deepen the canal, and make it what it was intended to be.” This was not a call to deepen the canal to more than seven feet; it was a call to deepen the canal to seven feet, as the canal enlargement had yet to be completed. Adding to the quote above, the Governor said, “Then you may put on the steam, and defy competition, from whatever source it may come.” The newspaper article went on to report that the boats often hit bottom on their tour, which is backed up by the annual reports of the time.ii
Although the railroads had yet to surpass the canals in tonnage of goods carried the men promoting the steam boats could see the future. In an extensive article about steam on the Erie Canal in Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review, the writer said; “It should be borne in mind that the railways are ‘up to time’ under the shrewdest competitive management, whilst the canal managers and forwarders have stuck like leeches to the tow-path, until they have sucked the financial blood from this great artery, so that she requires powerful stimulants in loans to reinvigorate her; hence, it wants an energetic and expeditious policy to meet the activities of the railways and redeem her from the sluggish habits of the past.”iii The point was that the railroad and the steam engine were evolving, while, even though the first enlargement process was ongoing, the canal had stopped growing. Clearly steam was the future, if only the canals would embrace it.
So let’s step away from the parade for a moment. One of the men on the Sternberg was temporarily appointed canal commissioner Samuel B Ruggles.iv He was a member of the State Assembly in 1838 and a canal commissioner from 1839-1842. Ruggles had been asked to fill the vacancy of Samuel Whallon. In this position he learned first hand about the condition of the canals and the progress of the enlargement. In 1858 the enlargement had been going on since 1835. Even with the missed Stop and Tax years (1842-1847), the work had been going on for eighteen years and it was far from complete. He wrote that, “It was soon discovered that the Erie Canal, the enlargement of which had been supposed to be nearly complete, had not a uniform depth even of six-feet of water, to which it had been limited during the progress of the enlargement, causing great dissatisfaction, delay and loss to the numerous persons engaged or interested in its navigation.”v
Let’s get back to the parade of steam in August 1858. Unlike Governor King who looked to the future, Samuel Ruggles looked back, “I have not time to speak to you of the future of this great work, and I desire only further to allude to the past, by calling to mind those to whom we are indebted for the grand canal, which has brought to you and the State so full a measure of prosperity. Let me in parting, point you to one memorial of those benefactors who have passed away, and whose monuments we see all along the line of this canal. Yonder, (pointing to a single arch of the old aqueduct) stands a monument to their wise forecaste and patriotism. Preserve that, fellow citizens, as a memorial of the triumphal accomplishment of a great enterprise. In Europe, and among all civilized nations, a mouldering ruin like that, illustrative at once of the art and enterprise of the past, would be cherished with religious care. Let it be your aim to secure it from the vandal hand, and preserve it for your children to contemplate as a memento of the opening of a new era to internal commerce.”vi This speech is interesting as it takes place during a tour of the new age of innovation, in which the central point is to push the State to finish the first enlargement. Ruggles is saying in effect, “The reason you are here is due in large part to the great canal. Let that arch be a reminder of this. Don’t forget it!” You can read similar reminders through all the yearly Annual Reports which all seem to start with a reminder of the past glory days of canals and the Empire State.
A push was made for the completion of the canal enlargement. Up to 1859, $29,800,000 had been spent on the enlargement. Engineers estimated that only one-million more would finish the work. On April 19, 1859, the Legislature passed a bill, Chapter 495 which in part gave money to survey the entire canal by boat, taking measurements of the actual depth, and publishing the results for all to see.
The 1860s
Thomas Colden Ruggles was appointed to carry out the survey, the first readings to be taken in 1860.vii A second test run was to be made in 1861. Ruggles found that the canal was between 5.9 to 6.7 feet deep. In addition there were large earthen benches that stuck out into the channel decreasing the width of the navigation channel and decreasing the amount of water in the canal. Ruggles also discovered that no surveys of the canal existed to aid him in his calculations of clearing out the canal channel. In the 1861 Annual Report, (the same one in which T.C. Ruggles report was published), the Canal Commissioners were quick to point out that this testing was a waste of money. On April 10, 1862 the State Legislature also reacted to Ruggles report by passing Chapter 169 of 1862, which declared the canal’s first enlargement complete as of September 1, 1862. What this meant was that if the canal was to be worked on after September 1, the money would need to come out of the general fund. The enlargement was complete.
Whitford noted that the policy change “left the enlargement of the canals far from actual completion.”viii As it stood in 1862, thirteen locks west of Syracuse only had one chamber; earthen benches remained along much of the canal; and over time, the canal had been getting shallower as soil, sewage, and trash filled up the canal prism. The depth was far from seven feet. And aside from the steam parade of 1858 little advancement was made in terms of non-animal towage.
The supporters of the canal only had to look to the loss of business to the railroads and see what the future held. In 1865 the canal hauled about a million tons more then the railroads. In 1867, the tonnage of freight moved by the canal and the railroad was about equal at about five-and-a-half-million-tons. In 1868 the canal hauled slightly more, and then after that the railroads pulled ahead never to lose ground again. The railroads were improving their steam engines which made it possible to move more freight in each train. In 1869 the Westinghouse air-brake was introduced and in 1873 the knuckle coupler was introduced. Meanwhile, the majority of boats on the Erie and other canals were being pulled by animal teams.
Little would happen along the canal during the next seven years. The locks west of Port Byron remained as singles. In his 1869 message, Governor Hoffman said it was the duty of the state to “foster and protect” the canal, and to restore it to full dimensions again, meaning seven feet of water.ix In May 1869, money was given to restart the lock doubling.x
The 1870s
The Governor repeated his message in 1870 and another $200,000 was given to the lock doubling effort.xi The Canal Commissioner stated that another $126,000 was needed to finish the work. One of the reasons to support the canals was that they acted as a check on the railroad’s freight prices. Even if the canals were not carrying great amounts, the fact that they were in business helped to regulate prices.
It was recognized that steam had not made the inroads along the canal as the people on the 1858 parade had expected. And in 1871 the Governor pointed out that Canada was actively enlarging their canals to allow for larger boats. The State reacted by encouraging any sort of towing system, saying that they wanted to see the use of steam, caloric, electricity or any motor power other than animals for the propulsion of boats.xii
In 1873, the newly elected Governor John Dix said that the State had been far too generous with its money over the Hoffman years and needed to make cuts. However, he did give his support for the canals and that the need to have full dimensions and steam. In 1874 Governor Dix mentioned the Canadian canals and the fact that ships of 1600-tons will soon be using the St. Lawrence River. He said that the State must respond by providing a canal that will cheapen the cost of moving goods or the State would lose its place in commerce. However, he warned, 1874 was not a time to even think about a ship canal across the State, since even as Governor Dix gave his 1874 message, the world had been in a financial depression since September of 1873.
In 1873, people selected from around the state met to discuss changes to the New York State Constitution. One of the big changes was to create the position of the Superintendent of Public Works, and to abolish the Canal Commissioners. Once recommended, and with the approval of the Legislature, the amendment would be placed on the fall ballot. Even with the change favorably voted upon by the voters, the change from Canal Commissioners to Superintendent would not happen until 1876.
In 1875, newly elected Governor Tilden made very favorable comments toward the canals, saying that the canal had enough capacity to do the job asked of it and more but that the canal needed to be cleaned out to seven foot.xiii His tone was measured, in light of the depression that was ongoing. “Economy from the best group of adaptations”, was his message. Then he wrote; “I may be excused for repeating here what I said in the Constitutional Convention eight years ago: “What the Erie Canal wants is more water in the prism; more water in the waterway. A great deal of it is not much more than six feet, and boats drag along over a little skim of water; whereas it ought to have a body of water larger and deeper even than was intended in the original project. Bring it up to seven feet- honest seven feet- and on all levels, wherever you can, bottoming it out; throw the excavation upon the banks; increase that seven feet toward eight feet, as you can do, progressively and economically. You may also take out the bench walls.”xiv
There are a couple of remarkable items in the Governors message. The first is that the Governor had made the argument for an honest seven feet in 1867, some five years after those in 1862 said the enlargement was complete, and here he was again making the argument again in 1875 some thirteen years after 1862. He also made statements concerning the way that boats move in the canal and this message may be the first serious call for a canal deeper than seven feet. But in doing all this, he also made it clear; “No Rash Innovations.”xv Complete the canal to seven feet, give steam a chance, study the results. In short, don’t do any thing else in a time of depression.
Governor Tilden was not done. On March 19, 1875, he released a special message to the Legislature. He began by saying that he had received a communication from the boatman, forwarders, and others concerned with the business of the canals asking for cheaper tolls and ways to cheapen the movement of freight. He then said he started his own investigation into the canals of the State, and that this investigation had found that many millions of dollars had been spent on useless improvements and repairs. He said that the canal must be cleaned out and gradually deepened so the boat is moving through more water. (more on this later) He asked for a measurement of the canal depth. He then pointed out the fraud in the canal bidding system and said that engineers, contractors, and commissioners have been ripping off the State for years. He finished with, “It is clear that, under the present system of canal management, the people will not be relieved from taxation, the boatmen from high tolls, or the needed improvements of the Erie and Champlain Canals will be finished.”xvi As a result, the Legislature set up an investigating committee which was given a year to study the management of the canals and make a report.
The Governors special message had the intended effect. The New York Herald ran a full page devoted to the message, the need for investigations, and the need for seven feet of water.xvii Thurlow Weed, no friend of Tilden, gave his support to the Governor.
Samuel Ruggles, the ardent canal supporter and member of the New York State Chamber of Commerce, joined the fight for the canals. Maybe not surprisingly, in May, 1875, the Chamber hired Thomas Colden Ruggles to run his depth survey/tests again, examining the speed of the boats on the canal, and the depth of water. Ruggles rode along on the City of Utica, a Baxter Steam Canal Transportation boat. He submitted his report to the Chamber on October 7, 1875.xviii Ruggles condensed his report down to three points; 1) that delays in navigation cause the boaters to waste money, 2) that in many places the canal is not more that thirty feet wide, and 3) that the boaters would be better served with eight feet of water. He also points out that in many places the canal has not been improved since his 1861 survey. On March 30, 1876, the Chamber passed a resolution in favor of making the canal seven-foot-deep, and deepening where ever possible.
The Canal Ring
In 1876, Governor Tilden called for a special investigation of “the canal ring”, and the waste and fraud connected to canal work. The conclusions of this investigation had an impact on what happened next with the canal enlargement. It is not the purpose of this article to investigate what was called “the canal ring”. But it is important to note what happened as it has such a bearing on what would happen next.
In March, Governor Tilden delivered the findings of the investigation which found; 1) almost fifteen million dollars had been spend over the last five years on canal repairs and improvements, 2) almost all the work done had little value to the State and was only done to enrich the contractors, 3) most of the bids and contracts were handed out illegally, 4) most of the work was useless. He then recommended that; 1) close all contracts, 2) make $400,000 available to close out any payments on closed contracts, 3) make $400,000 available to restore the canal so it could have seven feet of water, plus make $15,000 available for a complete survey of the canal, 4) use any non-expended balances left from prior appropriations on the Champlain Canal, 5) direct the canal board to come up with a set of recommendations for next year. These recommendations became law as Chapter 425 of 1876.xix The “canal ring” had been broken.
When the 1876 fall elections rolled around the voters had a chance to respond to the news of the canal ring by way of the Constitutional changes recommended in 1873. They were well prepared to change the management structure of the canals. The State would have its first Superintendent of Public Works, and the Canal Commissioners were to be gone. But change was to come slowly and political shenanigans would postpone the appointment of the Superintendent until late January 1878.
In 1877 newly elected Governor Lucius Robinson pronounced that the fraud on the canal was gone but that the boatmen had been harmed by the waste over the last years. And because of the ongoing depression the only way to help the boatmen was to cut the tolls.
At the heart of the matter for the boatmen was moving more freight at a faster speed. Whether it was a horse boat or a steam boat, the owner needed to get from Buffalo to Albany or New York City as fast as he could with as many tons of goods as the canal would let him carry. What stopped him was the depth of the water and the size of the enlarged locks. No boat could be larger then 98-feet-long and 17-feet-wide, with a maximum draft of six-anda-half-feet (if the canal had seven feet of water). This is why all the arguments made on behalf of the canal up to this point was to give the boaters a full seven feet of water, and to get the boats moving faster by allowing steam instead of animal towage.
As they had just finished enlarging the locks, it was unlikely that the State would enlarge the locks a second time, so every improvement had to work around the size restriction. Pennsylvanian William Frick had developed a device to allow two full size Erie Canal boats to be coupled so that one crew could safely steer the two boats. Most likely he based this on what he saw some of the Pennsylvania canals, with two small boats coupled together using a hinge device. In effect, his invention created one very long boat so the owner could move 400 tons instead of 200 tons. This greatly saved time and money as one crew could move twice the amount. But at the locks the boats had to be uncoupled and each boat passed through on its own. And lockage time was at least twice as working a single boat. And the work load on the horse was almost doubled. So it made sense to promote the use of a steam powered boat to pull or push a non-powered boat.
To drive home this point, in 1877, State Engineer John Van Buren, went into great detail as to the workload of the canal horse. He reported that despite all the efforts to get steam on the canal, the primary movers of boats was still the canal horse. He then gave an overview of the costs of running a horse boat and a steamer, an overview of the Belgium system of towage, an overview of the Frick coupling system, and the workload of either animal or steam to move a boat in the canal. He wrote that the animals would be better served to be owned by a large company and used in stages along the canal with proper food and rest, and then he concluded by saying, “The condition in which the horses employed on the canals are kept is very bad economy, to say nothing of its being a disgrace to our civilization.”xx
In his 1878 message, Governor Robinson announced that traffic was up on the canal, as all available boats were in use. The depression was over. However, since the State had cut tolls so deeply the revenue in 1877 did not cover the cost of running the canal which was higher because more boats were now using it. The State operated the canals under a constitutional article that said that the expenses for the coming year could not exceed the previous year’s revenues. If the expenses did run over the money had to be taken out of extraordinary repairs fund. With this restriction the State had to make cuts to the upcoming years budget. The Governor stated that governance of the canal under the auspices of the new Superintendent of Public Works would be able to cut the annual budget in half from 1877 and run a successful canal.xxi No mention of improvements was made. No mention would be made in 1879 either, however, it may have been that the Governor was giving the new Superintendent some time to get his bearings. The Governor also had other concerns to occupy his time. In a time of consolidation and cuts, the State had spent over nine-million-dollars on a new State Capitol building which was far from finished. The Legislature had moved in to the sections of the capitol that were usable. The Governor wished them well in their home hoping that it would lead them to pass only wise and good laws, but he feared that the new building was built in the fashion of European Courts and would lead to more dishonesty and corruption and he thought maybe the voters might wish that the earth would open and shallow it up.xxii
The Jervis Plan
Soon after VanBuren’s report was made public in January of 1878, John Jervis wrote at length of the need for a canal railroad.xxiii This may have been in response to the various methods of towage that VanBuren reported on which left out any sort of railroad / canal connection. In the 1878 International Review , Jervis wrote an article titled “The Future of the Erie Canal”, in which he attempts to make the case for canal boats to be pulled by steam engines on rails that would run along the towpath. His logic was that if the trains on rails were still pulled by horses as were the canal boats, the canal would be the dominate transportation of the times. However, since steam engines pulled train cars and horses pulled canal boats, the canal could not compete. Then he suggested that steam engines could tow five boats at one time. Nothing would come from this paper other then the fact that a well respected engineer had weighed in onto the future of the Erie Canal and added some facts to the discussion.
In the 1878 Annual Report of the Surveyor and Engineer, Division Engineer Sweet included the results of a study he conducted for State Engineer Horatio Seymour Jr. The purpose of the study was to determine “the commercial value of the proposed improvement of the Erie Canal by deepening it a foot.” In his remarks Sweet made reference to a survey of 1876, “which was undertaken for the purposes of this improvement”. This appears to point back to Governor Tilden’s address, and the resulting act of the legislature (chapter 425 of 1876) which authorized $15,000 for this study. Although Governor Tilden did not call for a deeper canal it appears that Sweet’s instructions were to investigate this. Was this an improvement or an enlargement? [And I pose the question, “Is this the start of the second enlargement?”]
Sweet’s tasks were; 1) to determine the cost to the State of enlarging the canal, and 2) to determine the savings to the boat owners if the canal was made eight-foot-deep. The first task was relatively straight forward. How much would it cost to either dig out the bottom of the canal another foot, or, raise the banks a foot? The second task was a bit more involved and centered on determining how much energy was needed to move a canal boat in the narrow confines of a canal. The energy thus expended is called the tractive force.
At its very basic level, a boat, whether it is being towed or pushed, will resist being moved. Whatever is pulling or pushing the boat the animal or engine will need to overcome this resistance. The amount of water around and under the boat, the shape of the hull, the draft and length of the boat, the current, the shape of the canal, all serve to have an effect the amount of force needed to move the boat. Both Engineers Sweet and VanBuren tried to quantify this force, although Sweet seems to have taken it a bit further. Interestingly, Sweet seems to have only looked at horse boats while VanBuren studied both. In the end he wrote that if the canal was one foot deeper (eight feet), a boat could carry about 50-tons-more, and still have less drag than the boats operating in the seven foot deep canal.xxv
Seymour’s Plan
In his first Annual Report, State Engineer Seymour outlined the challenges faced by the New York State canals.xxvi The railroads and the Canadian canals were the major focus. Studies showed that the St. Lawrence route was a shorter route to Europe and when complete, the locks along the Canadian border would allow much larger boats access to the Great Lakes. The Erie had to innovate and improve, or lose most of its water borne traffic to the Canadian canals. He then turned his focus to how to help the Erie Canal.
For Seymour it all came down to the ease of transportation and how to cheapen the cost of moving goods. He reasoned that the State could either increase tonnage, or increase speed. He noted Sweet’s study as to how to increase the size amount of tonnage a boat could move while decreasing the amount of time that a boat remained in transit across the state. He also suggested that locks could be lengthened and that machinery be installed on the locks to assist boats through the locks. He also suggests deepening the canal to eight feet.
The enlarged Erie to scale with boat. An added foot to the top and bottom of the canal is also shown. The boat takes up 25% of the canal.
Deepening seems to suggest that the canal should be dug deeper. That is not what Seymour wanted to do. He wanted to raise the banks one foot. This could be done by adding a foot of earth to the top of the banks, adding some boards to the various feeder dams, and adding structure to the top of locks and aqueducts. Some bridges might need to be raised. Digging out the bottom of the canal would be much more difficult as the floors of the locks and aqueducts would need to be reconstructed. And the culverts that passed under the canal might need to be lowered or reconstructed. But the main reason to add to the top of the canal was that this would greatly increase the amount of water in the canal prism, since the top of the canal was seventy feet wide, and the bottom was only fifty-two. More water meant reduced drag. This plan of improvement was called the Seymour Plan, a name that would stick up through the Nine Million Dollar Enlargement.
1879- T.C. Ruggles and the Ten Foot Canal
Inspired by the Jervis’ article, Thomas C Ruggles responded with his own argument for a deeper canal. Ruggles agreed that a extra foot of water in the canal would help but an extra three-feet would allow steamers to run faster at an improved economy.
“I will speak first of the length of boats, then of the bottom of the canal. All vessels that go by steam require length; they are now being made about ten times as long as broad. This makes room for machinery, for cabins, and for cargo. The only way left to do on the canals, as the locks would not admit longer boats than those in use, was to fasten one boat before the other, taking them apart at the locks. This in fact, has doubled the capacity of the steamer, and enabled the same crew to bring down twice the load for the same price, and has made steam a success. I recommended this plan in 1861, and left models with Auditor Benton. The plan was approved of by Governor Hunt and Canal Commissioner Hiram Gardner, and the press along the line of the canal. It was adopted in Illinois on a smaller canal than the Erie, and is now approved on the Erie. As I passed along the canal in 1875, captains of canal boats told me if one horse canal boat was fastened before another, the two were towed with less effort than separately.”xxvii Ruggles made the case for a deeper canal and longer locks of twice the current length, if possible.
Ruggles seems to have then taken a step that others had not. He reached out to the newspapers who then used his facts and figures in various articles to publicize the idea. Not all the press was favorable but many picked up on the idea of a deeper canal.
The 1880s
After many years of Governors saying nothing about the future of the Erie Canal, in his address of 1881, Governor Alonzo Cornell may have been forced to address the situation by the soon to be completed enlarged canal of Canada. He said that the new Canadian canal rendered; “the future of the Erie Canal a subject of much concern, and well worthy of your intelligent consideration.”xxviii He said that the State Engineer wanted to raise the banks to increase the water to eight feet, and then said that the Engineer goes into much greater detail in his Annual Report.
In the 1880 Annual Report, State Engineer Seymour devotes many pages to the question of a deeper canal. He outlined the “Danger To Our Commerce” by the St. Lawrence route. He wrote; “The British are so confident that they will wrest the trade of the west from us, that they have nearly completed works that will cost more than thirty millions of dollars. This is in addition to about twenty-millions spent in early improvements, making about fifty-millions paid out to gain the great prize they seek, the control of the carrying trade from the heart of our country to the markets of the world. They do not fear our railroads. While we are neglecting our water-routes, they spare no cost to perfect theirs.”xxix
He then moved into ways to improve the Erie Canal. He used letters from Engineer Van Richmond, George Geddes, and free-tolls promoter Alonzo Richmond to emphasize the need for a deeper canal. In a complicated tangle of letters, Alonzo asked Van Richmond about the practicality of adding one foot to the banks and digging out the canal bottom, who then cited the opinion of George Geddes. Geddes endorsed the idea of a nine foot canal and then said; “The engines must be on the boats, and able to move them backward as well as forward, and for this reason, if for no other, all schemes of railroads on the banks of the canal, or cables laid along its bottom to move the boats, have appeared to me idle, and but divert the public mind from a full investigation of the true plan of improving our means of transportation.”xxx This was certainly a criticism of the Jervis Plan and the other towing plans. He closes with this statement; “The path of improvement is now so plainly marked out that it most certainly will be followed. The opinions of all experts, who have given investigation to this matter, may be said to be alike, and the time for prompt action has fully come. In addition to the financial advantages that would flow from the improvements you advocate, there is a moral consideration worth the attention of all lovers of men and animals. It will be a great advance in this direction, to give the galled and jaded horses and mules of the tow-path an honorable discharge from that service, and it would be a great thing to substitute for the drivers, facing storms and hardships on the bank, educated mechanics, managing steam engines in the comforts of sheltered cabins.”xxxi
By law the State Engineer was given the authority to make some improvements to help the canal without having to ask for an appropriation.xxxii In 1880 machinery was installed into the Port Byron Lock 52, to assist in moving boats through the lock. Once the success at Lock 52 was seen, the other four locks that lifted boats from the west (47,48,49,51) were fitted out with the water powered machinery.xxxiii The State Engineer estimated that two and a half hours would be saved, which was part of his plan to increase the overall time that boats spent in transit.
In his message for 1882 Governor Cornell points out the obvious that by continued cutting of tolls, there was not enough revenue generated to cover the expenses of operating the canal. If the canals were to stay in operation a new method of paying the bills would need to be found. The Legislature passed an act that would be presented to the voters in November that would abolish the tolls and raise the money needed from direct taxation.xxxiv This amendment passed and September 30, 1883 would be the last day that tolls would be collected on the canal.xxxv
The last day of 1883 would end the service of Engineer Silas Seymour. Silas seems to have had held a different opinion of the canals then his predecessor Horatio Seymour. Silas’ Annual Report is full of gloom, from the washing of the banks from the passing steamers, to the filling of the canal bottom due to sediment and sewage, he stated that the idea of a free canal, even though it had only been in operation for a year, was a failure. He then gave three pages of his report extolling the expanding railroad system of the country, and why the canal was a drain. He wrote; “The last named alternative [selling the canals] would, in light of past experiences, appear to be the wisest of the three; for the reason that Pennsylvania, Ohio and other States, have found it for their interest to dispose of their canals; and thus reimburse their treasuries to some extent, for the capital invested in them; and there can be no doubt that the canals of this State can readily be sold for a sufficient amount, to liquidate the entire canal debt of the State; and thus relieve the people from the burden of any further taxation on that account.”xxxvi His last word about the subject was that “THE CANALS MUST GO”.xxxvii It was, as he wrote, his last official act to submit these opinions to the Governor and the Legislature.
Elnathan Sweet was to replace Seymour as the next State Engineer. Sweet, you will recall, wrote the report regarding the tractive force needed by the boats in 1878. Unlike Silas Seymour who had been a railroad man most of his life, Sweet had worked for many years on the canals. He knew the difficulties faced by the State and the boatmen. The divide between the railroads and the canals had grown so that in 1884 the combined railroads had moved over twenty-two million tons, whereas the canal had moved just slightly over five-million-tons. Sweet is notable for his publication The Radical Enlargement of the Artificial Water-way Between the Lakes and the Hudson River.xxxviii Sweet proposed a ship canal one-hundred-feet-wide and eighteen-feet-deep, with locks four-hundred-fifty-feet-long and sixty-feet-wide. Sweet wrote that it would need to step down from Lake Erie to the Hudson, so that water from Lake Erie could be used to fill its entire length. The valley of the Seneca River near Montezuma would have an embankment fifty-feet-high. From Utica to Albany the canal was to use a canalized Mohawk River. He not only proposed this idea through his Annual Report of 1885 (which covered 1884), but also submitted the idea to the American Society of Civil Engineers. It is amazing that some thought the idea grand for the fact that ships of war could be quickly moved into the Great Lakes in case Britain was to move their ships of war into the lakes.xxxix Others had opposing opinions saying that as a nation we should be using the St. Lawrence route, “If the same facilities, and even better, can be got by the expenditure of thirty-three millions [what the Canadian Canals had cost] than by the expenditure of two hundred millions, where is the ground for hesitation and doubt as to the course for prudent sensible men to adopt? Simply this- reluctance to depend in any way upon a foreign nation- pride in our own country- the sentiment which we call patriotism. If the object is to gratify this sentiment- to enforce a Chinese like national exclusion- to build up New York City- then by all means let us enlarge the Erie Canal. But if the object is, as we first stated it, to secure cheap, rapid and reliable transportation from the lakes to the seaboard, then let us take the route that God, the great engineer, has laid out for us.”xl Sweet estimated the cost of his ship canal to be between $125 and $150 million dollars.
Sweet’s Ship Canal proposal was the last of the big ideas when it came to the canal. Sweet had Gere’s Lock 50 lengthened so that two boats could be locked through at one time and then after seeing the success seen at Lock 50, the effort to increase the capacity of the canal centered around lengthening the locks and dredging out the canal to return it to seven feet. Over the years, sediment, sewage, trash an anything else that could be poured or thrown into the canal decreased the working depth. It proved hard enough the keep seven feet of water, let alone eight or nine feet.
The Governors seem to be ready to move on or perhaps away, from the canals. As we have seen, most at least made some mention of the canals in their yearly message. But with the canals free as of 1883, there seemed little reason to push for any improvements. Whitford made note of this, writing “The annual message of Governor Hill, covering the period of 1885, is worthy of note from the fact that it did not contain a single word of direct reference of the canals.”xli Governor Hill did mention the canals in his 1885 message, where he said that no substantial improvements had been made in years.xlii But then after that, canals were absent from the messages covering 1886 to 1891.
The State Canal Union
This does not mean that the canals had lost all their friends and supporters. The State Canal Union was formed around 1885 to bring together interested parties and support the canals. Governor Seymour was the first president of the Union, replaced by George Clinton after Seymour’s death in 1886. In an interview in 1892, President Clinton said that, “The Union was formed for the purpose of lengthening the locks on the canal and deepening the channel so as to give two feet more water; also to clean it out and in part construct vertical walls. The great object was to give a broader and deeper bottom, making it nine instead of seven feet.”xliii The state-wide union would later try to organize smaller “local” canal unions that would advocate for canal improvements from a local perspective. It appears that the Union disbanded in the mid 1890’s.
The New York Produce Exchange
The New York Produce Exchange was a commodities exchange that could swing lots of power. It advocated for the canals but, at times found itself in conflict with other pro-canal organizations that wanted lower grain elevator prices in New York and across the state. It is notable that TC Ruggles sent his proposal for a ten foot canal to this organization before he mailed it out to the media at large. When it came to the deepening of the canal, the Exchange was on the side of the canal men.
The 1890s
1892 was the one hundred year celebration of the canals in New York, going back to the first small canals around the rapids of the Mohawk River. The men of the State Canal Union would seize upon this centennial to serve as a backdrop to the question of what to do with the canal system. The State Canal Union set a date of October 19, 1892 in Buffalo for men to gather to show their support. Canal Union President Clinton said that “the main object of the convention, is to arouse public interest in this matter of canal improvement and to make the convention in a sense educational.”xliv Over three hundred people attended the celebration.
For the first time in years, the 1892 Governor’s message mentioned canal improvements, continuing the lock lengthening project that had been going on since 1884. In the previous two years, little had been done as the Legislature had not given any money for the locks. In 1893 money was given to restart the work. The Governor also stated that he felt electricity should be used to propel the boats and asked for funding to install poles and wires along the canal. This was done under Chapter 499.
Again, in 1894, the Governor makes extensive comments about the canals, but takes an interesting twist. At first he states that a ship canal is out of the question, then says that the lock lengthening project has been a failure and that even the deepening would be useless. Then he suggests that electricity is the way of the future and that the State should continue with the experiments and infrastructure started in the prior year.xlv
The question of the canals came to a head at the 1894 Constitutional Convention. Since the canals are written into the constitution, each convention gave the State the opportunity to make changes such as the amendment to sell off many of the lateral canals in 1873. The canal men knew that this was their chance and held meetings to discuss the resolutions to be passed along to the Convention. They adopted the plan that had been in the works all along, the Seymour Plan.xlvi Their estimate for the work of lengthening the remaining locks, and making the canal a uniform nine-foot-deep was between $10,000,000 and $12,000,000. This plan was rejected and instead, the Legislature was given the power to enact laws in regard to the improvement of the canals. Article 7, Section 10 of the NYS Constitution does not give any number in regards to the enlargement of the canal. It merely states; “The canals may be improved in such manner as the Legislature shall provide by law. A debt may be authorized for that purpose in the mode prescribed by section four of this article, or the cost of such improvement may be defrayed by the appropriation of funds from the state treasury, or by equitable annual tax.”xlvii This was no change in the Constitution, as the Legislature held this power already, however, the question was put on the ballot as a sort of public referendum on the canals.
A investigating Canal Commission later wrote that before the convention, there was a “general impression” that the work could be done for $7,000,000 to $9,000,000. The convention delegates asked for a revised estimate from the State Engineer and gave him just twelve days to estimate the entire work of deepening and enlarging the 350-miles of canal. The last real physical survey of the canal had been made in 1876, and with so little time, this is what the Engineer used. Without leaving the office he estimated the cost to be $11,573,000. As the Commission later wrote; “It was merely the best guess which the State Engineer could give, based upon such facts as he had at hand.”xlviii For some reason, the Legislature, State Engineer and friends of the canal came to a $9,000,000 figure for the Seymour Plan enlargement. The Commission wrote; “It was, in fact, an amount fixed without sufficient data and upon the theory that there would be no unusual difficulties and that the best plan was to do the work as cheaply as possible.”xlix
With the affirmative November vote, the canal men jumped into action wishing to get their resolutions in order before the Legislature opened its 1895 session. A canal conference was held on December 21where as the men resolved that; a liberal amount of money be allocated for the enlargement of the canals; that the money be expended in 1895 and 96; a plan be made to continue and complete the work already in progress, with surveys and estimates; that bonds be secured in the least time, commensurate with the economy.l
1895
The next couple months would serve as the beginning of the second enlargement and at the same time mark the end of the second enlargement. At the beginning of the 1895 Legislature, newly elected Assemblyman Edward Clarkson introduced a bill that would allow the voters, who had just voted in favor of the canal enlargement, to vote again in the fall election. One might view this as a stalling tactic of the opponents of the canals, but Clarkson was a canal man. The newspapers reported, “Hon. Edward M. Clarkson, secretary of the Boat Owners and Commercial Association, was elected member of the assembly from the eighth assembly district, Brooklyn. He will make a capital worker for canal interests.”li Clarkson was also a member of the New York Produce Exchange.lii The bill that Clarkson introduced was for $9,000,000, a sum that was attributed to the canal union.liii
The first odd thing about this step is that the law did not require that the voters re-vote on a sum. The 1894 vote allowed the Legislature to move ahead with the enlargement as they saw fit and never before had the Legislature gone to the people for a vote on a appropriation even though millions had been spent on the canal improvements since 1884. The second odd thing is the $9,000,000 figure that Clarkson had used, since it came from the canal interests. Even the State Engineer had reported that at least $11,500,000 would be needed. Other estimates ran even higher. Clarkson’s bill also required that Superintendent of Public Works be required to enlarge and improve the canals within three months of the issuing of bonds. And it said; “The work called for by this act shall be done in accordance with plans, specifications, and estimates prepared and approved by the State Engineer and Surveyor.”liv The bill moved through the Legislature and was approved to move onto the voter at the fall election.
The canal men and other commercial interests met in June to plot their campaign to get the voters to give their approval a second time. The campaign worked, as enlargement was once again given the nod of the voters, with a majority of 250,000. The newspapers wrote; “The great improvement will begin this year, and three years’ time will see the completion of a wonderful change in the condition of the canals. It means work for idle workmen, a low rate for the transportation of merchandise, grain and coal, and a movement for the general prosperity of the State.”lv
1896
With the approval of the voters work could begin. However, before a shovel could be put to earth, much work had to take place. A survey of the canal had to be made so that the engineers could decide what work was needed. Survey men had to be hired and trained, and assistant engineers hired. There were not enough available men on the civil service lists so more had to be found. The canal was divided into thirty-bid-sections, and into each section estimates for improvements had to be made. Test cores had to be taken to judge if the soil was rock, clay, or earth. Measurements had to be made as to whether to raise or lower the canal, what structures were present. An engineer and assistant was needed for each section. Once the estimates were complete, the work needed to be advertised in all the papers along the canal. And then the contractors would submit their bids, and from these, work was awarded. All this was supposed to take place within three months. It took a year.
By July 1896 it became clear that the work for the enlargement of the canal using the Seymour Plan would cost $13,500,000. And this did not include engineering, advertising or inspection, all things that the State had to do. The enlargement law as written did not apply to existing structures, say when a bridge had to be raised or if a culvert had to be rebuilt. In fact all the structures that were in poor condition could not be repaired under this law.lvi And it was clear to the Superintendent that the canal would suffer if any part of it was disturbed. He wrote the banks were likely to collapse if any work was done around them, say when digging out the bottom or adding soil to the top.lvii The State Engineer was told to make cuts to bring the work in alignment with the $9,000,000.lviii Wholesale cuts were made to structures, bank work, excavations. And the work was bid out.
ii Annual Report of the Canal Commissioners of the State of New York, Albany 1857, pg 42. This report covers the year 1856. In it, it was stated that the canal, although enlarged to seventy feet wide, only held five feet of water.
iv Wikipedia contributors, “Samuel B. Ruggles,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. The name Ruggles was well known in New York City. He donated the land in NYC for Gramercy Park, Irving Place, Lexington and Madison Avenues.
v Report on the Canals of New York, Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of State of New York, New York, 1875, Pg 21.
vii I have not been able to ascertain if Samuel and Thomas Ruggles were related.
viii Whitford, Noble E., History of the Canal System of the State of New York, Albany, NY., 1906, pg. 258
ix Message of Governor Hoffman from 1869. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909.Volume 6- pg 16. There is a volume series of annotated messages edited by Charles Lincoln dating between 1683 to 1906. All messages used in this article come from these volumes.
x Chapter 877 of 1869. Annual Report of State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1892. This Report, which covers the year of 1891, contains a wealth of information about the canals, boats, and improvements. There is a list of the various laws passed in support of the canals beginning on page 75. Laws are also noted in Whitford and the messages of the Governors.
xviii Ruggles, Thomas Colden, Report to New York Chamber of Commerce. Eighteenth Annual Report of the Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce, New York, 1876. Pg 47
xix Message of Governor Tilden from 1876. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 6, pg 994.
xx Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1878, pg 62. This report covers the year 1877.
xxi Message of Governor Robinson from 1878. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 144
xxii Message of Governor Robinson from 1879. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 273
xxiii Jervis, John B., The Future of the Erie Canal, The International Review, New York, Volume 5, 1878, pg 379. John B Jervis was a engineer of note, with projects on the Erie Canal, the Delaware and Hudson, and many other civil works projects.
xxiv Sweet, Elnathan in a report to Horatio Seymour, Jr., Increasing the Depth of Water in the Erie Canal, Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1879, pg 54. Sweet’s report was dated October 1, 1878. There appears to have been two completely separate studies carried out in regards to the workload of a motor, be it animal or mechanical, when moving a canal boat. VanBuren’s report appears to have been carried out in the fall of 1877, and Seymour had another made in the summer of 1878. Why two studies were made is unknown.
xxv Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, 58th Session, Volume 2, 1835. See Hutchinsons’ report on the enlargement of the Erie Canal. He first submitted it in 1834 as Assembly Document #88. It was resubmitted in 1835 as Assembly Document #143. Tractive force may have not been considered when the first Erie was designed, however, it is clear that that Engineer Holmes Hutchinson did consider the tractive forces when designing the first enlargement. If all had been equal between the first and second versions of the Erie Canal, the boats on the second Erie would have been twenty-six feet side. But they were only seventeen, which reduced the tractive resistance and allowed three boats to pass side by side. Governor Tilden referenced Hutchinson in his 1875 address when he called for canal improvements. Later Sweet and others will credit Hutchinson and Jervis for making use of the work of Frenchman Chevalier DuBuat, who in the late 1700’s, studied the way that boats moved in canals. This is all to say that as early as the mid 1700’s engineers realized that increasing the size of a canal boat was not always the best way to increase canal capacity.
xxvi Horatio was the son of John, and was not a junior at all. He appears to have been named for his uncle, Governor Horatio Seymour.
xxvii Ruggles, Thomas C. Letter of T.C. Ruggles on the Erie Canal. Report of the New York Produce Exchange for the Year 1879, New York, 1880, pg 72. Ruggles may have been making reference to a boat lashing system designed by William Frick. Frick applied for his patent on March 11, 1878, but some type of system was in use by 1875. Most of the engineers referred to the lashing system as the “Illinois system”.
xxviii Message of Governor Cornell from 1881. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 516.
xxix Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1881, pg 8. This report covers 1880.
xxx Ibid. A letter from George Geddes to Engineer Seymour, pg 12
xxxii Chapter 99 of 1880 allows the Superintendent of Public Works and the State Engineer to make repairs and improvements.
xxxiii Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany, 1882. pg 140. This report covers 1881.
xxxiv Message of Governor Cornell from 1881. State of New York, Messages From The Governors, edited by Charles Z. Lincoln. Albany, 1909. Volume 7, pg 685. Chapter 229 of 1882.
xxxv This law would remain in effect until 1994, when lockage fees were applied.
xxxvi Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor, Albany 1884, pg 32. This report covers 1883.
xxxviii Sweet, Elnathan M., The Radical Enlargement of the Artificial Water-way between The Lakes and The Hudson River, American Society of Civil Engineers Transaction #299, Vol 14, New York, February 1885 p
Everyone has heard the brief history of concrete. The Romans used it and after the fall of the Roman Empire, the use was “forgotten” for about1500 years. The rebirth of concrete as a building material came back in the late 1600s and but was not heavily used until the invention of Portland Cement in 1824. The terms cement and concrete are often used as replacements for one another, however, cement is an ingredient in concrete. Concrete is a mix of cement, aggregates (stone and or sand), and water. The material is then poured into some type of form until it sets. Reinforcing materials are added to strengthen the structure. The recipe used in the mixing of the cement, stone, and water can vary the strength of the concrete. The use of concrete exploded in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the methods used in the mixing, pouring, and curing, were widely studied and reported on by engineering journals. For our study of canals, we must note that the rock cutters of the Enlarged Canal were replaced by the concrete workers of the Barge Canal. So there is your primer on concrete.
When the World War broke out, the need for barges and ships increased at a time when the shortage of metal forced builders to look to other methods of construction. The Emergency Fleet Corporation “floated” the idea of concrete barges and ships, for both on the inland waterways and on the open seas. It was pointed out that a concrete boat had been in use on the Welland Canal for a number of years. The Portland Cement Association jumped at the chance to promote their product into wider use. Thus the era of the concrete barge was born.
In the spring of 1918, the Concrete Ship Section of the Emergency Fleet Corporation designed a concrete barge for use on the Barge Canal. The barge was 150 feet long, 21 feet wide and had a depth of 12 feet. The cargo carrying capacity was to be 500 tons with a draft of 10 feet. The barge was divided into three sections and designed along the lines of the old Enlarged Erie canal boats, with a forward 15 foot section for storage and crew quarters; a cargo area of 115 feet; and a rear well appointed captains quarters of 20 feet. The captain’s quarters had a galley, living room, bed room, and wardrobe.
Four yards were chosen to build the barges;
The Grayhaven Shipbuilding Company, operated by Thomas Currie of Detroit Michigan and built in Michigan. (Five barges- U.S.101 to 105);
The Holler – Flood and Davis Company of Fort Edward, NY and built in Fort Edward (eight barges – U.S. 106 to 113);
The Cummins Structural Concrete Company of Philadelphia, and built in Ithaca, NY (four barges- U.S. 114 to 117);
The Caldwell Marshall Company of Columbus, Indiana, and built in Tonawanda, NY (four barges- U.S. 118 to 121);
A total of 21 barges were built and launched throughout 1918 and 1919. All the barges were to be identical, although the methods of construction varied, with each yard adapting to the landscape and available machinery. This gave the engineers a chance to review and improve the way concrete was handled and used. These methods were widely reported on in the concrete industry newspapers.
One of the concrete boat fleet.
With the exception of the interior decoration of the living quarters, the boats were made entirely of reinforced concrete. The hull was three inches thick in the middle and four to four and a half for the bow and stern. The deck was three inches thick except where the deck hatches attached.
Wood forms were designed and built that would give the boat its shape. The outer form was constructed and then reinforcing bars were laced together that followed the shape of the forms. An inner form then created the space that was filled with the concrete. The bow and stern of the barges had some degree of curvature, so the skills of the men were tested as they bent the bars to fit into the three to four inch space available between the forms.
Once the form was set, it was coated with some type of release agent that would allow the forms to be removed without harming the concrete. The boats were to be poured in one process. One hundred and twenty yards of cement, aggregate, and water was then mixed to a point that was flowable, but not liquid. As the mix was poured into the mold, air hammers vibrated the sides of the form to help the concrete fill the voids in and around the reinforcing bars. It was a demanding process that took between forty to fifty hours. Once the concrete had set, the forms were removed and reused on the next boat.
The boats were problematic from the start. We are fortunate that Richard Garrity wrote about his memories of the concrete barges in his book, Canal Boatman. According to Garrity, the boats were not well suited to the canal and were quick to puncture. Even when empty, the boats would sit draft lower then the wood barges. This is also apparent in a review of the newspapers of the period, with many mentions of sunken concrete barges. It wasn’t that the concrete barges did not float; it was that they had no give or bounce when they bumped into dock walls and bridge abutments. Wood and steel barges had some elastic abilities that the concrete lacked. The concrete simply would puncture. Garrity writes that the Munson Company did not take the concrete barges when it purchased the government fleet, although he doesn’t mention the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation, who first purchased the boats.
US 107 at Lock 9, Rotterdam JunctionUS 107, 109 and 120 lie upstream of Lock 9 as seen in 2013.
In a twist of history, the New York Department of Public Works took a step that “saved” the concrete barges, so we can still see them today. The barges were purchased and then filled with stone and soil, towed to various locks along the Mohawk River and then sunk as approach walls. The Annual reports for 1927 and 1928 state that barges were placed at the end of the upper and lower walls of Erie Lock 9, the lower wall of Locks 10 and 13. This was done to correct the error in design of building very short approach walls to the locks. In times of high and fast water, the bargemen found it difficult to control their boats during the approach into the locks. To correct this issue, the concrete barges were sunk at the end of the existing approach walls. This gave the bargemen the opportunity to gently bump into the wall during their approach to the lock, and then pivot off them. It was not a perfect solution, but the walls were never extended beyond this quick remedial measure.
US 102 at Lock 13US 102 at Lock 13
Over time, weather and water have taken a toll on the old barges. As the concrete failed and fell off, it left the old steel rebar sticking at at odd angles, waiting to catch the unsuspecting boater. The barges at Lock 13 have been buried in the last reconstruction after the 2011 floods. The floods and work appear to have destroyed the barges below Lock 10. The three barges along the upper wall at Lock 9 remain as the most intact and are quite the attraction in the winter when the water is low in the river. The barges below Lock 9 have been mostly buried and were in very poor shape when last seen.
US 112 and 116 lie downstream of Lock 9.
Concrete is still used to build rot resistant boats. The St Helena III at Canal Fulton in Ohio, and the General Harrison at the Johnson Farm and Indian Agency, also in Ohio, are animal powered boat rides that use a type of concrete in their hull. But this is a rather limited, and low impact usage.
As the United States entered the European War in 1917, it was found that the nation’s transportation facilities were not up to the task of mobilizing and supplying large quantities of materials and men to the east coast for shipment to the war front. What took place over the next three years was an experiment in the nationalization of the railroads, and to a much smaller extent, the waterways. I have tried to follow the chain of events that led to the take over of the New York Barge Canal and what happened after the War.
1917, The New Barge Canal, and The War
The year was 1917 and New York State found itself with a rather big problem. After fourteen years of planning, engineering and construction, the new Barge Canal was almost ready for use. Although terminal space was still being built, and plans were to have the entire canal channel and locks ready for use in the spring of 1918, there were few boats available for use on the canal. And there were many reasons for this;
The older wooden boats which had been used for years on the Enlarged Canal, were at best able to carry 250 tons, whereas the new canal was built to have boats of 2000 tons.
Boats operating on the new canal had to either be towed, or have a means of propulsion. Many family operated boats from the old Erie Canal simply didn’t have the means to purchase and operate a tug or powered barge.
It had taken years to build the new canal, and much of the new canal followed a new and different route across parts of the state. It had yet to be seen if shipping companies and industries would move to set up shop along the Barge Canal. The boat builders, the shippers, and the industry had taken a wait and see approach to use of the Barge Canal.
To put it as plain as one can, the State of New York had spent almost $150,000,000 dollars on the new canal, only to realize in a year before the grand opening, that few people and companies were ready or able to use it.
As the people in charge of the new canal looked at their new creation and saw few private companies ready to use it, they turned to the Federal Government for assistance. The reason they did this is because in the lead up to the War, the Federal Government, by way of the Department of Commerce under Secretary William Redfield, had begun to look at the readiness of the nation’s transportation resources. Redfield was from New York and was a waterways supporter. In 1916, he wrote, “Wherever it is possible to obtain direct transit by a steamboat on a waterway of sufficient size and depth for it to maintain speed the waterway provides at once the quickest and cheapest method of transit.” The Department created a Committee on Waterways, and it was a given that the men of New York would look to Secretary Redfield for help.
William Cox Redfield
On August 24, 1916, the President of the United States created the Council of National Defense to ready the nation for war. A number of committees were created by this Council, one of which was another committee on waterways. So New York, under the direction of the Department of Public Works, asked the newly formed Council to tour the new Barge Canal to see if it could be of use in shipping. The group toured the State looking at the almost completed Barge Canal still under construction. It was clear to the Committee that the lack of boats and terminals was a major problem. Whitford states in his History of the Barge Canal that the report of the subcommittee appointed to study the canal was never made public and no action was taken.
While this was going on, in April 1917, the Emergency Fleet Corporation was created by the United States Shipping Board, which itself had been created by The Merchant Marine Act of 1916. The EFC was to acquire, maintain, and operate a fleet of merchant ships to meet the needs of the national defense, and the foreign and domestic commerce, during the war. On July 11, 1917, the President gave to the Emergency Fleet Corporation all his wartime power and authority to acquire all the existing vessels needed and to construct whatever additional vessels might be needed. The EFC also could operate all the vessels that had been acquired by the United States. (And here is the important part for our study here.) Legally, the EFC could not actually operate the ships unless no private companies could be found to do so. But again, no movement was made by the Federal Government to use the Barge Canal.
So on August 1, 1917, the canal men of the State held a New York State Canal Convention. At this gathering, they passed a resolution asking the New York State government to petition the Feds to take over transport on the Barge Canal. By the end of August 1917, Governor Whitman asked President Wilson to take charge. And in spite of all this, little happened at the Federal level.
However, the public and the press jumped on the Federal control bandwagon, with many articles stating that the Feds must take over the canal and predicting great benefits for the State and her people. “Let the Canal Help Win the War” was the headline in the Tonawanda Evening News of December 7, 1917. “How the Barge Canal Can Relive The Freight Tie-Up”, reported the Brooklyn Daily Star of December 21, 1917. This all pointed to one simple need; “Ask the U.S. To Build Barges”, reported the Ellicottville Post of January 7, 1918. Without boats, the new canal was useless, and few boats were available.
While all this agitation was taking place the EFC was working under its charter. But on December 26, 1917, the President took control of all the transportation facilities in the country and appointed his son-in-law William Gibbs McAdoo as head of the United States Railroad Administration. The reason for this step was a total break down of the railroad operations during the winter of 1917 when cars and entire trains loaded with supplies for the war front in Europe stacked up on the East Coast leaving few empty cars to load. With all the yards filled with cars, trains filled with coal could not make their way to the docks to load the ships that needed the coal as fuel in order to cross the ocean. And with the cars filled with coal waiting to be unloaded, there were few empties to send back to the mines. In short, the entire network of railroads came to a standstill. It was against this backdrop that the President exercised his war time power over the railroads.
1918, and the Federal Takeover of the Movement of Freight.
In February of 1918, McAdoo, head of the USRA, created the Inland Waterways Committee. The goal was to see if the waterways could be used to break up the railroad traffic jams. The Committee of Inland Water Transportation, which was working as a subcommittee to the Council of National Defense, was turned over in total to the Inland Waterways Committee of the USRA. The rumors about the Feds taking over the Barge Canal resurfaced.
William Gibbs McAdoo
During this changeover period, State Engineer Frank Williams, who had spent years working on the Barge Canal and was desperate to make it a success, testified before the EFC. On January 31, 1918, he touted the canal and what it could do for the war effort. And he again stressed the lack of boats and shippers as a major problem for the State and her people who had invested $150,000,000 in constructing the canal.
It is here that we must introduce George Ashley Tomlinson. Tomlinson was a self made Teddy Roosevelt type man, having gone to the west as a young man to find and prove himself and learn the value of a hard days work. He then bounced around a bit, working as a reporter, joining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and then returning to the newspaper business, finally becoming the Managing Editor of the Detroit Tribune. Encouraged by his father-in-law, he moved to Duluth and set to work to start a shipping business on the Lakes. By the time the US entered WW1, he had a fleet of twenty-six ships, and was a partner in many shipyards. He testified before the same Board that Engineer Williams was speaking to.
George Ashley Tomlinson
George Tomlinson took the exact opposite stand as Williams. He plainly stated that he, as a shipper and boat builder, would not use the canal if the Federal Government took control of the shipping and boat building. He stated that he had $3,000,000 of his own money ready to start the construction of 100 barges for use on the Erie Canal. He even stated that he had the steel all lined up. These barges would work with his line of Great Lakes steamers to move freight to and through the new canal. But, he cautioned, if the Federal Government was to run a line of barges on the canal, he would not.
What happened next was not recorded, but it appears from what Tomlinson said years later that he was almost immediately offered the job of Federal Manager of the Barge Canal, under the control of the USRA. He also stated later that he was made to see the need to have the Federal control over the canal. George Ashley Tomlinson was officially appointed by General Order #22 of the USRA, dated April 22, 1918, but it is clear from the records that he was serving on the Waterways Board months before this appointment.
Four days prior to April 22, McAdoo assumed control of shipping on the Barge Canal. It is one great misunderstandings of history that the Federal Government took over the Barge Canal. Even Richard Garrity in his memoir writes that the Federal government “operated and controlled” the Barge Canal. That was never the understanding that was worked out between the Federal government and the State. The Barge Canal was always to remain under the operational control of the State. The State constitution makes this clear. The State of New York would continue to maintain and operate the canal, it was just that the movement of traffic was be taken over by the Feds. They were to ensure the best use of the facilities, putting private boats under contract with the idea that one large management structure could coordinate the movement of freight. If there were not enough boats to move the freight, then the government would build and operate the boats as needed. This move by the Feds was greatly heralded by the State and her citizens for everyone knew that there were not enough private boats and that the Feds would need to build many boats. These boats would fill the empty canal and the construction of the Barge Canal would be justified. The headline in the Rome Daily Sentinel basically said what everyone else was saying; “McAdoo Takes Over Traffic Upon Canals”. The smaller headlines read; “Barge Canal and Connections To Be Operated As Part Of Railway System”, and then “To Build Great Fleet Of Barges”. The Ithaca Daily News reported; “Barge Canal Under Federal Control. Will mean much to Ithaca- Construction to start at once”.
But even in the State-wide joy, not everyone was happy. New York City Mayor Hylan was warning whoever would listen that the takeover by the USRA was a railroad plot to destroy the canal. But few papers carried this opinion.
On May 15, 1918, the completed Barge Canal opened. The New York Herald wrote of the USRA operations of the canal by saying; “Thus passes the old antagonism of the railways which so long retarded development of the State’s waterways.” The railroad and the canal were to become brothers in arms. With Tomlinson in charge, great plans were made. By the end of April, Tomlinson was stating that he intended to build barges for the canal. In June, Tomlinson was in Buffalo, urging the shippers of the city to use the canal. Here the paper reports an interesting conversation; Emphasis was laid on the fact that the new waterway was not created in opposition to the railroads. Although it was all part of the railroad administration, he [Tomlinson] supposed he was the only man connected with the canal administration who wasn’t a railroad man. It would be idle for me to seek to establish a barge canal system in opposition to the railroads. I don’t expect much encouragement from them, it is true and up to this date I haven’t gotten it. But we’re going to do business on the canal this fall. In the next thirty days we expect to be busy when the wheat comes east for the seaboard, as much of it will be diverted from the short hauls by rail to the water route.”… “At present we are operating on the railroad tariff”, said Mr. Tomlinson. “I have asked the administration to put on a differential for state service and expect a reply within a few days.”
It is hard to read Tomlinson and who he was. He said years later that a person did not need to like his job in order to be good at it. He was a practical man and was very successful in the shipping business. He saw that the people and industry needed to use the canal to make it successful, and he repeatedly pleaded with shippers to use and develop the canal. Terminal arrangements were made at Buffalo and New York City for large amounts of traffic. The papers did their part. The Syracuse Journal editorialized; “Let the communities through which pass the great fleet of carriers once catch the spirit of the industry and the new means of transportation will become as popular as the vastness of the enterprise merits”. In July, it was announced that a fast freight service was being added, with boats servicing terminals three times a week.
The good feelings were not to last. The tariff or shipping rate set by the USRA that Tomlinson spoke to was causing much concern. For the first time in history, the freight rates were equal between the railroad and canal, offering little incentive to ship by canal. By the end of June 1918, the USRA increased the railroad rates by 25%. But they didn’t lower the rates down to where the canal interests wanted them; instead they raised the rail rates. And this was not done to pacify the canal concerns, but to help the railroads who were losing money. The increase in rates resulted in an additional one billion dollars of revenue for the roads.
However, the concern lingered and grew that not only was the public not using the canal, but the federal government, who was supposed to be building large fleets of barges and shipping by canal, were instead giving all the traffic to the railroads. The New York Herald said that; “The State of New York is confronting a calamity unequaled in its history.” At the June 1918 NYS Canal Convention, just a month after the opening of the canal, and two months after Tomlinson’s appointment, a committee was appointed to make arrangements to go to Washington and speak directly with Director General McAdoo. The committee did not receive an appointment with McAdoo until October. When they finally got the chance to speak, what they heard was what they feared. The question was asked if the USRA would ship by canal, and McAdoo reportedly said that he would never ship by canal if he could ship by rail, because it would be harmful to railroad interests. It was the opinion of McAdoo that private boat owners could ship as they wished, however, it was pointed out by the New York delegation that the USRA had contracted with all the serviceable boats. And these boats were sitting idle, or were moving empty between ports. The question was also asked about the building of steel barges, which had been promised in April. They were told that all steel was being used in the war effort and none was available to build canal boats. However, the Federal government was having concrete boats built for use on the canal.
In late July, the Mississippi and Warrior Rivers were added to the USRA control, and on September 8th, George Tomlinson was appointed to become the Director of Inland Waterways, which had control of all the inland rivers and canals. H.S. Noble became the director of the New York Barge Canal section of the USRA.
On November 11, 1918, the War was over and it was hoped that the government would soon be returning control of the railroads and canals back to their owners. However, the railroads (and waterways) were still needed during the demobilization of the Nation, so control remained with the USRA. There were also numerous issues on the railroads that had yet to be dealt with. The problems that existed prior to the war and throughout 1917 were still there and simply handing the roads back to the private corporations might make things worse.
1919, and The Post War Era
One of the issues for the Waterways Division of the USRA is that they had been purchasing and building barges, tugs, and motorships, and they had many under construction as the war ended. The question then became; what to do with this equipment? With the railroads, the government had agreed to make restitution for use of the lines and the engines and cars could be given to the companies. But with the canals, there was no corporate structure to give the boats to. After all, New York State had offered the use of the Barge Canal for free. The short term answer was to operate the government fleet as a shipping business, and continue to provide a service to the State and the shippers. At the same time, the private boat owners were released from their contracts and allowed to operate without Federal control. And the Feds agreed that they would only take shipments between Buffalo and Albany. They would not compete in the local market. For the moment, this seemed to quiet the situation.
With the Nation at peace, public opinion quickly turned against government intervention of any kind, no matter how good the intentions. With no emergency to solidify public opinion, the mood was to go back to pre-war conditions. Although the cry in the papers was to return control of the canal to New York State, the railroads were feeling the same way. The War was over, and it was time to end the government control everywhere. For those in the government, there was still the issue of the failure of the railroads in the winter of 1917. Representative John Esch, a strong believer in the oversight of commerce, introduced a bill to the House of Representatives to switch oversight of the railroads from the USRA to the Interstate Commerce Commission. At the same time, Senator Atlee Pomerene introduced a similar bill in the senate. This became known as the Esch-Pomerene Bill and hearings were held. Although the bill pertained mostly to railroads, the fact that the waterways were controlled by the USRA meant that New York State would be impacted by any legislation. The New York Canal delegation was outraged to learn that the oversight of the federal fleet could be handed over to another federal agency, and much agitation against the Bill resulted. Superintendent Edward Walsh testified before the Committee on Foreign and Domestic Commerce on September 15, 1919 that any further government control or action would be disastrous to the canal and New York State.
In the end, Esch-Pomerene Bill was modified as the Esch Bill and sent to the House where it passed. Going to the Senate, the Bill was modified by Albert Cummins (and others) and the resulting legislation became known as the Esch-Cummins Bill, or the Transportation Act of 1920. This Act resulted in the returning of the railroads to private control as of March 1, 1920, albeit with much government oversight. And the Inland Waterways, well they were turned over to the Secretary of War. On March 1, 1920, George Tomlinson went back to private business, although he may have never totally quit his interests during his tenure in the USRA. A newspaper article from January 1920, states that Tomlinson had recently returned from a two month “ship building mission” to England. In January, 1920, he was appointed as the president of the Buffalo Drydock.
Why the end of federal operations of the waterways was not included in the Transportation Act was not clear. Senator Cummins said he thought the exclusion of the Barge Canal was a mistake, and all agreed that by the time it was noticed in the Act, the time it would take to remove it would push the passage of the Bill past President Wilson’s promised March 1 return date. So it had been left in.
With the government fleet waterways now under the control of the War Department, it was announced that the fleet would continue operations on the New York, Mississippi, Warrior and other waterways that had been under the control of the USRA. Recognizing that all the waterways were hurting from a lack of business, the Secretary of War decided upon an experiment of sorts, where the government fleet would operate solely as a commercial transportation company. (Director General McAdoo had suggested that the government retain control of the railroads for five additional years to see if they could be run as a nationwide experiment.) For the men of New York, this was a continued outrage. The message was clear; with any government craft working the canal, no private company would invest in shipping.
To be sure that the message was heard, in May 1920, an aide in the NYS Engineer’s Department wrote a article for the New York City papers titled; “Why New York’s $150,000,000 Barge Canal Is Idle”. Three reasons were given: a lack of boats, an intrusive Federal Government, and the shippers of the mid-west. An entire page was given to the article which carefully explained that after just two years, New York might abandon the new Canal if nothing changed.
Senator James Wadsworth led the charge to amend the Transportation Bill so that the Barge Canal could be exempt from federal government operations. While the Congressmen from the southern states were happy to have the federal government running barges on their rivers, the New York State Congressmen and men of commerce wanted them gone. More hearings were held and again, Superintend Walsh and others in the State traveled to Washington to beg the Federal government to leave. Again and again, it was claimed that not one private person would operate on the canal as long as the Government fleet continued to operate, because no one could compete with the Government. Although testimony revealed that many private boats were indeed operating on the canal, it was the position of the State that until the Federal government ended operations, the Barge Canal would never be able to prove her worth. Alexander Smith, the Editor of the Marine News, demonstrated the evils of the Federal Government by having placed into the record the testimony of George Tomlinson. George, it might be recalled, said early in 1918, that if the government was to go into the shipping business, he would not. That was proof enough that any level of control by the Fed’s would keep prosperous men of shipping away from the canal.
If the men of New York had simply gone before the Committee on Interstate Commerce and asked that the canal be exempt from the Transportation Bill, all would have been well. Even Chairman Cummins said that the matter would have been over. But they wanted more and asked that the resolution be changed so that in addition to the end of government operations, all the government built vessels; 73 barges, with another 27 being built, and 20 self propelled barges, would be given to the State of New York as “payment” for the use of the canal over the last three years. Thus begins a convoluted argument by Superintendent Walsh (and others), that New York State, who had at first told the Federal government that they were welcome to use the canal free of charge, deserved to be given (paid) a gift of the government fleet.
The men of the south protested and stated that if New York no longer wished government involvement, that they would be happy to take the barges for use on their waterways. The counterargument by Walsh was that the barges, being designed and built for the Barge Canal, were only suitable to the Barge Canal.
On February 28, 1921, the President signed the joint resolution to exempt the Barge Canal from the Transportation Act of 1920. The Government fleet was to be sold to the highest bidder.
The story might have ended there. But it doesn’t. In June 1921, Edward Walsh (the former Superintendent of Public Works and man who spent days testifying before Congressional Committees) and others under the name of the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation, purchased the government fleet for $1,400,000. By March 1924, Walsh and his concern were asking that the price be reduced as they could not make the payments. Stating that the canal was “almost unfit” for use, he placed the blame for his financial troubles squarely on the State. In March1925, a bill passed Congress to reduce the price of the sale by $900,000, from $1,400,000 to $500,000. By November 1925, the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation had been sold to the Munson Steamship Company for more than One Million. According to Garrity, the steel boats were later sold and moved to Cuba. (Walsh was also facing charges of failing to faithfully conduct the duties of his office while acting as Public Works Superintendent, but that is another article.)
Conclusion
So what really happened in the period between 1918 and 1921? It is clear that New York State asked the Federal government to take control of the new Barge Canal in the hopes that the federal boats would stimulate use of the new waterway. And although the terms; “federal control” and “federal takeover” have been used by many, the federal government never did take over the canal, they took over the movement of freight for one year during the War in 1918. By 1919, some private boating companies were using the canal in spite of the “federal control”. It is also clear that the actions by some people in the Federal government may have been purposely injurious to the new canal by routing freight away from the canal.
However, it is also clear that by the time the new canal was fully open, that there was a lack of serviceable boats and businesses to use the canal. Even if the Federal government wanted to ship by canal, there may have been no boats available to load. The War was over by the time the Federal government had time to design, bid out, and build new barges and ships for the canal. However, the Government pushed forward to finish the boats and put them into use.
When shippers didn’t rush into the canal use void, the builders and promoters of the new Barge Canal may have been looking around for scapegoats. It was clear by 1916 and 17 that there was a lack of boats and firms ready to use the canal. The Federal control would solve that problem. When it didn’t, it was clear that the Federal government control was keeping shippers away. And once the Federal fleet was gone, it was the lack of maintenance, the lack of terminals, etc. People may have been simply grasping at any reason to explain why shippers were not using the new canal. The Federal action of 1918-1921 was just a first in a long line of explanations as to why the canal never reached its full promise.
The Finger Lakes of Central New York are well known for their natural beauty and award winning wines. They are not so well known for the role they played in the state’s canal and boating history. Three of the Finger Lakes were connected to the Erie Canal by way of the Cayuga Seneca Canal, which joined with the Erie at Montezuma. From this junction, boats could travel south to Cayuga Lake and then west to Seneca Lake. Both Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are about forty-miles-long and allowed boats to reach Ithaca and Watkins Glen. In addition, the Chemung Canal allowed boats to reach the southern regions of the state and for a few brief years, provided a connection to the Pennsylvania canals and coalfields. The short Crooked Lake Canal allowed boat to travel between Keuka and Seneca Lakes. Once on Keuka Lake, boats could travel south about twenty miles to Hammondsport. Over the decades of canal transport, many boats were lost and now rest relatively intact on the lake bottom. These sunken boats could provide invaluable information about canal boat construction. Over the years, some boat have been found and investigated. The book, A Canalboat Primer (1981, Erie Canal Museum), notes that the Underwater Archaeology Association of Elmira found twenty-eight canal boats in Seneca and Keuka Lakes. Line drawings of one of these boats was included in the book.
In 2018, Art Cohn, the Director Emeritus of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, led a team of researchers from that museum on a hunt for the wreak of the Frank Bowley, a coal boat that had sunk in November of 1869. The loss of the Frank Bowley had been well documented in the papers and the approximate location was fairly well known. This allowed Art and his team to quickly find the canal boat. With some extra time to spare, the team conducted additional surveys which located an additional seven boats. It was clear that more boats could be found with more time and resources, and this encouraged the team to plan a return to the lake so a more in-depth survey could be conducted.
In the summer of 2019, Art Cohn, and Dr. Tom Manley, Assistant Professor of Geoolgy at Middlebury College, led a team of investigators on a Archaeological and Bathymetric Survey of Seneca Lake. This time they had the support of the New York State Museum; the Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation; the Canal Corporation; the Department of Corrections; as well as the Canal Society of NYS; Middlebury, and Hobart and William Smith colleges; and others. The primary vessel was Middlebury College’s research vessel R/V David Folger, with support from the Underwater Research Vessel Voyager. Together they were able to locate ship-wrecks and to map the lake features with a bathymetric survey.
Over the two years sixteen targets were found. These include one log raft, one lifting frame, seven original sized canal boats (one of which might be a packet boat), six Enlarged era boats, and one ship. What is notable is that if the team did find a packet boat, they might have found the only existing boat of this type. The report notes that in the cold fresh waters of the lake, these remains should be safe for years to come. However, the introduction of Quagga Mussels has changed the timeline for researchers. Research in Lake Champlain has shown that the mussels will consume any iron nails, bolts, or straps, which then destabilizes the boat. It is predicted that every boat will be covered and damaged no matter of the depth. As a result there isn’t a lot of time left before these sunken treasurers are lost forever.
Plans were made to return to the lake in 2020, but the pandemic delayed these until 2021. When the team is able to return, the goal is to complete the survey of Seneca Lake. It is hoped that the resources will be found to conduct a similar survey of Cayuga Lake.
The team released a very detailed report of the surveys and findings. This 106-page book, The Seneca Lake Archaeological and Bathymetric Survey 2019 Final Report, outlines the goals, gives a very good history of boating on the canals and lakes, and provides an overview of the sixteen targets and what the team believes these to be. I asked Art Cohn if the report would be made available as a pdf, and he has kindly allowed the ACS to post a copy on our website.
The Black River Canal was one of New York’s many lateral canals that extended navigation to the north and south of the main Erie Canal. Today, it is a remarkably intact abandoned canal, largely due to the fact that parts of the southern end continue to be used as a feeder channel to supply water to the Barge Canal, however canal locks and the prism can be found all along the thirty-five miles between Rome and Lyons Falls. And lately a trail has been established along sections of the towpath, giving it further protections.
The southern end of the BRC joined to the Erie Canal in Rome. This was near the location of Fort Stanwix, or to be more precise, at the intersection of Black River and Erie Boulevards. The canal then headed north, climbing into the mountains by following the valley of the Mohawk River and then the Lansingkill gorge. Today State Route 48 closely follows this same route and remains can be seen all along the highway. When the canal reached it’s highest point at Boonville, it began to descend along the Black River valley toward Lyons Falls. Lyons Falls was the northern terminus of the canal, but not of the navigation. By using the Black River north for forty-two miles, boats were able to reach the village of Carthage. This, the state reasoned was a cost effective project by turning the thirty-five-and-a-half-miles of canal into seventy-seven miles of usable waterway into the Adirondack Mountains.
Planning for the BRC, and many other canals, began as soon as the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. Early plans for the canal were ambitious as the hope was to build a canal through and over the mountains to reach the St. Lawrence River at Ogdensburg. This would have involved a series of canals and river navigation along a route north of Carthage that used the Indian and Oswegatchie rivers, passing through Gouverneur and ending at Ogdensburg. This route would have been 146 miles long. In reality, construction on the system ended once the canal reached Carthage.
An interesting footnote of BRC history was the close examination of the Morris Canal’s (New Jersey) inclined planes to replace the need for the great number of locks that were purposed along the canal. In all, the BRC was to use 109 locks over the thirty-five miles between Rome and Lyons Falls, which means about four locks per mile. In contrast, the Erie Canal used eighty-three locks along it’s 363 miles between Albany and Buffalo. The well known canal engineer Holmes Hutchinson traveled to New Jersey and made an in-depth report as to the usefulness of the inclined planes. In 1905, Whitford devoted many pages in his history of the New York canals to Hutchinson’s study on the subject.
The talk about the canal, conducting surveys, and attempting to find a suitable route, went on for years, until 1836 when a law (Chapter 157 of 1836) was passed that authorized the construction of the canal. The year is significant as it was also the year that construction began on the enlarged Erie Canal, a canal that would need an increased supply of water to fill it’s channel. Whitford notes that the law allowed the state to take as much water as could be reasonably spared from the Black River to supply the summit of the Erie Canal at Rome. The canal was to be called, “The Black River Canal and Erie Canal Feeder.” A second factor in the authorization was the never-ended supply of lumber in the mountains and the opening of lands to settlement.
The 1836 law was not without it’s opponents. Mill owners and those with interest is navigating the Black River pointed to the Act of 1811 that gave them ownership of all the waters of the Black River, and that the state was breaking it’s own law by taking water for the Erie Canal.
Water management on the BRC is a fascinating subject on its own. The Black River begins at the North and South Lakes (twenty miles due east of Boonville) and flows south-west toward Forestport, about fifteen miles (all distances are as a stright line, so the actual distance is much longer). It then flows north toward Hawkinsville which is three miles east of Boonville. The river continues to flow almost due north to Carthage and Great Bend, which is another forty-four miles. At Great Bend the river turns west to Watertown and Lake Ontario. Since the Black River is three miles east of Boonville and the canal route, a feeder canal was constructed to get the water from the river to the canal. To gain the proper slope so that water would flow between the river and canal, the feeder was extended for another seven miles to Forestport. To make the best use of this canal, it was built as a navigable canal, thus adding another ten miles to the navigation.
The feeder connected to a wide area along the river called Kayuta Lake. Later a dam would be built to create more of a reservoir. This watershed diversion was so important to the Erie Canal that even though the BRC was never a money maker, it’s supply of water was so critical to the operation of the Erie that the canal escaped a number of abandonment’s over the years. While most of the lateral canals were closed in 1877, the BRC kept flowing. And when the Barge Canal was constructed in the early 1900s, the BRC was kept as a navigable feeder. Even today, parts of the canal serve to take water from the Black River and pass it into the Mohawk.
Work on the BRC began in late 1837 and early 1838. Whitford’s history of canals gives a nice description of the work, and the requests made by people in the northern areas to extend the canal route either to Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario, or to Ogdensburg and the St. Lawrence River. Whitford goes as far to list the routes, the cost, and the number of locks. Some construction on the feeder arm was done in 1841 and 42, during a drought that was hampering navigation on the Erie Canal. The Stop and Tax Law of 1842 brought all work to a halt. The construction materials, the lumber and stone, that had been purchased but had not being used were offered for sale to the public, selling for pennies on the dollar. Construction resumed in 1847, and by October 18, 1848, water began to flow through the feeder. In 1849 the amount of water being taken from the river to supply the Erie Canal exceeded the natural flow of water north causing the river to dry up for three months. To alleviate further shortages, a series of reservoirs were built to store water for the river and feeder. These include North Lake, Bisby Lake, and the Woodhull Reservoir. The Canal Society of NYS held a field trip to these sites in 2003, and for those with an interest in this system of water supply should find a copy of the guide book for the Adirondack Reservoirs. Whitford also delves into the subject.
The BRC was put into use on November 1, 1850, which means that navigation really began in the spring of 1851. There are a number of openning dates floating around. Whitford notes that the canal was in use in 1851, but was complete on November 13, 1855. The large canal map that the state published in 1862 states that the canal was completed in1849, so we can safely say that the canal was being used by 1851.
As this is not intended to be a complete history of the canal, I will skip forward to the 1870s when canal abandonment fever was sweeping across the state. The debate was could the BRC feeder system supply the needed amount of water to the Erie without the whole canal in use. The state wished to see if the Black River water could be sent south by using the Lansingkill and Mohawk and then taken into the canal at Rome. So an experiment was made in the spring of 1875, where the Erie Canal was opened before the BRC was filled. This supply proved to be insufficient and the experiment proved the worth of the canal as a feeder. This is how the BRC escaped the 1877 abandonment fate of most of the other lateral canals.
Nobel Whitford devotes an extensive number of pages in his history of canals to the work of David Whitford (his father, uncle?) who was selected to conduct a study on the water supplies of the Adirondack Mountains in the 1890s. At the same time, Verplank Colvin was advocating for the establishment of the Adirondack Park to protect the forests and thus the amount of water that could be used by the Erie Canal. The state created the Adirondack park in 1894 as a forever wild area under the NYS constitution, in part, to have water to fill the Erie Canal.
Abandonment would catch up with the canal as it was recommended by the state engineer to close the section of canal north of Boonville in the early 1900s. And this section was closed to traffic in 1905 as traffic had dwindled to almost nothing for several years. Oddly what saved this section of the canal, at least for a few years, was the Barge Canal and the construction of the Delta Dam. Rock and stone from quarries north of Boonville were to be used in the new dam and the best way to transport this stone was by the canal. Thus the canal and locks between Boonville and Port Leyden were refurbished and put into use for a few years.
During the construction of the Delta Dam, three new locks and a new aqueduct were constructed as to carry the canal around the new Delta Reservoir. The old canal from lock 7 to lock 13, including the village of Delta and the one-mile-long navigable Delta feeder, would be flooded by the new reservoir. The new concrete locks and aqueduct can be seen downstream and to the right of the dam. Lock 7 would be moved slightly south from it’s original site that was to be under the new dam. After all this work, the locks north of Boonville were refurbished once again in the hopes that the canal would be used up through the Black River and Carthage and the canal remained in a navigable condition into the 1920s.
And yet, only eighty-four boats left Boonville for Rome in 1921, three in 1922, and none in 1923. The canal was un-officially abandoned by disuse. The canal continues to carry water south to Rome by using the Forestport feeder and the section from Boonville to lock 63. At that point the water spills into the Lansingkill and flows south to join with the Mohawk River, and then into Delta Reservoir.
What all this later work has accomplished is to leave a relatively intact canal for historians to explore. By the time the canal was abandoned, the route of the highways and railroads had been established, so there was no rush to fill in the old canal and turn it into a highway or railroad. Over the years, some sections have been lost to the highways, most notably in the south along Black River Boulevard and north of Boonville along Rt 12. Most of the locks remain in fairly decent condition, although the aqueducts have removed due to flooding.
For those who are interested in further study, there are a number of good books. Of course, Whitford’s History of the New York State Canals was written while the canal was in operation, and it is likely the most complete. The book Forestport Breaks by Michael Doyle is a later look into how people were purposely breaking through the canal banks in the spring to cause leaks and floods, with the hopes that the state would hire locals to help make repairs. It was a job creation by destruction technique. The book Snubbing Posts by Thomas O’Donnell is called “An Informal History of the Black River Canal.” The Canal Society of New York State has printed four guidebooks for their field trips in 1981, 1994, 2003, and 2007. And then there is Walter Edmonds, who was a local author. Walter used the Black River country as a setting for his stories. Reading these delightful novels such as Rome Haul, or The Boyds of Black River (and many more), will give you a sense of what life was like in the southern Adirondack mountains and along the BRC.
The canal and locks are very visible on Google Earth, especially if you can go back to the 2003 images. From Rome to Boonville the route of the canal is very easy to follow. North of Boonville, the imagery is not so good, however by using the guidebooks and Google Earth and Google Maps, I was able to plot most of the canal structures. This work can be found in the Canal Index sheets.
In the fall of 1905, representatives of the New York State Barge Canal visited Europe on a fact finding tour to see how the new dams (weirs) were working along the canals and river navigation. A stop was made to see the newly built bridge dam at Mirowitz on the Moldau, or today known as Mirejovice on the Vitava River. The engineers were interested in the Vitava as it was very similar to the Mohawk River, and they felt that it would offer a nice comparison to what New York wished to accomplish.
The bridge dam, or what the French called the “barrage mobiles a pont”, was a relatively new system of elevating the weir works above the river channel. Prior to this development, mobile or movable dams were of the trestle type which were attached to a sill in the river channel. By elevating the dam over the river, it was hoped that any floods or ice flows would not damage the structure.
So in 1905 the New York contingent visited Mirejovice to see this new weir. Interestingly, this dam is a mix of the old and new. The five-span-bridge was built to accommodate vehicles and to support the weir works that can be seen in the middle of the span. But to each side you can see the older trestle style needle dam. And in the other photos, you can see the group walking on the heavily stoned river bottom. The group watches from this bank as the weir is deployed.
The other dams along the Vitava were of the trestle type. The only reason that the bridge weir was built was due to the bend in the river and the fear that boats would not be able to line up for the lock while avoiding the piers of the road bridge that had to be built there. So it was decided to combine the two into one.
The Mirejovice weir was heavily promoted in New York during the construction of the Barge Canal as an example of modern construction. It is interesting that today the weir has been replaced while the bridge dams along the Mohawk remain in use 115 years later.
The bridge dam at Lock 13, Yosts, NY
In the collection was a photo of the Horin Lock, which looks like it hasn’t aged a bit over the years.
Miaow Miaow, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
These photos are from the New York State Archives, Barge Canal Collection 11833.
The Mohawk River in New York State has been used as a transportation corridor since the beginning of man’s settlement. The river in it’s natural setting was shallow and relatively slow flowing, with the occasional series of rifts or rapids. Along the 120-miles between Rome and the Hudson river there are two waterfalls. The largest of the two is near the eastern end of the river, where the water flows over a 90-foot-high falls at Cohoes. At Little Falls the river flows over a series of rapids that are 45-feet in height. However in the 120-miles between Rome and the Hudson, the elevation change is only 450 feet. This made the river a natural corridor for movement from the east to the west.
This was such a natural pathway that in the 1700s, the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company constructed short canals and locks around the natural obstacles in the river. The falls at Cohoes was simply avoided by making Schenectady the eastern end of navigation. For those interested in the topic of early river navigation, I would suggest Robert Hager’s excellent work; Mohawk River Boats and Navigation before 1820.
The construction of the Erie Canal would change all this. The Mohawk valley route was used but the canal was kept separate from the river by constructing a man-made ditch. In some places this separation might be the width of the canal embankment, but wherever possible, the canal route was kept away from the river so the man-made cut would be protected from floods and ice damage.
The route of the canal returned to the river channel during the construction of the Barge Canal. Instead of avoiding the river, the canal would occupy it in a process called “canalization.” Dams would be constructed to form 12-foot-deep navigation pools, and locks would connect these pools. A major consideration for the engineers was what type of dam would best suit the river since the Mohawk was well known for its seasonal floods.
The Mohawk River has a large watershed that reaches north into the Adirondack mountains and south into the Catskills. From it’s beginnings north of Rome near Boonville, the river flows south to Rome and then turns east in the Mohawk valley. As it flows east, it receives the flow of the 76-mile-long West Canada Creek, which is another south flowing Adirondack foothills river. Just west of Amsterdam, the Mohawk joins with the Schoharie, a river that has it’s beginning near Indian Head Mountain, 93-miles south of its confluence with the Mohawk. With this large watershed, a heavy rain storm or snow melt miles away from the Mohawk valley can cause the Mohawk to quickly rise and flood without much warning. In the winter, large blocks of ice can form in the shallow river waters and when the weather warms in the spring, these ice chunks will begin to float on the rising waters, and create dams that can cause water to backup for miles. When the ice dam finally breaks up, the rushing water and ice flows can easily destroy anything left or built in the river channel.
The state did have some history with building dams in the Mohawk. Small fixed crest dams had been used to supply water to the Erie, such as the dam at Rocky Rift near Indian Castle. was one of these small dams. And prior to this, wing dams had been built along the Mohawk to help boats pass over the riffs. But the canalization of the river would be far beyond anything they had built to date. So they began to look elsewhere around the world to see what had been built and who had success.
One of the ideas they began to study was the movable dam. On a number of rivers, both in Europe and the United States, movable dams had been constructed to improve the navigation of the river by creating temporary navigation pools in times of low water. And the term “low water” is important here. The first movable dams had been designed and built by the French engineer, Charles Antonie Fracois Poiree, in 1834. (Although the bear trap dams built along the Lehigh in Pennsylvania are recognized as the first movable dam, they are built as part of a fixed crest dam, and thus are not a true movable dam.) The Poiree dam consisted of a number of iron frames that were fixed to a foundation on the river bottom. When the natrual river flow was sufficent for boat use, the frames were folded down to layflat on the bottom of the river. When the flow decreased in the summer and the river began to get shallow, men would lift the frames upright, and then lay a wood walkway across the tops of the frames. Once all the frames were raised and the wooden walkway installed, the entire affair looked like a trestle bridge, and thus the name of the dam is sometimes called the trestle dam. However, at this stage there is no dam, just a nice bridge. The dam was constructed by placing in-filling the upstream side of the dam with long narrow boards set vertically. The bottom of the board rested on a sill in the channel bed, and the top leaned against the wooden walkway. By installing board after board, a dam was slowly built up and the water is impounded. The height of the pool depended on the height of the trestle and boards, but these dams were typically three to eight feet in height. In France the boards are called aiguilles or needles, and the name of this type of dam is often called the needle dam. If the pool behind the dam had to be regulated, single or multiple boards could be removed. Once the natural condition of the river allowed use without dams, the needles could be pulled and the frames returned to the river bottom. These types of dams were later modified by French engineers named Boule and Camere, but the basic trestle framework stayed the same. Boule modified the dam by laying the boards horizontally and then joining them into larger gates that could be raised or removed when needed. Camere design a rolling curtain type of dam that looks much like a Venetian Blind.
A drawing from an engineering journal of the period. All are large trestle dams as seen when compared to the person standing by the right most structure. The left hand dam is a Boule type, while the other two are Camere types.
Slowly the use of the movable dam changed as shipping changed. If the dam was left in place throughout the navigation season, the canalized river could be kept at a set depth. This built consistency into the use of the river. If shippers knows they an always expect a depth a four feet, and that the areas of fast water have been stilled, then shippers can begin to use barges instead of arks. It was only during times of flood, ice, or canal closure, that the dams would be removed.
The period of the mid to late 1800s was a great time of dam innovation, and other movable dams were invented that served the same purpose as the trestle dam, but used a different structural framework. The Chanoine dam used three or four foot wide panels (sometimes called a wicket) that were attached to the river bottom. A man on a bridge or boat would reach into the flowing water with a long hooked pole and lift the panel upright. The panel was supported by a single strut. The idea of the wicket dam was that once the water began to flow over the top of the panel, the water pressure would cause it to trip backwards and release water. Once the water level lowered, the panel would snap back into place. It was found that this self-regulation didn’t work well, so the dam was modified so that all the struts could be released by pulling a level on shore, and the entire dam would return to the river floor. Incidentally, these dams were quite successful, and the last one was replaced recently on the Ohio River.
The engineers in New York State were use to building and maintaining a man-made canal. For the canalization of the Mohawk, the state hired David A. Watt as a “expert designer.” David had co-authored the Improvement of Rivers, a two-volume book that covered the vast field of dam and river navigation topics. He had worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and in 1905, he had completed projects in Kentucky and Ohio. David realized that the main issue for the canalization of the Mohawk River was the unpredictable seasonal flooding and ice flows. Early in the Barge Canal planning the trestle dam had been considered, however it was realized that the ice flows would quickly damage or destroy the frames as they lay on the river bottom. However, David had written about another type of movable dam was coming into use throughout Europe, this being the bridge dam.
At its core the bridge dam takes the trestle dam and turns it upside down. Instead of mounting the frames to the river bottom, the frames are suspended from an overhead bridge where they are safe from the ice flows and easier to maintain. The French had built a bridge dam at Poses on the Seine River in 1885. This dam combined the hanging frames with the Camere curtain dams. This dam was unique enough to be given a fair amount of press in the American papers. Watt knew about this dam but he focused on a new type of bridge dam that had been built at Mirowitz on the Moldau [Vitava] River in the Czech Republic. The similarities of the Moldau and the Mohawk is striking, and for Watt, the Mirowitz dam was just what he needed.
The Poses Camere bridge dam.
The Mirowitz bridge dam was a mix between a roadway bridge and a dam. It’s appearance was of a typical truss-type bridge with five spans. The dam components, which were were long steel beams and plates, hung off the bottom of the road-deck. These were attached to the bridge along the downstream side, and could be lowered or hinged down, so that the lower part of the bean rested on a concrete sill in the river channel. With these supports in place, the large plates that created the dam were lowered. The navigation pool was regulated by either allowing the water to flow over the top of the plates, or by lifting individual plates so that water could escape. Interestingly, or oddly, this dam was a hybrid of this new hanging bridge dam, and two sections of a Poiree trestle dam. And, among all the dams along the Moldau, the dam at Mirowitz was the only bridge dam. The rest were very large trestle dams with Boule gates. The Moldau dam was only used because it was thought that a new road bridge, and a new dam, would be too difficult to navigate around as Mirowitz was located on a long bend in the river. This one bridge dam at Mirowitz [Mirejovice] was often cited by Watt and others as the example for the new dams that would be built along the Mohawk.
You can see how the dam components were suspended from the bottom of the bridge. The bridge dam at Mirowitz with the dam in place and the steel plates being lowered. The water in the river is at it’s natural level. The people along the right bank would be underwater when the dam was in use.
Watt would need to build eight bridge dams along the Mohawk between Schenectady and Fort Plain. In this construction alone, he would be doubling the total number of bridge dams in use around the world. These dams would certainly be in the public’s eye as each dam consisted of a multi-span truss bridge, structures that would be very visible to those traveling through the valley on the New York Central Railroad and the main highways ran along the river. Their successes (or failures) would be on view for all to behold, especially those politicians who used the railroad to travel to Albany. It was a gamble for Watt and the state.
Construction began in 1906 and for the most part, all the dams were finished by 1913. The only exception was at Lock 8, where the contractor ran into quicksand and couldn’t complete his contract. For the most part, all the structures are alike, although each was adapted to fit into the environment. All the dams between Scotia and Amsterdam use three truss-type-spans as the river was naturally wider east of the confluence with the Schoharie Creek. All the dams between Tribes Hill and Fort Plain have two truss spans. The dam at Tribes Hill (at Lock 12) has two very long spans in order to minimize ice damming.
The vertical beams that hold the steel plates operate as pairs. First the frames are lowered into the river channel to rest upon a concrete sill. Each pair of frames holds two steel plates, and these can be raised or lowered as needed. Typically the lowered and larger plate remains in place all season long, and the upper and smaller plate is moved to adjust the navigation pool and flow of water. These two plates was an Watt innovation and a notable change from the dam at Mirowitz which used one large monolith plate. By splitting the plate into two, excess water could be released from the mid-point in the dam face. If the water was released under the plates, the flow would create scour in the river channel.
The frames and plates are seen here at the Rotterdam Junction dam after the 2011 floods.
The frames and plates were raised and lowered by using a large mechanical winch. When first designed, this winch was driven by a steam engine and boiler that was moved along rails that circled around the outside of the bridge. Steam engines were used as electricity was not available to most of the rural dams, and the winch was designed to be powerful enough to raise the dam even if the frames and plates were deployed. The platform that supported the winch was cantilevered out from the bridge on all sides, and these cantilevered beams were also used to support the dam components. This left the inside of the bridge open for possible use as a highway bridge, although when first built, there were no plans to use any of the bridge dams in this manner.
This image of the steam powered winch was taken from a engineering journal of the time.
As noted, most of the work was complete by the spring of 1913. In March of that year, the dams at Tribes Hill and Yosts (Locks 12 and 13) had been lowered to allow the dredging contractors to get an early start to the dredging season since the State was very eager to get the new canal completed and the old Erie abandoned. Unknown to all, a large winter storm was dumping inches of rain across the mid-west. In Ohio it is known as the “Storm of 1913”, and it’s flooding caused so much damage as to put the Ohio and Erie Canal out of business. In New York the storm headed east along the Mohawk Valley, catching the Barge Canal contractors unaware. As the flood waters rose, the construction wood, buggies, wagons and derricks was swept up. As the water began to rise, the locktenders at 12 and 13 decided to pull up the top steel plates but left the lower plates and frames in place. As the debris from the contractors sites along the river washed downstream, it began to collect and pile up on the plates and frames. These debris dams impounded the water to a greater depth then the dam was designed for. The resulting flood created stresses caused the plates and frames to twist and bend, the chains to break, and the supporting members in the bridge to buckle. Heroic measures were taken by the locktender forces to clear the dams, but the damage was done.
The damage at Yosts after the 1913 storm.
It was very apparent to everyone that the dams had some major issues. If the dams were not raised prior to flooding, they were impossible to raise. The dams are constructed to that the pressure of the water helps to seal the dam to the sill, much like a miter lock gate uses the water to help seal the gate closed. If any debris collects on the plates and frames, they become impossible to raise. Any adjustment has to take place prior to the flood waters reaching the dam. And, as they discovered in 1913, the bridge structure was strong enough to handle the immense pressure of the flood waters.
To salvage the dams all the bridges were given a additional, and sometimes a fourth, truss. In all cases, the downstream truss was twinned to add rigidity. (The dam at Scotia was built after 1913, and it was built with single, but stronger trusses.) The cantilevered sections were especially weak and these were strengthened. To help to reduce the weight on these cantilevered members, the heavy steam powered winches were replaced with lighter electric winches. On the original design, these winches ran on a track that circled the dam, much like a child’s Christmas train running around the tree. This was modified to that all the lifting points and winch were along the downstream side of the dam. The State made most of these modifications very quietly. In addition to all these repairs, the dam at Rotterdam Junction was modified to serve as a road bridge. Later in 1927 the dam at Tribes Hill would be also used as road bridge.
The Rotterdam Junction bridge after being made usable as highway bridge.
The next test of the dams was during the fall storms of 1938 when much the same flooding occurred. It was feared that four of the dams would fail, but they held, likely largely due to the work done after the 1913 floods. Of course, the last major event was in 2011 when Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee brought damaging floods to the valley. Although the storms resulted in damages over 50 million dollars, the dams held.
There were other bridge dams built as part of the Barge Canal project. At Herkimer a single span bridge dam was built in 1918 to replace a Poiree Dam that was first built there in 1910. At May’s Point in Seneca County, a single span bridge dam forms a navigable pool for Lock 25. On the Genesee arm of the canal at Rochester, a single span bridge dam was used to create the pool that creates the Rochester harbor. This dam was replaced in 1926 when the power company took control of the works and replaced the dam with a taintor gate dam. The last bridge dam was built in 1927 at Rocky Rift on the upper Mohawk. This was a smaller three span truss dam. The 1927 dam replaced a fixed crest and Boule trestle dam that was difficult to control.
The bridge dam fell quickly out of favor for the reasons seen here. They are difficult to operate under poor conditions, and once debris begins to build up on the frames and gates, they are impossible to open. The dams along the Mohawk might be the last of their kind, although two other bridge dams are still in use. The Emergency Swing Dam at Sault Ste. Marie, and the Camere dam on the Red River north of Winnipeg, are close cousins in the bridge dam family tree. All these are engineering landmarks.
I wanted find out if the bridge at Mirowitz (today’s it is Mirejovice) was still is use. The bridge is still in place, however the dam components have been replaced with a type of roller dam. I was able to grab a view of it off of Google Earth.
What follows is an article I wrote in 2011 for the Canal Society of New York State’s Bottoming Out journal.
Many years ago in 2002 when I was working on my book; Twelve and a Half Miles, The Erie Canal in Cayuga County, Craig Williams of the New York State Museum gave me a copies of some 1834 canal maps of Weedsport, Port Byron, and Montezuma, NY. This map showed the line of the canal and the structures immediately adjacent to it. Up to that moment in time the earliest maps I had seen and used were the 1853 Cayuga County wall map, so these new maps brought to life that early period of time when the canal was almost new and the small villages were even newer. These maps are known as the Holmes Hutchinson maps, and they showed details along the early canal that had all but disappeared by the 1850s.1
Years later, when I was doing some local research on the internet I stumbled across a court case involving Holmes Hutchinson that gave some insight into the making of these maps. In addition it provides some behind the scenes details that might be otherwise lost to history. So I had to dig into this bit of canal history and what follows is what I discovered. Much of what is known about this case comes from the testimony of the principals before the State Legislative Committees. I will do my best to lay out the story in chronological order.
But before I get into the details, it would be fitting to introduce the two people around whom this story revolves.
Holmes Hutchinson (HH) was born in Port Dickinson, Broome County, NY in 1794. He began work on the Erie Canal in 1819 as an engineer.2 He held this post until 1835 when he became the Chief Engineer of the middle division of the canal. He worked in this capacity until 1841. He died in 1865 in Utica, NY. Hutchinson’s career is well documented because of his public work on the canal system.
Jacob Trumpbour (JT) was born in Saugerties, Ulster County, NY in 1779. He lived all his life in Ulster County, and died in Kingston, NY, in 1843. He was a judge and surveyor. Jacob was a nephew of William Cockburn, a well known surveyor, land agent and land speculator.3 William also taught the art of surveying and it is presumed that Jacob learned his craft from him. Little else is known about Jacob.
So, on with the story.
One might think that the canals had been mapped as they were built. But apparently this was not the case for in 1827 the Legislature of the State of New York ordered that a survey be made of all the canals. This fell under the Revised Statutes of 1827, Part I, Ch. 9, Title 9, Article 1. In part, it said; “A complete manuscript map and field notes, of every canal that now is, or hereafter shall be completed, and of all the lands belonging to the State adjacent thereto, or connected therewith, shall be made, on which the boundaries of every parcel of lands, to which the State shall have a separate title, shall be designated, and the name of the former owners and the date of each title be entered.” And then; “If the Canal Commissioners, on examination of the premises, be satisfied that the cost and expense of making such a map, field notes and survey will exceed the sum of five thousand dollars, no such map and field notes shall be compiled.”4 The statutes also state that the maps were to be approved by the Canal Commissioners and copies placed in the office of each county clerk that the canal passed through and that the maps were to be, “received as presumptive evidence in all judicial and legal proceedings.”5 This last phrase refers to ownership, even though it seems fairly vague.
Jacob Trumpbour was the first to submit a proposal for doing the field work and maps. Not surprisingly his proposal was for $5000, the amount allowed by statute. He shortly learned that Holmes Hutchinson had submitted a proposal for $4000, plus any additional expenses not to exceed $1000, or basically what was a $5000 bid.6 This type of ‘cost plus’ bid was something Trumpbour had been told was not allowed. Trumpbour was then told that Hutchinson’s proposal was more favorable to the State. He requested that his proposal be modified to $4000 plus expenses. His resubmitted bid was rejected at first but he persisted. As a result, the Canal Commissioners then sought to divide the survey between the two men. (The fact that the Commissioners took this step seems to indicate that they had made a mistake among themselves.) In April 1829 they dispatched Hutchinson with a letter and instructions to meet with Trumpbour in Kingston and to try to reach an agreement where both men could survey. The question comes to my mind is why send Hutchinson instead of sending a Commissioner? When Commissioner Seymour had Hutchinson go visit Trumpbour, was the understanding with Hutchinson that he was serving as a contractor taking on a State contract; or was he working on behalf of the State as a Canal employee; or was he acting as an agent of the Commissioners? Hutchinson was a paid State employee at this time so his role in the hiring or negotiating with Trumpbour could be seen from many different viewpoints, and as we shall see later no one was clear on this at the time. But evidence later showed that some sort of agreement was reached to split the survey at Canastota, about half way across the state. Trumpbour was to survey the western part of the Erie including all of the Cayuga Seneca, and the Oswego canals; and Hutchinson was to survey the eastern half of the Erie and all of the Champlain.
At this point in the story it might be helpful to cover the methods of surveying in use at the time because it is so critical to this case. Surveying was a multi-person job. The chief surveyor was the crew boss and kept a record of the measurements and make a sketch of the landscape. His main partner was a man who carried an instrument that had a telescope type sight that rotated on a compass rose often called a transit or a theodlite. This was mounted on a tripod. An axe-man would be sent forward along the intended route to clear a sight path. A fourth man would walk out along this path with a long rod and a fifth man would toss out a sixty-six-foot-long metal chain that was made up of 100 links. If the rodman had not been reached in that first toss, a pin was stuck in the ground, and the chain was moved forward. When the rodman was reached, the number of full chains and then the number of links were counted. The result was a measurement recorded as chains and links.7 As the ground rose or fell, the change in elevation was also noted through a process of fore and back sighting. He then moved forward and the process was carried out again and again. Surveyors will often close their loops by working back to the beginning point to check the correctness of their readings.
Along the canal this process would have been fairly easy as the land was cleared and flat. However, measurements would have been needed off the canal and into the nearby land and also across the water to the berm side. So let’s get back to the story.
By way of the court papers, we know that Jacob Trumpbour sought to construct a very detailed survey. It was an outside-in survey. This would be what you would likely get in any boundary survey. He ran his lines along the outside boundaries of the canal lands and noted these in his field book. He noted all encroachments onto canal lands. Trumpbour also took readings to permanent nearby landmarks. By taking this extra step, Trumpbour was providing starting points for future surveyors. This exacting method of surveying was not fast.
We don’t know what plan Hutchinson had planned on using, or even if he had a plan when he took the contract. Later testimony seems to point out that his employees settled this question. We know that he settled on a inside-out method that ran a base line down the inside edge of the tow path, and then every 100 feet; or when the compass heading changed; or when the construction of the canal called for it, such as at a wide waters or basin; he would run offsets to the outside boundaries of the canal. By using this method, he would miss any variations in the boundaries unless he made an effort to measure it. Any building encroaching onto canal land, which would have to show up on Trumpbour’s survey, may not be shown by this method. This method would keep the lead man on the flat and clear towing path. Of course, this method was far cheaper and faster.8
From my vantage point in 2010, it is easy to read a lot of conspiracy into the dealings of the players in this little drama. Under the Statutes under Title Nine, the Legislature seemed to be asking for a lot, but attempting to squash any efforts by under-funding the work and piling onto the Commissioners a lot of work. In addition to the survey and maps, the Commissioners were to approve, certify, copy and deliver maps to all the counties along the canals. And the wording that the Commissioners “be satisfied that the cost and expense of making such a map, field notes and survey, will exceed the sum of five thousand dollars, no such map and field notes shall be compiled.” seems to be an attempt to give everyone an easy and legal way out. Even in 1829, $5000 was not a lot of money. It represents about $116,000 today. For a team of men to survey across the 500-plus miles of canal lands; draw up the maps and compile the notes; then copy and deliver; all seems like a lot to ask. So looking at it just from that perspective, Hutchinson’s methods of cutting corners may have appealed to the Commissioners. They get the job completed and stay within the budget. I have not found anything that might suggest that the Commissioners looked at the Statute and the costs, and said that there was no way to get this done. So one way or another, the survey was getting done.
But leaving that as it is, as the survey work proceeded there may have developed a far larger reason for cutting corners. Through the statute, the State was seeking to know what lands did the State purchase, acquire, or simply build over with little regard to ownership? Although the State Legislature may have wanted to know the answer, this was a question the Commissioners did not wish to answer. Trumpbour pointed this out in a letter from 1831. If the reason for the maps were; “to furnish an authentic and precise record of the land belonging to the State, so that the owners of adjoining lands may know where the boundary line is, and that in controversies which may arise, evidence may be easily obtained from the county clerks office, to determine the respective rights of the State and of individuals”, then, Trumpbour went onto say, that the Hutchinson maps “will not furnish any such evidence. The boundaries of the State property are not actually run, but are artificial lines laid down on the map and depend upon a base line on the margin of the canal.”9 This question about land ownership may have been the can of worms that the Commissioners did not wish to open as they wrote, “…it will be seen that there is no record or public document (except the deeds which have been taken) which designates, or describes the bounds of the lands appropriated or purchased for the canals…”10
Jacob Trumpbour began his survey in the spring of 1829 at Port Byron. Trumpbour said that before he had begun his work he had met with both the Surveyor-General DeWitt, and Canal Commissioner Seymour, and settled on the method of survey. He began his work, but in June 1829, he fell ill and took a couple months off to recuperate while he stayed in his temporary home in Port Byron. During this time, Hutchinson stopped by and they discussed the survey methods. Hutchinson later admitted that he did not object to any of the methods that Trumpbour was using. In August Trumpbour had recovered from his illness and continued his work until late fall. In November Trumpbour stopped his work for the season and traveled to Rome to compare notes with Hutchinson. By this time Trumpbour had completed his survey on all of the Cayuga Seneca Canal and eighty-five miles of the Erie.
In his visit Trumpbour discovered that Hutchinson had not been so productive. In September 1829, Hutchinson hired Edwin Johnson to conduct the survey for him. By his later testimony, Johnson suggested that either he alone, or perhaps with Hutchinson, had come up with the plan of using the baseline off the towing path.11 By the time Trumpbour had stopped work for the season, Edwin Johnson had only completed about thirty to forty miles of work. As Trumpbour and Hutchinson compared their surveys they discovered the difference in methods, the outside-in, and the inside-out. And here it gets messy.
So when was Mr. Trumpbour made aware of this change, or perhaps we should say adoption of methods by Hutchinson? Remember that Hutchinson had been shown Trumpbour’s work in the summer of 1829 and had not voiced any concerns. Trumpbour, working under the idea that he had the approval of the canal commissioners, advised Hutchinson that he (Holmes) was incorrectly conducting the survey. Of course Hutchinson disagreed and the men took the issue to the canal board. It was at this meeting that Trumpbour also learned that some on the Board, along with Hutchinson, thought that Trumpbour was working for Hutchinson and not for the Board. Instead of walking away or adopting Hutchinson’s methods, Trumpbour simply dismissed the notion that he was an employee of Hutchinson. Trumpbour clearly felt that he had been awarded one half the survey and that he was working for the Board. Hutchinson thought that he had been awarded the entire survey and had been forced by the board to take Trumpbour on as an employee.
That winter of 1829/30, both sets of surveys were sent to the Surveyor General for his opinion. He said that Trumpbour’s were the best, but asked for the two men to settle the dispute and continue. If not, both should continue and complete their work, make their maps and submit them to the board. The State did not wish to pay either man to resurvey his work that was already complete.
On May 20, 1830, Trumpbour wrote to Seymour and told him that he is proceeding with his work and if Seymour has any comments to make, to do it to him. At this time Seymour wrote back telling him that he was not to continue work. “The Commissioners consider Mr. Hutchinson as the sole contractor for the survey of the canals, will hold him responsible for its due performance, and will pay him and him only, for the expense of completion.”12 Trumpbour was undaunted. He wrote to Seymour on August 31, 1830, telling him that he had completed his work. However no one from the State would reply to his letters.
In February, 1831, Trumpbour traveled to Albany for a face-to-face meeting with the Canal Commissioners, or finding no satisfaction there, with the Legislature. He learned that Hutchinson had been dispatched to resurvey all of Trumpbour’s work. He was outraged by this action, and he told the Commissioners that the work Hutchinson is doing is worthless; “Your memorialist would neglect that duty which every citizen owes his country, if he failed to apprise the Legislature that the surveys and fields notes made under the direction of Mr. Hutchinson, will not attain the object for which the map is directed. That object is believed to be, to furnish an authentic and precise record of the land belonging to the State, so that the owners of adjoining lands may know where the boundary line is, and that in controversies which may arise, evidence may be easily obtained from the county clerk’s office, to determine the respective rights of the State and of Individuals.”13
In his efforts to make a proper survey, Jacob Trumpbour may have stumbled upon something that the State did not wish to be common knowledge, or at least make evidence of easily attainable. It appears that Trumpbour saw his duty to the State and to his fellow citizens to provide them with the information they needed to settle canal land disputes. Whether it was surveyors pride, or a chance to help the State, he seemed to have reached the opinion that the records of who owned what was a complete mess. He continued to write; “Your memorialist is constrained to say, from an examination of the maps and field notes made by the persons employed by Mr. Hutchinson, that they will not furnish any such evidence. The boundaries of the State property are not actually run, but are artificial lines laid down on the map, and depend upon a base line on the margin of the canal, and upon off-sets across the canal and towing –path, leaving the outlines which constitutes the boundaries on the map, to be located without the aid of any written description of them, and without courses or distances, the buildings and other permanent monuments along the canal are not described, nor is their position designated in reference to any point of the outlines. This has been the general plans adopted by the surveyor employed by Mr. Hutchinson; but when they came to a basin or other place, when it was impossible to measure across the canal, they have abandoned their plan and pursued that of your memorialist. An inspection of the maps and field notes made by those surveyors, will more fully exhibit the radical defect of their plan.” Then Trumpbour went on with what he thought was the key issue in his favor. But perhaps not knowing or realizing who he was appealing to, it all seems to have worked against him; “Your memorialist would further represent, that in making the survey herein before mentioned, he could discover no releases to the State, of land occupied for the purposes of the canal, no entries by the appraisers or Canal Commissioners, of lands appropriated for those purposes, as required by law, and in fact no evidence whatsoever, of the title to any such property being vested in the State, (except in a few instances where information has been forwarded to your memorialist by the Comptroller, to whom your memorialist was referred by the Canal Commissioners for information, they stating that there were no documents on the subject in their possession).” Jacob went onto say that he had; “…surveyed and marked out the boundary lines on each side of the State property, and has designed the same on his maps, with their course and distances. When completed, they are to be accompanied by a written description of the boundaries on both sides of the lands belonging to the State, with the necessary references to buildings and other permanent monuments.”14
In the winter of 1832, Trumpbour wrote to the Legislature that he desired payment for his work completed. He included a letter written to him from Holmes Hutchinson asking if Trumpbour would like to work for him, resurveying his own work using Hutchinson’s methods. Jacob had refused to answer. And then the whole matter went before the State Legislature for settlement.
Assembly Document #334, June 27, 1832, is a fascinating investigation into the facts of this case. It covers the investigation of the select committee to whom the case of Holmes v Trumpbour has been referred. Early in the report the Committee seems to agree with Trumpbour on that the Statutes called for a survey of the canal. And to make a proper survey a man needs to make an actual map of the canal boundaries. Surveyor-General Simmon DeWitt the was asked to appear before the Committee and asked to read the Statutes. He concurred with the Committee and in large part with the methods of Jacob Trumpbour. The Committee seemed to grasp that the reliance of the towing path as a base line is questionable, since it is not a fixed point since weather, frost, wear and tear, or floods, could cause it to move and shift. John Kiersted, who was a witness called by Trumpbour, (and a student of William Cockburn) testified that Jacob’s survey matched what the Statutes call for; “I do not conceive the survey of Mr. Hutchinson to be conformable to the requirements of the act, because it gives no actual location on the ground, by metes and bounds of visible monuments, designating the division lines between the lands of the State and those of individuals: because also, his manner of taking offsets without taking the course of them by the compass, is, in my judgment, too loose for any survey.”15
This point was made again by the Surveyor-General to the Legislative Committee. Hutchinson method was to use canal features such as locks and other structures along the canal to pin his survey to the landscape. But what happened when there are no locks nearby? If one was to use the Hutchinson map to settle a property dispute, the Surveyor-General would need to begin a resurvey of the canal at the nearest lock even if it was twenty miles away. Trumpbour’s method was to use nearby objects to lock his survey to the landscape by using monuments on trees or buildings. Hutchinson’s defense of his methods centered on the ability and ease of the surveyor to walk along the edge of the canal banks, and precisely measure them with a surveyor’s chain. Later, in response to this, the Committee noted; “The great pains which Mr. Hutchinson has taken to prove by witnesses the innumerable difficulties of surveying the boundaries of the public property, as will appear by a reference to the affidavits, seems to have little other tendency that to shew [show] the steady fortitude, and unyielding perseverance , with which that duty has been actually performed by Jacob Trumpbour, according to the true construction of the statute, and the design of the Legislature, so far as that could be done.”16
Trumpbour had brought in as his witnesses surveyors from the Cockburn school of surveying. Cockburn has taught him and his friends and relatives and Jacob found them to be friendly witnesses. But Hutchinson was a long term canal employee and also had many friends. He decided to bring in the big gun to back his methods. He was able to get John Jervis, the well-known canal engineer. Unfortunately, Jervis was not a great witness for Hutchinson. At the beginning of his testimony, he was asked by the Committee if he had the opportunity to examine Hutchinson’s methods. He replied; “I suppose it is the book I have seen here in the committee room; I have looked at a few pages of it only, and cannot say I have examined further than to ascertain the plan upon which the survey was conducted, but not sufficient to give the details.” Jervis was then asked if he had seen Trumpbour’s maps and plans. He replied that he had given it the same examination as Hutchinson’s. Apparently, Jervis had not been prepped for this testimony, but under questioning he did state that he would conduct a similar survey much in the same fashion as Hutchinson. Jervis was then asked by Hutchinson’s lawyer; “Can you, from Mr. Hutchinson’s survey, map and field book, or either of them, ascertain, without further measurements on the ground, how many feet and inches, or chains and links, any buildings along the canal encroach upon the State property?” Jervis’ answer is brief; “Not without it is described in the field book.” [ed- I believe this should say, “Not as it is described in the field book.”] The Committee then asked; “Does the field book contain any such description?” Jervis: “I have not noticed any description in reference to buildings in the field book, but there may be such entries contained in it. My examination of it has been brief. In examining some cases upon the first sheet of the atlas of the survey of the Champlain Canal by Mr. Hutchinson, I think it would be necessary to take a measurement on the ground from some offset, to ascertain the encroachment.” Jervis is then asked, based on his examination of the maps, which survey better describes; “the parcels of land taken by the State for the use of the canals?” Jervis again stated that he is not sufficiently acquainted with the plans, but added; “…but from what I have seen from the samples produced, there is more fullness in Judge Trumpbour’s specimens of field book, submitted, and should rather give it the preference over that of Mr. Hutchinson…”17 If John Jervis had been called in to bolster Hutchinson’s case, he does not seen to have gotten the message. Or perhaps, once he saw Hutchinson’s methods, he couldn’t wholeheartedly support them.
Even Hutchinson’s own employee, a Mr. Edwin Johnson, wasn’t a good witness for his boss. The Committee reported that; “his atlas [of the survey of the Champlain Canal] is a very beautiful topographical map of that canal. Its practical utility is, as we have seen, a very different matter.” John told the Committee that he; “…was not directed to notice any interference or encroachment by the erection of buildings on the State property.” He went on to say; “The object of the survey was to obtain the means of determining at any future day, with the greatest practical degree of precision, the boundaries of the State property. It was with reference to that leading object, that all measurements were made.” He went onto say that either he or Hutchinson regarded most of the buildings on Canal property to be of a temporary nature.18
The Committee came to the conclusion that Hutchinson was making a survey for surveyors. His methods were to allow others who might have questions concerning canal property the means to begin their own surveys, whereas Trumpbour was making a survey for the people. As they began to close, the Committee pointed out very clearly at the lack of leadership by the Canal Board lead to the problem of method of survey. The Statute called for a survey and it was up to the Canal Board to set the method before work began. They had not done this and instead once the matter came to a head, they adopted Hutchinson’s methods; “without expressing any decisive opinion thereon.”19
Everyone on the Committee seemed to agree that the Trumpbour method were better in all respects. And they agreed that Trumpbour had finished his part of the survey and produced field books and rough maps. So the question came back to who did Trumpbour work for? If it was the State, then the State should pay him. But if it was Hutchinson and Trumpbour did not do the work the way Hutchinson wished it done, even if it was not as good as Trumpbour’s, then he should not be paid. The Canal Board may have seen this as the loophole to reach their goal.
The Canal Commissioners were not to be deterred. In their Annual Report of 1833, they lashed back at the findings of the Assembly Committee in a remarkable rebuttal that includes a rewriting of the goals of the 1827 Statute. Since the Statute placed the survey in the hands of the Canal Commissioners, then; “The statute evidently contemplates that the survey, map and field notes be made in such a manner as shall be approved of by the Canal Board.”20 So the argument, the Commissioners reasoned, was that it was up to the Commissioners to advise the Canal Board and the Assembly as to the proper way to carry out the Statute. If they chose Holmes Hutchinson, then that was their duty, regardless of the method of survey. The Commissioners reasoned that the Assembly really wanted two surveys to be completed. The first was of the lands appropriated for the canal. The second was to survey the lands adjunct to the canal complete with names and titles. They wrote; “The [Assembly] committee have evidently confounded these two classes of cases; and they seem to suppose that the statute requires ‘an actual survey on the ground…’”21 If the Statute had wished a real survey of all the grounds, they should have appropriated at least $15,000 instead of the $5000. And, the Commissioners argued, “It has been the uniform practice of the Commissioners to reserve the power in their contracts of limiting, controlling, and changing the mode of their execution, whenever, in their judgment, the interests of the State require it.”22 With this re-reading and re-writing of the Statute, then Holmes Hutchinson was simply carrying out the first phase of the survey as the Commissioners felt best for the people of the State. They also added; “The misconstructions which they [the Assembly Committee] have put upon the acts of the Canal Commissioners and the Canal Board, will be passed over in silence.”23 They had not been given the opportunity to defend themselves before the Assembly Committee, so they wrote that they were using the Annual Report of 1832 to put the matter to rights. However, even in their rebuttal, they admitted that many of the agreements reached between Trumpbour and the Commissioners were informal, and that the Surveyor-General had given an “offhand and verbal assent” to the survey methods proposed by Trumpbour. And since the Statute had been entrusted to the Canal Commissioners, the Surveyor-General did not have the authority to say anything one way of the other.
In the mean time, the Albany Evening Journal was having a good time covering the issue. “Among the petitions presented to the House of Assembly this morning, was the memorial of Jacob Trumpour, which discloses some extraordinary facts in relation to the conduct of the Canal Commissioners, and the situation of the property belonging to the State.”24 A year later, the Journal again laid out the facts of the case, showing examples of how some in the Albany Regency were attempting to squash the claim and the investigation. The case would cause embarrassment to some in the party if they came to the light of day.25 On February 2, 1834, the Journal wrote;
“Judge Trumpour’s Claim- The Canal Commissioners obtained a vote in the Assembly, yesterday, which again defeats the liquidation of this claim. For the last two years, when they were too weak to defeat it by direct vote, it was by various legislative arts and contrivances, left as unfinished business.
It is a singular fact in the history of this claim, that no member of the Legislature whose duty it has been made to examine it thoroughly, has arrived at a conclusion adverse to the claimant. Two years ago an intelligent Committee, consisting of Mr. Hammond, or New York, Mr. Hogeboom, of Columbia, and Mr. M’Donald, of Washington, were appointed, with power to send for persons and papers, and to sit thirty days during the recess of the Legislature, for the purpose of making a full investigation of the subject. The result was an entire and unanimous conviction of the justice of this claim.
This Report was submitted to the last House of Assembly, in which so many members were familiar with the subject that the Regency dare not come to a direct vote, and therefore bent all their exertions to give it the go-by.
It is the opinion of all competent, disinterested judges, that Judge Trumpour’s survey of the Canals is the only true and practiced one, and one which will ultimately be adopted. But Holmes Hutchinson, the pet Engineer, and the partner of Henry Seymour, in various Canal Speculations, has been paid for the entire survey: and now, to relieve the Commissioners from the odjurn of having overpaid their pet Engineer.”26
While this was going on, Holmes Hutchinson applied to the Canal Board in January 1835 for additional funds for the completion of the making of the survey and maps. This was then turned over to the Assembly His expenses were over $6000, a figure that did not include his own time, plus he was seeking to cover the cost of counsel for the Assembly investigation.27 In 1836, Hutchinson was awarded an additional $2,545.
The matter of Trumpbour v Hutchinson was repeatedly introduced and legislatively given the “go-by” In 1837 an Assembly Committee wrote that they had “not been able to ascertain whether there ever was any understanding between the memorialist [Trumpbour] and Hutchinson, or the Canal Commissioners, as to what precise plan of survey should have been adopted; nor does it appear with certainty, whether the memorialist was expected to be governed by Hutchinson’s directions in that particular, the evidence on these points having been somewhat loose and conflicting.” And they finished with; “[The Committee] are also of opinion that the weight of testimony is decidedly in favor of the superiority of the mode of surveying pursued by the memorialist.”28 This committee also stated that Trumpbour should be paid for his services before and after his dismissal and for his efforts in pursuing his claim.
In 1838the Committee of Claims of the Assembly once again ruled in favor of Trumpbour, but only for his work of doing half of the survey and not for his efforts since to collect his money.29 The bill was introduced into the Assembly and passed. The matter was then sent over to the Senate, where the Committee on Canals took up the issue. After reviewing the years of investigations and claims, the Committee made their observations, of which I summarize here. Hutchinson had been given the contract and had he allowed Trumpbour to take half the work, and that an agreement had been entered into by both men. That both Hutchinson and Trumpbour had agreed on the method of survey and that Hutchinson would head up the drawing of the final maps. That Trumpbour had gone off on his own before he had the agreement of the Canal Commissioners. That Trumpbour had been given notice in 1830 by the Commissioners. That Trumpbour had already been given $500. That Trumpbour had rejected Hutchinson’s offer to resurvey the canal. That Trumpbour had finished his surveys without the agreement of the Commissioners once they had terminated him. That Trumpbour had forced his services upon the State because he had felt his methods were better. That it was up to the Canal Commissioners to decide on what plan of survey they wished to have used. That Trumpbour, if his figures were correct, had spent nearly $4000, $1500 more than the $2500 he would have received and based on this alone, Trumpbour should have been happy that he had released from his contract. That based on his figures, Trumpbour was overpaid for his work in 1829.
After stating all this, the Committee then wrote that they were “disposed to take a more practical, and they believe, a more just and equitable view of the subject.”30 They stated that the initial agreements were; “founded in mutual misunderstanding.” They wrote that Trumpbour should be paid for his services in 1829; “although” they added, “his services were of no value to the State.” Using figures based on estimates of surveying of “experienced engineers” they agreed to pay him a fee per mile, minus his $500, plus his interest over the last ten years, for a total award of $287.58. Then they stated that Trumpbour should not be given money for his services forced upon the State, nor for his time in sittings of the Legislature. They finished with; “although there are doubtless cases of individual hardship and injustice, it is better they should be endured, than that a precedent so pernicious should be set as that of inviting the services of claimants against the State in the legislative halls, by offering them a bounty.”31
With that, the matter was over.
But let us go back to Trumpbour’s claim that the Holmes Hutchinson maps were worthless as a legal document to determine the ownership of State or private lands. This issue was never really addressed in the end. Perhaps the Canal Board was able to divert the issues raised by Trumpbour by focusing on the question if he was a contractor of the State or employee of Hutchinson, and if he had the right to be paid for the work he had done. All the other issues were swept under the legal rug. In 1837, the Legislature passed a law, Chapter 451, declared that the Hutchinson maps; “…are hereby declared to be presumptive evidence that the lands indicated on said maps as belonging to the state, have been taken and appropriated by the state as and for the canals…” which basically reaffirms the 1828 Statute.32 The timing of this ruling seems odd as well with the maps becoming Law in 1837 and Trumpbour receiving his ruling in 1838.
There are many ways to look at this affair. In 1854, the Court of Appeals in Rexford v Knight ruled that landowners who lost land to the building of the canal had one year after the 1828 Statute to make claims to the State.33 The Court reasoned that the 1828 Statutes that ordered the making of the maps also gave landowners a year to ask for damages from the loss of land during the building of the canal. But the maps that might help the landowners were not even begun until 1829 and not finished until 1834.
The Hutchinson maps continued to emerge as legal evidence of State ownership even after the State repealed a number of canal acts in 1894 and 1909. In the case of People’s Gas and Electric Company v. The State of New York (1918), the State asserted that even though the State had appealed the use of the 1834 maps as evidence of State ownership, it really didn’t mean to and that the State should be allowed to use the 1834 blue-line. The State lost the case, but not on this technicality.
I have attempted to discover if the Jacob Trumpbour maps or field notes are still in existence or have been lost to history. The NYS Archives do not have them. I have also reached out to the Trumpbour family, but so far, no one knows much about Jacob.
In the end, the Holmes Hutchinson maps are a fantastic historical resource and in some areas they are the first maps of canal villages and towns. As I noted in the introduction, In Cayuga County the Hutchinson maps predate all other maps by over twenty years. Hutchinson’s field notebooks remain intact and are another great resource sometimes showing details missing on the published maps. And the Hutchinson maps make another appearance as dotted lines showing the first canal in the 1896 George Schillner Enlargement maps
But darn, wouldn’t it be fun to see those Trumpbour maps?
1 In addition to these maps, the NYS Archives collection includes the field notebooks you will read about later.
2 Whitford. In 1896, Daniel Wager gave Holmes’s birthplace as Genoa, Cayuga County, NY. Daniel Wager, Our County and Its People, The Boston History Company, 1896.
3 The name is also spelled as Trumbour or Tremper. Background on the family is found at the New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Cockburn Family Land Papers, SC7004.
7 For a good primer on old survey methods and reading of deeds, see; Philip L. Lord, Jr. Mills on the Tsatsawassa. New York State Museum. 1983. In later surveys of the canal the chain used was 100 feet long instead of 66 feet.
8 The methods used by the surveyors are at the core of the issue and are described in many places. I used the testimony by Augustus Tremain for this description. Docs #334, pgs 26-30.
9 Docs #188, pages 21-22. A letter from Jacob Trumpbour to the Canal Commissioners.
33 Reports of the Cases in the Court of Appeals, Vol 1. WC Little and Co. Albany. 1855. Pages 308-315. This case argues that the original land owner should have gotten his land back once the canal stopped using the land when the canal was moved during the Enlargement. The State felt that it had the right to sell the land since it had taken ownership during the building of the canal and that the owners had the opportunity to apply for damages. Evidence of ownership was shown in the Hutchinson maps.
I found these two maps in the back pocket of the wonderfully researched and written, “The Sandy and Beaver Canal” by Ronald Max Gard and William H. Vodrey, Jr. The book was published by the East Liverpool Historical Society, East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1952. There was a reprint in 1972, and as far as I can see, no one has new copies for sale. The book can be found in some libraries and on the various book sellers, although finding a copy with the maps will cost you a good bit. I also found an old link to a CD copy of the book, but it was dead.
If you have an interest in the canal, chapter 20 is titled; Guide to the Canal, and it is a structure by structure guide for the 90 locks and 30 dams along the 73 mile-long canal. However, the authors caution that their map is a reconstruction based on a couple period maps and that they were not able to “reconcile” a few locks.
Terry Woods, who was a friend of both men, and served as the president of the Canal Society of Ohio and of this organization, sent along this note;
In the intervening years (since the publication of the book) a great deal of additional information has surfaced. So, while the book is terrific and I encourage everyone interested in the nation’s canal era to read it if available, the guide is not that accurate. The middle division is great. I always thought the Eastern division was accurate, though I’ve just been engaged in a series of e-mail sessions with a couple of historians who, through intense efforts in field work and electronic map looking, are attempting to correct some errors in Max’s Eastern Division guide. Max had some serious errors in the guide of the Western Division. I did some intense field work in the early 90s and published a typewritten guide to the western division around the turn of the century. However, more work needs to be done on it.
After reading through Terry’s guide, I must say it is a remarkable bit of field investigation. However, he welcomes any corrections or other comments. I have been using it to update the canal sites map.
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