The Raging Erie: Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal, by Mark S. Ferrara, 259 pages.
I think it would be safe to say that well read canal researcher or enthusiast will not learn anything new from The Raging Erie as most of the material used has been taken from other books on the canal. In fact, the extensive footnotes clearly show that the entire book has been built upon the works of others who researched, and authored books and papers before him. However, if your interest was not on the societal impacts of the canal and the era upon certain classes of people, you could have been easily skipped over much of the material that Mr. Ferrara presents in his book. The Raging Erie is divided into seven topic chapters along with an introduction and conclusion. Each chapter closely looks at the lives of a different class of people or the resulting societal movements that took place during the 1800s. He notes that he proposes “instead a journey through canal life from the perspective of the ordinary folks who experienced firsthand the dislocating and alienating social consequences, the extreme class and income inequality, that this waterway wrought.”
I greatly enjoyed the the first chapter, Decline and Fall of the Iroquoia, as it lays bare the struggles of the Native Americans as they tried to deal and live with the newly immigrated white Europeans. Most canal historians skip over the displacement of these Peoples and begin their narrative with the 1810 journey of DeWitt Clinton or the first shovel of turned earth at Rome in 1817. I had recently read Memory Wars by A. Lynn Smith and found myself wanting to learn more of the Native Peoples. A trip to the local library resulted in a pile of suggested readings that mostly were geared to the elementary school student. It is safe to say that I learned more from this book then I learned from my library raid.
After the first very useful chapter, the author details the lives of the poorer folks who helped to build and maintain the work-a-day world of the 1800s. Here, at least for me, the book falters. This is not a book about the canals. Instead, Ferrara uses the canal as a backdrop to loosely pull in various social movements. Many of the events had nothing to do with the canal aside from taking place about the same time. For instance, in chapter four he tells about Anne Royall, a woman who is considered to be the last person to be tried as a witch. Anne’s only interaction with the canal was to travel along it in a packet. She lived and was active in Washington DC., and, if you do an internet search for her, much of the same material presented by Ferrara is readily accessible. (I found out that she coined the term “redneck.”)
I have grown fond of Dr. Karen Grey’s term “zombie history” and I use it often. And here is another case of potential zombie history run amok. For instance, Ferrara quotes George Condon’s Stars In The Water often, and although it was the first book that I ever read about the canals, it is generally not considered to be the work of a great scholar. I pulled out my copy of “Stars” and see the Condon never used footnotes and most of his work is built upon the authorship of others within the limited scope of a two page bibliography. So much for deep research.
Anyone who has researched their family knows that it can be very difficult to find information and life details about their poorer ancestors. The poor working class were illiterate and didn’t have time to write diaries. That is why a book such as A Midwife’s Tale is so important in developing an understanding of what life was like in the late 1700s, or Life on a Canalboat, The Journals of Theodore D. Bartley, 1861-1889, which provides details into the life of an actual person on the canal. Another great study is Anthony Wallace’s Rockdale which gives insight to the life of mill workers in a small town in Pennsylvania. Although I mention Midwife due to its rarity, the other two works certainly fall within the scope of Ferrara’s study period and he never mentions either. What really surprised me is that I didn’t see any use of newspapers to tell the story of the poor. On the rare occasion where your ancestor might be mentioned in history is either for their birth, death, marriage or when they were arrested. These stories may not have fit into the larger scope of this book, but if you are seeking details about the life of the poor working class, the digital files of thousands of newspapers should be consulted.
As a quick overview of, or a introduction to, the social movements of the 1800s, The Raging Erie can fill that space. A reader who has never picked up a canal history will be well served by this book. And for others, it might better serve as a sort of annotated bibliography to help you find other books that deal with the subject. Each chapter stands on its own and doesn’t require you to read the entire book. So with a scan of the sources you will have a starter list of books and readings that you can pursue to hopefully find some original material.
The last chapter of the book, neatly titled “Conclusion, Transforming Life and Labor in America” nicely ties the book together and might cause you to reconsider some notions about life along the canals. We do tend to glorify the canal era, and I would guess that all of us have dreamed about having a time machine that would whisk us back to a towpath of the canal where we could see and hear the canal and the people in action. We seek sanitized versions of this when we visit parks that feature mule pulled canal boats. But I doubt many of us would like to live in those times and be a real canal driver walking 12 hours a day, find shelter in a 12 by 12 cabin, or have to unload thousands of pounds of cargo by hand. The canals, mills, factories, railroads, and so forth, were all miserable places to eke out a life. Years ago, PBS had a documentary series about a group of re-enactors living in Montana, and one man was losing weight so fast that his wife had the doctors come in to check him over. They said basically, “ma’am, this is what people looked like when they had simple diets and worked 16 hours a day!” Life was tough and few of us could hack it. And to help people cope with their existence, they sought meaning and understanding by way of religion and other social movements. And Ferrara neatly wraps that up with his conclusion.
So, for my conclusion, if you happen to volunteer at a canal park, or oversee docents, and want to help inform visitors about life in the 1800s, The Raging Erie can fill that void. But, if you are thinking about buying the book because you see the words “Erie Canal” in the title and you want to fill out your canal library, you will likely be disappointed.
Note- This article is about guide books authored by canal society volunteers which have been printed and distributed in fairly low numbers, which can make them difficult to find if you are not aware of them. “Formal” guides that have been authored, printed and even sold with professional help have not been included.
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One day when I was visiting the Canal Society of NYS Samuel Center in Port Byron, Park Director Dan Wiles was showing me their stacks of society guide books that have been published over the last five decades. He mentioned that as people have passed away, or began to clean and de-clutter, many old guide books were being returned. So it might be an excellent time to reintroduce the guide book to a newer generation as these guides can contain some wonderful information not found in other sources.
If you never have attended a society study tour, you might not be aware of the guides, as they were printed with a limited run and handed out during trip registration. Extra copies were often given away to the tour stop hosts as a thank you, and if there were more, they were sold locally at society events. In this way, these guides often had a publication run of less then 200 or even 100.
As my beginnings were with the CSNYS, I had naturally thought that the guide book was a staple of the society weekend tours. And it was, as at each registration, the participant would receive their name tag, registration materials and the tour guide book It was only when I began to attend tours hosted by other groups that I realized that guide book was not always a given.
So what is a society trip guide book and how does it differ from the typical guide book?
For decades, the biannual canal society field trip, or as Thomas Grasso liked to call them, the “study tour,” was a staple of what most of the state societies did. Each spring and fall, a weekend trip would be planned to make an “on the ground” study of a selected canal section. The trip would cover a selected section of canal with any where from five to nine stops, or whatever was reasonable for an eight hour day. The stops focused on what was present, what was safe, and what could accommodate a bus or a number of cars. Sometimes, the bus would quickly drop people off at a trail and then pick them up a mile or so down the line. As the bus rolled along, the trip host or chairperson would give an quick history and overview of the next stop knowing that most folks would scatter for photos when they unloaded at the stop.
If the hosting organization used them, the guide book could be used to give background and context to the trip. It might have have maps and photos that each person could closely look at instead of having the guide hold up or pass around images. Depending on the author, might might include basic facts such as; maps, canal profile, lock lift, construction and use dates, who was the engineer, and so on. The guides were focused on the sites that would be visited during the tour, and were not always a comprehensive history of the canal. In short, the guide could serve as a recap of the weekend tour.
As with most society publications put out by volunteers, the guides can be divided into two periods which might be titled; “before desktop publishing” and “after desktop publishing.” In short, the power of home computer and publishing software has greatly revolutionized the guide book. In the “before” times, the guide book was often a bunch of single-sided typed pages, and hand-drawn maps and diagrams, some poorly copied photos. These were mostly taken from the hosts knowledge, personal collection, and perhaps what could be found at local libraries and historical societies. They were copied at the nearest photocopier and then stapled together. Over the years these were somewhat improved and expanded by using a local print shop who could offer a bit better quality and bind the books with glue or use plastic spirals.
From the 1970 tour.
Once computers became a part of the household, the authors had a bit more flexibility, and a lot more power, to put out a more complete and professional quality guide book. Images became clearer with higher quality paper, two-sided pages became standard, and later the use of color was introduced. With the internet and resources such as digital newspapers and so on, the author could conduct a lot of research from their home and thus enrich the amount of information included. Given all this, all guide books tend to reflect their authors and their enthusiasm and knowledge of the study area. It can take many hours of study, writing, editing, checking and rechecking, to craft a decent guidebook, and many trip hosts didn’t have the time, or desire, to do the work. All the guides are in the 8.5 x 11 inch format. As most of these societies have hosted trips for more then 50 years, many sites have been visited and revisited. It can be helpful to review all the tour guides to see how sites have changed over the years and what new research has been conducted.
It might be helpful to note that many trips were co-sponsored with neighboring societies, so if you can’t find a guide in the state you are researching, check the state next door to see if they printed a guide.
With all this in mind, I pulled out the many guide books that I have in the ACS archives. Here is a summary of what I found.
Canal Society of New York State – The first guide was printed in 1961 for the tour of the Cayuga and Seneca Canal. The early guides are mostly a road log of stops and hand drawn maps that can be very detailed. Beginning in 1980 the guides featured a geology overview by Thomas Grasso, and the amount of content about doubles with 25 to 30 pages. In 1987 the society printed the first 50 page guide, and in 1990 the guide topped the 100 page mark. The first guide to feature color was with the 2009 Erie Canal Aqueducts tour.
The society also published guides for their out of state trips to the Morris Canal in 2002, the Rideau Canal in 2003, the Portage Railroad in 2006 and the C&O in 2014. All the guidebooks have been scanned but none are available as digital downloads. The society has a fairly complete collection of paper copies available for purchase. A listing of their trips can be found here.
Canal Society of Indiana – The society has been hosting study tours since 1982, however, the first published guide was in 1998 with the tour of the Wabash and Erie. Even then, not every trip has a guide. The guides have benefited greatly by having Carolyn Schmidt as the sole editor, and the results are a very uniform style and appearance from trip to trip. These guides are simply fantastic resources and should not be overlooked as they are very comprehensive in what information they contain.
The society has also hosted or co-hosted trips into Ohio eleven times and each of these has a guide. The guides are available online as digital downloads on the website with quite a nice organization by year, county, and canal.
Canal Society of Ohio – I could only find a few copies of guidebooks from the CSO in the American Canal Society archives. So I reached out to Michael Morthorst, CSO president, to see how often the society printed guidebooks for the study tours. He reports that the CSO did print guidebooks for their trips and his own collection dates back to 1988.
In the guides that I have I see the typical variation of quality and content. For example, the 2019 Spring Tour (Circleville to Chillicothe) is quite detailed with 108 pages that include history, maps, and photos. The guide was printed in cooperation with the Chillicothe Restoration Foundation and the quality of the guide certainly reflects that partnership. The other guides in the ACS collection follow the typical format of; introduction, tour stops, maps and references. These have plastic covers, wire or plastic spiral bindings, and average 15 to 30 pages.
Michael notes that there is no central repository for the back issues, however, the CSO website states that reprints of some guides are available by request.
Pennsylvania Canal Society – The PCS and the CSNYS share founding members and thus share some guide book history. Early examples of the guides include a list of stops and some helpful “explainer” drawings/maps. All the examples I have are in the typical 8.5 x 11 inch format. I have not found a comprehensive listing of trips or guides available, although I would expect that the National Canal Museum in Easton has most copies.
Other canal groups and societies have tackled the question of a guide book in the more traditional manner by publishing a comprehensive guide of the entire canal. These guides are usually printed in greater numbers and can be sold at book stores and museums, thus they receive a bit more attention, although you are unlikely to find then on Amazon. But they can still reflect the local knowledge of the author and in that way be very useful to the researcher.
The Virginia Canals and Navigations Society has published 21 “atlases.” These are in a 8.5 x 14 inch format that allow for a very nice presentation of the maps, which are the main feature of the guide. Most of the information is presented as by using topographical maps, overlaid with text blocks and arrows pointing to numerous sites.
The information found between the map pages contains articles on history, people, boats, geology, suggested highway markers, historic articles and recollections and a lot more. These guides were written mostly by Dr. William Trout and include wisdom from his lifetime of study.
The Middlesex Canal Association has a very good canal guide authored by Burt VerPlank. The guide uses a 8.5 x 5 inch format and takes the reader along a tour of the 30 miles of canal from south to north. Large fold out maps make this guide very easy to read and understand as you seek sites hidden in the urban environment of the Middlesex.
In conclusion, these small production study tour guide books can be a rich source of information that might not be found elsewhere, and most come with a decent list of references that could also be useful in directing further research. However, finding them, or simply finding a listing of them, can be a challenge. Be sure to seek them out by contacting the state canal society, local historical societies, libraries and archives.
Also note that the authors of the guide books typically would publish more in depth articles in the society’s newsletter. Be sure to check those as well.
Editors Note- I tried to find this article online and was not successful. So I don’t know if it was broken up into so many paragraphs or if that was Terry’s work. Anyhow, this is how he send it. It is quite a long article for a newspaper and makes me wonder if it was spread out over multiple days. There are a few words missing at the beginning of one paragraph.
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Terry’s Introduction- A couple of weeks ago, Tim Botos of the Canton repository had a three article event on Transportation in Stark County. He concentrated on three transportation routes, the Ohio Canal, the Lincoln Highway, and Route I-77. That made me think of a 1941 Repository article I ran across several years ago while compiling listings of the Massillon Museum’s clipping file. This 1941 article described the benefits to the county and area brought about by the county’s canals and railroads – and how local business benefited from modern transportation. Oddly enough, roads were not mentioned.
So I’ve copied that very good 1941 article for today’s CANAL COMMENTS column, only adding some footnotes to insert an historical fact over an historical legend here and there.
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THE CANTON REPOSITORY: March 31, 1940, with footnotes by T.K. Woods, Feb. 2011.
Canals came to Ohio – to Stark County – and with them an exciting era. The Legislature on February 4, 1825 authorized the Ohio & Erie system, by way of the Tuscarawas, Muskingum, and Scioto Rivers from Cleveland to Portsmouth, and the Maumee-Miami system on the western side of the state, each connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River.i
It was a great day, July 4, 1825, when Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York turned the first shovel of earth at Licking Summit. With pomp and ceremony, Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio and other dignitaries turned other shovels full, Governor Clinton toured much of the state to stimulate interest in the building of branch canals. He envisioned the entire Ohio system as a gigantic feeder for his own Grand Canal, running through New York State, a transportation system traversing all the inland states from New York to the Mississippi.
There was feverish speculation in land adjacent to the line of the canal. The economic and social effects were rapidly visible. After twenty years of quiet development, largely limited to the county’s boundary, shut in by nearly impassible roads to an economy self contained, the thrifty, industrious, steady, German-speaking farmers of Stark County and their English-speaking neighbors suddenly found the outside world knocking at their side door.
Thousands of men were needed for labor and much of it was performed by farmers living in the vicinity. Dreams of new towns seized the imagination. Canton men bought land and laid out Bolivar, naming it for the South American hero of the time. Here the canal was to cross the Tuscarawas River by an aqueduct. James W. Lathrop and William Christmas of Canton established Canal Fulton in the northwest corner of the county.ii
In the winter of 1825-26, Captain James Duncan, retired shipmaster from Portsmouth, N.H., owner of most of the township’s site land, established Massillon. His scholarly wife, a niece of Charles Hammond, early editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, suggested the name in honor of Jean Baptiste de-Masssillon, celebrated Roman Catholic French bishop of the days of Louis XIV. Contracts for canal work in the vicinity of Massillon were awarded at Captain Duncan’s house January 18, 1826. (Kendall, the hamlet that preceded it, is now the fourth ward of Massillon; named for Kirky-in-Kendal, ancient English town celebrated in history.)
Akron, the Greek word meaning The Heights, rose in bustling fashion from a collection of shanties where the canal laborers lodged at the top of a spectacular and picturesque descent which locks and sluices would lower the waterway from the Portage Lakes to the Cuyahoga Valley.
An advertisement in the Repository stimulated interest in the residential and business prospects of Massillon: “The proprietors are now laying out and offer for sale lots in the new town of Massillon, situated on the Ohio Canal at the intersection of the great road leading from Pittsburgh westward through New Lisbon, Canton, Wooster, and Mansfield . “It occupies both banks of the canal, having a large and commodious basin near the center of town, with a large number of warehouse lots laid out adjoining so as to render it peculiarly convenient for commercial business. The prices of the lots and terms of payment may be known by applying to Alfred Kelly, acting canal commissioner, James Duncan, one of the proprietors who resides in the town; or John Saxton, agent for the proprietors in Canton.”
Simultaneous with the Ohio development, Pennsylvania built canals and there was much competition for labor. Alfred Kelly advertised in the Repository that from $10.00 to $13 a month would be paid – 30 to 34 cents a day – with plain board and shanty lodging. Some contractors, in addition, assured their workmen a daily jigger of whiskey.iii
Canal traffic opened between Akron and Cleveland July 4, 1827. Exactly two years after the project began, a boat dropped down the Akron locks and, at 3 miles an hour, its speed hardly suggested the revolutionary effects the canal was to produce in Ohio and Stark County within a few years.
In August, 1828, the canal was open for traffic from Akron to Massillon. Stark County had its outlet to Lake Erie! Farmers responded instantly with grain for shipment. Bezaleel Wells and others shipped the wool and cloth which they milled at Steubinville overland to Massillon, up the canal to Cleveland, across Lake Erie, through the Grand Canal and the Hudson River to New York City, up the Atlantic to Boston and down the Atlantic to Philadelphia and Baltimore. It was faster and cheaper than the old wagon route over the mountains eastward.
The people of Columbiana county incorporated the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company, financed by the sale of stock as a private enterprise, surveyed its route from the junction of Beaver creek and the Ohio river, up through New Lisbon and across to Minerva and Bolivar, there to join with the Ohio & Erie. It was a distance of 73 miles and called for the construction of several tunnels, the largest at a summit just east of Hanover.iv It was confronted with protracted delays in financing, organization and engineering.
By the end of the year (1829) the (Ohio) canal was open to Dover and by July 10, 1830, it had reached Newark. The tide of commerce shot upward, the cash value of wheat doubling.
Lotteries flourished: the Dismal Swamp Lottery, the Union Canal Lottery of Philadelphia, the Pokomoke Lottery of Wilmington, and the Grand Consolidated Lottery of Pittsburgh. All of them sought chance-taking customers in these parts; their advertising was compelling, with dollar signs and strings of figures running through it.
Carroll county in 1832 was created out of townships taken from Stark, Columbiana, Jefferson and Tuscarawas counties.
Complete from one end to the other, the canal in 1833 transported freight and passengers from Cleveland to Portsmouth – from Lake Erie to the Ohio river and over these water courses to New York City and to New Orleans. Simultaneously, the Miami canal was open from Dayton to Cincinnati and the Welland canal on the Canadian side connected Lake Erie and New Orleans.
The new town – Massillon, as differentiated from Kendall – had 100 houses and population of 500.
Elderkin Potter, New Lisbon Lawyer, broke the first ground for the Sandy & Beaver Nov. 24, 1834, addressing great throngs of people, setting forth in glowing terms the rosy future for New Lisbon and Columbiana County.
Concerned over the growing importance of Massillon, misguided in their zeal to off-set Massillon’s advantage, a group of Canton citizens subscribed to stock in the Nimishillen & Sandy Slackwater Navigation Company – a fancy title for what they thought would be a feeder canal from Canton to the Sandy & Beaver, thence to the Ohio & Erie and out to the oceans. Pomp and ceremony accompanied the breaking of ground on lower Walnut Street. Speculation in real estate ensued, casting the buyers into despair when the little Nimishillen creek quickly demonstrated that its water supply was far too inadequate to float boats of size. The project, of course, was abandoned and a miner local panic occurred.v
Massillon grew and so did Canton, both in population and prosperity. Because Massillon’s movement had the excitement of a “boom”, local pessimists overlooked the gradual benefits backwashing to Canton. By comparison they saw Canton retrogressing. The country had a population of 26,556, doubled in ten years.
The canal boomed wheat to $1.00, corn to 37 cents, rye to 56 cents, oats to 28 cents, butter to 14 cents, clover seed to $5.00, whiskey to 31 ½ cents a gallon, tallow to 10 cents a pound. The tax value of town lots totaled $96,556, a gain 65% over 1827. Eighty-nine merchants were in business in Canton. Pleasure carriages ranged the streets where none existed ten years before.
Massillon thrived as “the Wheat City.” The, canal, a busy thoroughfare, reflected the lusty, picturesque period. There was talk of railroads, but it dampened not a whit the ardor of canal enthusiasts, yet it held much hope for communities remote from the waterways.
A charter granted by the legislature March 14, 1836, to the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, projected to run through Columbiana county and cut northward through a corner of Stark county, lay dormant.
The panic of 1837 struck the east and its repercussions were promptly felt in Ohio. Construction of the Sandy & Beaver canal prosecuted with vigor in despite many obstacles, came to a standstill. The price of wheat and other farm produce dropped. Business in general took a tailspin. In many ways, however, the canals served to cushion the effects of this depression. They brought settlers to all parts of the state, put them on farms and put them in towns and cities, kept the money in circulation, brought venture capital into industrial enterprise.
The legislature created Summit county, with Akron and contiguous territory shaping into size by reason of the canal, and to create it Stark county lost two townships in the readjustment.
Massillon’s growing importance brought on talk of transferring the Stark county seat from Canton. That is to say, there was such talk in the vicinity of Massillon; there was successful resistance in Canton and eastward in the county.
After nine years, The Cleland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company took one more step toward development of its line, in 1845 amending its dormant Ohio charter in preparation for construction work in Columbiana county and in the eastern angle of Stark county.
Determined to offset the canal, to get under way a paralleling railroad line, which would provide transportation all year in competition with water transportation which was icebound in winter, groups of citizens in Canton and Akron met in Akron January 21, 1845. Samuel Lahm served as chairman and Thomas Goodman as secretary. All attending were enthusiastic and anxious. Their reports raised high hopes and on January 24, 1845, the Repository issued a letter-size single-sheet Extra Edition, printing verbatim the proceedings of the meeting and urging accomplishment of its objective.
Never for a moment fading out, the project languished to await a more propitious time.
The first boat, under command of Captain Dunn, moved triumphantly from the Ohio river into Little Beaver and up through the Fredericktown locks of the Sandy & Beaver canal to New Lisbon, where it was hailed with calibration and rejoicing Mathias Hester laid out town lots at Freedom and in 1848 David G. Hester received appointment to postmaster. His first mail contained one newspaper – a copy of the Ohio repository – and one letter.
The State Legislature passed an Act incorporating the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad Company, giving it the right to lay track from Mansfield eastward by way of Wooster, Massillon and Canton to a point on the east line of the state within Columbiana county, there to connect with trackage through Indiana to Chicago.
The tracks of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh and of the Ohio & Pennsylvania were to cross at Freedom.
The shadow of futility fell upon the builders of the Sandy & Beaver canal, but they kept doggedly at their work. After four years of digging, with hand labor for lack of mechanical devices, burrowing the Big Tunnel as an 18-foot tube, 80 feet below the surface of the hill, the middle section from New Lisbon to Minerva was incomplete.
A boat was forced through from New Lisbon to Hanover to hold the canal charter.vi Approaching West Fork creek, east of Hanover, it went aground. Seven yoke of oxen and many willing hands lifted it over the barrier into deeper water. Then, traversing the Big Tunnel, a huge stone rolled down in front of the boat. Again struggling men released the craft and it pulled through to anchor at Hanover January 6, 1848, “on schedule”.
Something more than railroads was faintly visible as a forecast of prosperity for Canton. Just outside Greentown, a machinist-farmer, Cornellius Aultman in 1848 made patterns and experimentally made five Hussey reapers from designs laying dormant in the hands of their Baltimore originator. They were the first machines of the kind made in Ohio, with exception of two or three turned out at Martins Ferry the previous year.
Michael Dillman, a progressive and prosperous farmer living nearby, across the line in Summit County, used one of Aultman’s machines and with so much satisfaction that he bought a partnership with Aultman. The next year, 1849, the two went to Plainfield, Illinois, put up a small shop and went into limited production of reapers
Stark county subscribed $75,000 worth of stock in the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad Company and work was begun at many places along its right-of-way between Crestline and Pittsburgh.
Cornellius Aultman, after the close of the harvest season in 1850, sold his interest in the reaper factory at Plainfield, Ill., and returned to Greentown. Several months prior, the Baltimore designer, Mr. Hussey, agreed with Mr. Aultman and his associates that $15 for each machine would be paid as a royalty on his invention.
The tempo of industry quickened for Canton in 1851. The Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad line was completed and trains were running. The little neighborhood where the C. & P. tracks crossed those of the Ohio & Pennsylvania, known previously as Freedom, now bore the name of Alliance, conferred upon it by General Robinson, an official of the company at Pittsburgh – a name he symbolized as a wedding of the rails.
Ephraim Ball and Cornellius Aultman in 1851 formed Ball, Aultman & Co., made twelve Hussey reapers and six threshing machines at Greentown and sold them in the vicinity. The location of a plant near the Ohio & Pennsylvania railroad appealed to them as advantageous for shipping of their machines to the wheat country of the west. After the harvest, they bought land adjacent to the tracks and moved to Canton.
It was the dawn of a bright new day for Canton, though not at the moment distinguishable. Mr. Ball, Mr. Aultman, Lewis Miller, Jacob Miller and George Cook pooled their financial resources, $4,500 in all, paid for their three lots alongside the railroad line and built a two-story brick factory, housing a wood shop, finishing shop and molding shop.
While not yet a large employer of labor, Ball, Aultman, & Co. built 25 Hussey reapers in 1852 and worked out the details of the Ohio Mower. Encountering conflict of patents with inventor Haines at Pekin, Ill., they came to mutual agreement on manufacture and sale.
The Iron Horse came to Canton in 1853. The Ohio & Pennsylvania line opened for travel from Pittsburgh to Crestline April 11.
Overshadowed by parallel railroad lines, the eastern section of the Sandy & Beaver canal went into disuse; the middle division was too difficult and too incomplete to use; the western section from Hanover to Bolivar was left for the state to take over.vii
Ball, Aultman & Co. began in 1855 a season of expanded production, but a fire on the night of May 5 destroyed most of their plant. Though handicapped, they produced 12 Hussey reapers in time for the harvest and rebuilt the plant.
Almost primitive up to 1830 and with only meager mechanical development up to 1850, agriculture went through a swift transition concurrent with the early period of Aultman activity. Up to 1830 the farmer produced chiefly for himself and family. With the advantage of machinery, he raised crops largely to sell.
(Missing bit here.) …system under the competition of railroads, but it continued to be a busy and beneficial thoroughfare, reaching into regions yet untouched by rails.
The Ohio & Pennsylvania railroad opened its line through from Pittsburgh to Chicago early in 1856 and on August the three divisions comprising it – the Pennsylvania division, the Ohio division and the Indiana division – were consolidated and the name changed to the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Company. Stark County, by this time, owned $105,000 worth of its stock, selling the stock subsequently for $127,000 to redeem the bonds by which the county had raised money for its investment.
Bell, Aultman & Co. weathered a miner panic of 1857 to become stronger and busier than ever, in this year producing 1,000 agricultural machines, demonstrating the superiority of its reapers, threshers and mowers in competitive tests in various parts of the country. Its most significant victory, in a great field demonstration at Syracuse N.Y. brought widespread favor for the Aultman machines.
C. Russell & Co. went into production of a reaper, called the Peerless, at Massillon, in competition with Aultman.
The Aultman plant in 1863 was busier than ever; farm machinery stood in demand, so that greater crops might be planted and harvested for the people at home and for the army in the field. Cornelius Aultman and his associates were prevailed upon by enterprising Akron men to establish a branch factory there.
The Aultman Company increased its capital stock to $450,000, and at a later date to $1,000,000 for the Canton plant only, setting up a separate capital structure for the Akron plant.
The Pittsburgh, Ft Wayne & Chicago railroad was sold under foreclosure at Cleveland. It was leased subsequently for 999 years dating from July 1, 1869 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and its parent, the Pennsylvania Company.
Dormant since 1845, the project for a railway line between Cleveland and Canton was revived and a charter obtained for the Akron & Canton Railway (The Valley Railway), but delay again confronted its development.
The Valley Railway set its capital at $3,000,000 and in 1871 went forward with plans to extend a line from Cleveland, by way of Akron to Canton and on through Tuscarawas and Carroll counties to Bowerstown in Harrison county, where it might tap the coal fields and connect with the Panhandle Railway.
Influential citizens of Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Wheeling and other towns along the projected route of the Valley Railway met in January 1872 at Akron. James A. Saxton of Canton presided. The Cleveland representatives pledged toward its financing $500,000, Akron $150,000 and Canton $150,000. Subscription books were opened at each of the cities and Canton was first to announce her quota had been raised. Akron reported the same success soon thereafter and, in due course, Cleveland subscribed $508,000. Saxton and George Cook of Canton along with five other men, were elected directors April 24.
David L. King of Akron, in 1875 president of the projected Valley Railroad from Cleveland to Canton, balked in his efforts to get it financed in this country, went to England. He was about to conclude the sale of bonds to English Capitalists when the House of Commons discredited American railroad securities on the basis of the Jay Cooke & Co. failure and other depression fears. Mr. King was forced to return empty handed, but he did not give up.
Work on the Valley Railroad, after all its financial vicissitudes, was well started in 1878. President King spiked the first rail at Akron Oct. 26 and from that moment the laying of track went forward with vigor, south to Canton and north to Cleveland.
Late in the year Canton became the beneficiary of another and equally important railroad project, the Connotton Valley Railway. It was developed by wealthy owners of coal property in the neighborhood of Dellroy, namely C.G. Patterson of Boston, N.A,. Smith of New York, G.L. Ingersoll of Cleveland, C.C. Shober of Carrolton and others.
They conceived it as a narrow gauge (3 feet) line of track, adequate and well operated for the transportation of coal, other freight and passengers, from a junction with the Panhandle at Bowerstown on the south, through Canton north to Fairport on Lake Erie and on to Cleveland.
They bought at court sale the little Ohio & Toledo line, laid between Carrollton and Minerva, which in 1878 was in financial difficulties. They extended it to Dellroy in 1879 and pushed toward Canton.
The Valley Railroad was completed from Cleveland to Canton in the winter of 1879-80 and the first train came through from the northern terminus January 28, 1880. Regular train service began February 2.
Soon thereafter, the Connotton Valley Railway came up from Oneida and Carrollton to Canton, then work completed with a rush in May 1880. At the same time construction was pushed to Bowerstown. It was a memorable occasion when on May 15 an excursion train came on the excellent narrow gauge line, bringing 500 enthusiasts from Carrollton, Dellroy and other points; the engine, two baggage cars, two passengers and four flat cars bedecked and crowded.
The Repository began its story of the event: “Energy begets success.” It was a compliment to the backers of the line, who with their own money, asking no loans, selling no bonds, calling only for free right-of-way in each community, built it.
The company placed a similar “special” train at the disposal of leading Canton citizens May 17 and they traversed the line to Carrollton, marveling at the Robertsville tunnel and Montgomery “cut”.
Regular passenger service began a schedule of two trains daily in each direction May 18, 1880. The company went forward with construction of the two northern branches, through Middlebranch, Hartville, Congress Lake, Suffield, Magadore, Brimfield, Kent, Twinsburgh and Bedford into Cleveland – and at an angle out of Kent toward Fairport, where coal from the Connotton Valley fields might be shipped to Canada, Milwaukee, St.Paul, Chicago and west.
i The Act referred to authorized the Ohio Canal from Cleveland to Portsmouth and the Miami Canal from Cincinnati to Dayton (later extended to Lake Erie). The Miami Canal was extended in two sections and completed to the Lake in 1847. A Legislative Act passed in 1849 changed the name of those three sections to the Miami & Erie Canal. That same Act changed the name of the Ohio Canal to the Ohio & Erie Canal though few people of the canal era ever called the Ohio Canal by any other name.
ii The initial name of the town was Fulton, the Canal prefix being added in 1830. When Fulton was established in 1826, Stark County included an additional township, Franklin, to the north. This was ‘lost’ in 1840 when Summit County was formed.
iii There is some evidence that not all contractors provided a standard four gills of whiskey a day even at the beginning of canal construction. Apparently, the practice of providing whiskey at all was stopped by all, or most, contractors within a year, not on moral grounds, but because the practice was too expensive for contractors to continue
iv The Sandy & Beaver Canal contained two tunnels, both on the summit level between Guilford and Hanoverton.
v When a project to link Canton with the canal at Massillon via an eight mile long horse-drawn railway was declared an engineering impossibility due to the steep grades between the two towns, and a waterway north was blocked by unfavorable terrain, the group of influential Canton businessmen turned their sights onto a waterway, south. In 1831, the State Legislature was approached to authorize an examination of the Nimishillen and Sandy creeks from “the forks” south of Canton to the Ohio canal near Bolivar with the object of improving those streams with slackwater dams and short stretches of canal. The examination was approved, and a Mr. Fields did the survey work. A Charter was given by the State to form the Nimishillen and Sandy Navigation Company that next year (1832). Stock subscriptions were slow until the Sandy & Beaver Canal Company broke ground in 1834. The Nimishillen and Sandy project was altered to tie into the former canal near Sandyville and the Nimishillen and Sandy Navigation Company stockholders met formally on December 25, 1834 to elect officers, and directors and appoint an engineer for their project. The sites for two reservoirs northwest of 6th St and Walnut N.W. were to supply the canal with water until the forks of the Nimishillen were reached. Ground was broken in 1836 and contracts let for both ends of the approximately 12 miles of canal and slackwater. The nation’s financial ‘bubble’ burst in the spring of 1837 and work on the Nimishillen and Sandy canal was suspended. By the late 1840s when the country’s economy had improved enough for the Sandy & Beaver project to be revived, Canton’s businessmen were focusing their hopes on the fledgling Pennsylvania and Ohio railroad and the Nimishillen and Sandy project was not revived. .
vi There was never any danger the canal company would lose it’s charter if the January deadline was not met. One of the principal investors had pledged $50,000 with the stipulation that the canal be finished by that date.
vii In actuality, the entire length of the Sandy & Beaver canal was operational beginning with the boating season of 1850 and carried a respectable amount of traffic. The canal company was under-funded, however, and when a dam on one of the reservoirs on the summit failed in the spring of 1852 causing local flood damage and losing support of the local communities, it became impossible for the canal company to survive. The entire line was auctioned off in sections approximately ½ mile long in March of 1854. A group from Sandyville obtained the western-most six miles of canal, refurbished it, and ‘sold’ it to the state for $1.00. The state took ownership of that section in December 1856 and ran it as a water and cargo feeder to the Ohio Canal at Bolivar until the Sandy & Beaver aqueduct across the Tuscarawas River collapsed in 1883.
Are you setting out on your journey to find your canal family tree? We are often asked how to find people who worked or lived on the canals, and sadly, there is no magic place where all canal based records are kept. A lot depends on how your state ran the canal. Was the canal government controlled, or was it all hired out? New York State has run its canals since 1817 and has great canal records when it comes to the construction and operation, but employees not so much. States like Pennsylvania and Ohio built their canals but hired out their operations to private firms. The Delaware and Hudson Canal was all privately owned and operated. If your ancestor was a state employee they might be mentioned in passing. If they were a boat owner or worked for someone on a boat, it is unlikely you will find them mentioned in any official records. If they were born on a boat, you might find a birth notice in the local town or county, but not often. So what to do? Well don’t despair. If you live down the street or on the other side of the world, there are many resources to help you find your ancestors and here are some of our favorite places to look.
First off, although subscription services such as Ancestry.com or Family Search can seem expensive, the amount of materials available will be well worth any money spent. These services have millions of records available and if you add up what you can find on their sites, and what it would cost to drive to each site to hunt and peck, you will find it worth the cost. Plus if you do a DNA test, it will tie into your tree. If you are new to these services, check out some of the genealogical how-to videos on You Tube. If you can’t afford them, or just wish to see what they offer, many libraries have access to a free Ancestry.com account, so ask!
But maybe you don’t want to do that, so try these sites.
A Caution- All these sites use OCR (optical character recognition) technology. if you don’t find what you are looking for, try a different search term or way to word it. You will be surprised!
Internet Search engines, or just “Google it.” Don’t overlook the simple tool of simply typing in your name and seeing what comes up. The search engines that power the internet are constantly crawling about content and updating. Local historical societies will write up articles, newspapers will run history based articles, and of course those of us who write blogs, are constantly adding new information to the web. The search engines will typically pick it up.
There are rules that will help your searching, such as adding “quotes” around your search terms. I go into this a bit further down in this post, but in short, searching for Bob Smith and then “Bob Smith” will return different results. The quotes turn the two words into one phrase. However if Bob Smith used the middle name Tom, using the quotes will rule out any returns if he was called Bob Tom Smith, or Bob T. Smith.
Google Books. Make a direct search in the Google Books search engine. Sometimes Google Books will pop up in your broad internet search, but not always. This is a overlooked resource. Search for; Bob Smith Lock 34 canal, and see what comes up. Be fancy and add the quotes to search “Bob Smith” “Lock 34” canal.
See if there is a local historical society. Many towns and villages will have a small volunteer run historical society, but every state is different. For instance, New York has village, town and county governments, whereas Pennsylvania has townships and county. Some states have county and city governments only. If you can’t find a local resource then take a wider look. Is there a county or city historical society? Check for a state archives or state library. Then check with the Library of Congress! Use a website like Cyndi’s List and/or Linkpendium to help you find these resources.
Be warned. While many small organizations will be happy (delighted!) to answer your questions, many will charge a fee upfront just take a look. If the organization has paid staff, then expect to pay for any information.
Check digital newspapers. Newspapers.com is a paid service but might be worth a month’s service if you can find something. The site called Old Fulton Postcards is free. It has over 51 million newspaper pages (as of March 2022) from all across the United States and Canada. As you might expect, it is a very busy site and at times, you will find the results very slow to load. I will open a few tabs and have many searches going at once so I am not waiting for a page to open.
If you use Old Fulton, take some time to learn how to use the sites search engine, and specifically, how to do Boolean searches. If you were searching for Oliver Tanner who ran a dry dock in Port Byron NY, you could simply type in the word Tanner, and chose the All The Words search option, your results will show every time the name Tanner, or the word tanner, as in tanning leather, was used. You could try to focus a bit more by entering, Tanner Port Byron, and then chose All The Words, and you will find every time Tanner, tanner, Port, and Byron, was used. So your results might show articles about the poems of Lord Byron next to a leather maker in Port Jacobs. You could try the Exact Phrase option to find all the articles about Port Byron, but that will return all the mentions of such as the Port Byron Chronicle, Port Byron schools, Port Byron Illinois, and so on.
Instead, use the Boolean search function and use the w/? function. Boolean allows you to enter the words, Tanner AND Port AND Byron, however it is much easier to enter Tanner w/10 “Port Byron.” This change has done a couple things. First notice that Port Byron is in quotes. This turns the two words into one word/phrase. So instead of getting every time Port and Byron is used, you will find only Port Byron. The w/10 tells the search engine to search for each time the word Tanner is used within 10 words of “Port Byron” And the number is up to you. If you wish to find all the times Oliver is used near Tanner, such as any of Oliver Tanner that might include his middle name, enter Oliver w/5 Tanner. You could do Tanner AND “Port Byron”, and you will find each time Tanner was on the same page as “Port Byron.” This is very helpful for finding those little articles in a far away newspaper that notes that “Mrs. Tanner of Port Byron, NY was visiting her niece last week.”
While Old Fulton is great, it is not easy to turn the page if your article is continued on …(page 4). What you need to do is to copy the page address that you are currently on, take a guess at how many pages to add, paste that into the search box, enter the Exact Phrase option, and then adjust from there. So if you find an article on page 8 of the Port Byron Chronicle 1905 Oct-0788.pdf, and your article continues on page 12, you will need to adjust the address to -0792.pdf. And go from there.
There are many other newspaper resources. The Advantage Archives are working with smaller organizations with digitizing their collections and then hosting the pages. Check their website for a directory map to see what might be available near your relatives. Advantage Archives has a nice feature where you can simply turn the page to find that continued on article. Many times if I know the date I am looking for I will focus on that date and then search the entire paper for the name, just in case the OCR missed it. Note- I find that the Community History Archive Directory works better for me in Firefox then Chrome.
NYS Historic Newspapers. This is another organization that has made newspapers available on the internet. Their search engine is a little different but you can search by county, dates, names and so on.
Be sure to check out the US GenWeb project. GenWeb is not what it used to be but it can be helpful and should be checked. Some county pages are great while others are very basic.
Don’t overlook Find A Grave, and Billion Graves. Both of these sites post cemetery information and have local volunteers that will search for a headstone and photograph it for you. Many of the bios are quite full of information.
Finding Their Routes; Family History and Genealogy -(Pamela Vittorio) specifically focuses on canal based family research. This is a fee based service but might be worth it if you are really stuck. Here is a guide Pamela has for finding records in New York State. if you want to hear Pamela talk about the canal and records, here she is on The Forget-Me-Not-Hour in 2016. (audio) The first 30 minutes is mostly a canal overview and history. The second half gets into what records are available.
Feel free to drop us a note and we will be happy to try to guide you along.
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
Tucked away in the back pocket of Nobel Whitford’s “1905 History of the Canal System of the State of New York” is found this map of all the canals of the North America. It is likely there are few others like it. If you are not familiar with Whitford’s book, the two volumes that made up the total work are considered to be the comprehensive work on the canals of New York. It also covers many other canals of North America, as to compare them with what New York had constructed.
In a letter from Nobel to someone asking for a copy of the book, he gave some great details about the who, what, and where of his work. But in short, there were 3500 copies made and distributed to law makers, libraries, other engineers, and those who had an interest in the canals. These are now highly collectible, and bring prices of $400 plus. They can be found on Google Books, although the maps and numerous other fold outs were not scanned.
Getting back to the map, it is a remarkable work and it captures those canals and navigation’s in use or which had been used, up till 1904.
