Chenango Canal History Nuggets
Forwarding house served the canal at Greene. Passengers could also purchase
their fares here to ride the packet boats.
The Morning Sun, Norwich, N.Y.
March 21, 1892
What a difference in the modes of traveling has a few years made! When the Lounger was a boy the old four in-hand stage coaches ran between Utica and Binghamton stopping at the Eagle tavern - kept by General DeForest - overnight. Peter Clarke was one of the proprietors and Doc. Ames and Bill McQueen the principal owners.
What expectancy was shown by the old villagers then coming down Main street from the furnace. The driver would toot his horn and whip up his team and away they would come on a run only to be stopped by the brake in from of the tavern. All of the prominent citizens of the town wee there to get their mail and when they received a letter would with great gusto open it and read it on the steps of the tavern to the great envy of their less lucky neighbors. It took a day to go to Utica then and also a day to go to Binghamton. Now two hours or less does the journey.
* * *
Speaking of slow locomotion, next to the canal boat when the frequent ducks at the cry of low bridge were most annoying, the old packet line between here and Binghamton was the slowest, although by no means the most unpleasant. Capt. Stiver ran a packet in those days between here and Binghamton and the crowds that used to convene at the old PerLee store (where R. Eaton now has a warehouse) were of themselves enough to speak of Captain’s popularity.
The packet was drawn by four horses that went on a fast walk and part of the time, particularly when coming into town, on a trot. The boat itself was like a canal boat except was well finished and furnished on the inside and had numerous window, dining room, births, &c., and the trip, although slow for three days, was a most enjoyable one. Captain Stevens was at the head crying “low bridge.”
The Lounger
Madison County Leader and Observer
August 26, 1915
Building the Chenango Canal
Hamilton - The work of constructing the canal commenced in 1834 and was completed in 1836. All of the six reservoirs and the feeders for supplying water for the canal and consequently Hamilton became the center of activity during that important period.
A great building boom was inaugurated in the village at the same time. All of the larger buildings existing in the town up to 1870 were constructed at this time, including the Eagle Hotel, Commercial Building, Hamilton Canal Exchange buildings, etc. St. Thomas’ Church was also built at the same time so it is easily seen that those were the liveliest days in the history of our village.
The laborers on the canal and reservoir jobs came with very few exceptions from Ireland, and were the first of that nationality ever seen here. They for the most part came from the slums of Dublin and Cork and were no representative of the Irish people as we know them today than is the Dago a true representative of the nation that gave to the world a Columbus, a Michaelangelo and an Addelina Patti.
There was very little of the criminal about them, but their love of strong drink and fighting was carried to an extreme which fairly appalled the regular inhabitants of the town and inspired a wholesome fear, which was unwarranted, as the fistic amusements of the strangers were confined pretty much to themselves. The central colony of these people in this locality were quartered in shanties erected on the land bounded by the present Maple avenue, Pleasant and Main streets and was called New Dublin.
Maple avenue had its origin at that time, it having been opened as a lane for the accommodation of New Dublin. After the completion of the canal it was extended and made into a regular street and christened Canal street; and after abandonment of the canal its name was changed to Maple avenue, on account of the many maple trees which adorn it.
The behavior among the Irish during the two years of canal construction was a constant source of anxiety and alarm to the villagers as a whole, and twice, in one year the militia was called out to restore order, and so the people were greatly pleased in 1836 when the canal was opened with a celebration, the principal feature of which was the arrival in town of the first canal boat, the “Dove of Solsville.” The canal was finally abandoned in 1876, after having served its purpose well for just forty years.
Madison County Leader and Observer
January 20, 1916
Navigation on the Chenango Canal
Hamilton - Do you remember the days of navigation on the Chenango Canal? A goodly number do, but more do not. It was just forty years from the opening of the canal until its final abandonment, and it has now been just forty years from that abandonment to the present time; therefore the memories of many of our citizens who have reached do not hark back to the last boat on the big ditch.
The Chenango canal extended from Utica to Binghamton, a distance of ninety-seven miles. At Utica it connected with the Erie canal, and through the latter its boats were able to each all of the canals of the state with the exception of the Delaware and Hudson canal, which, however, could easily be reached by them via the Hudson river. These canals also opened up to them the navigation of the Hudson river, Lake Champlain, Lake George, Oneida and Seneca lakes, a total of a little more than 1,330 miles of navigable waters in the state, and in addition of entering the Delaware & Hudson canal from the Hudson river, or the Morris canal by way of New York, they were enabled to reach Philadelphia and and the Delaware bay, via the Delaware river and canal or the Pennsylvania system of canals, which traversed the entire eastern part of that great commonwealth.
The great majority of the canals referred to above have been abandoned, but they were at one time the most important factor in the internal commerce and development of the Middle States. At one time in the fifties there were something like 8,000 canal boats registered in the state of New York requiring about 40,000 persons for their operation, whereas only a few hundred such boats are now registered in the state.
The water for the Chenango was mainly supplied by a system of reservoirs construct for that purpose, additional water being furnished from the Chenango river and Oriskany creek at such places as the varying levels of the parallel water courses would admit. The reservoirs were six in number and were all located in this vicinity.
They were Madison reservoir (now Lake Moraine), Woodman’s Pond, Leland’s Pond, Eaton Reservoir, Bradley Brook and Lebanon reservoirs. From five of these reservoirs their waters were discharged through feeders into the summit level of the canal, which extended from a short distance south of Woodman’s Pond to Solsville, a distance of five miles.
The waters from Woodman’s Pond were discharged into a lower level of the canal just south of the summit. Neither steam or gasoline power was used in the navigation of canal boats in those days, all being towed by horses or mules, and the path alongside the canal upon which the horses and mules traveled was call the towpath, while the opposite ban was called the heel path, or berm bank.
There was only one towpath at any one point alongside of any canal in the state, but of varying conditions it was necessary to occasionally change the towpath from one side of the canal to the other, and for the convenience of navigation the change of team from side to side of the canal was effected by means of what was known as towpath bridges, which were provided with large round posts at each corner and extending from the top of the bridge to the ground at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and the rails on each side for the entire length of the bridge were rounded at the top.
These facilities were for the purpose of carrying the towline over with the least possible friction. To make the change of towpath the team was driven on the path to the opposite side to that of the boat it was towing, and then up to and across the bridge and down to the other path upon the same side it went up, and the towline dropped into the water without the necessity of removing it from the boat and again replacing, which amounted to a considerable saving of time.
While upon the subject of towpath it should be stated that it was generally conceded by boatmen everywhere that the Chenango towpath was the best in the state, and we should also state here that the road bridge which crossed the canal a little south of Woodman’s Pond was a towpath bridge.
The Chenango locks had an average rise and fall of sixteen feet. At first they were all what was known as wooden locks, that is the inside of the lock proper was lined with plank and timbers, only the outside jaws being constructed of stone; later they were all made over into stone locks. There were no steam or electric appliances in those days for operating the locks, it all having to be done by hand, and the lock tenders who operated them lived for the most part in nearby houses constructed by the State.
The locks between this village and Binghamton, a distance of sixty-eight miles, were few in number, while there were sixty-odd locks between here and Utica, a distance of only twenty-nine miles. With the exception of from here to the first lock north, a disatnce of a little more than a mile, and the summit level five miles in length, the locks from here to Utica were very close together, an at Oriskany Falls was a pair of combined locks whee boats passed directly from one lock to the other.
This great number of locks made the northern division of the canal one of the most difficult stretches in this state to navigate. The loss of time caused by lockage can be appreciated when it is stated that the time required for a loaded day boat running ten hours per day to go from Hamilton to Utica was two days, while the trip for such boat from Hamilton to Binghamton required but two and one-half days.
At frequent intervals along the canal waste weirs were provided to permit the escape of any surplus waters and to facilitate the drawing off of the waters from the several levels when needed. All of the original bridges across the canal were of wood, built high enough to admit the free passage of boats with high deck loads. Some lacked a little of the required height, and the boat captain’s warning of “Low Bridge” gave a by-word which was long in use to indicate coming trouble. Many of these bridges were afterwards supplanted by iron, swing and other bridges.
So much for the canal and the canal system of the state. Later we will continue with local canal conditions, the boats and their navigation.
Madison County Leader and Observer
January 27, 1916
The Chenango Canal in the village of Hamilton
Hamilton - Having already given a description of the Chenango Canal as a whole, we now endeavor to make our readers acquainted with local canal conditions and the facilities for canal transportation.
There were two locks within the corporate limits of the village; one just a little north of the Kendrick avenue (then Mill street crossing and the other a short distance north of the College street crossing; the latter bearing the local name of the second lock and of which will more be said later.
There were five canal bridges in the village, located as follows: At College street, Mill street, Pleasant street, Lebanon (now Main street) and Eaton street. All of these bridges were originally wooden structures. In the last days of the canal the Pleasant street bridge was taken down and replaced by a swing bridge. The Lebanon street bridge was first succeeded by an iron bridge and that by a swing bridge. The original Eaton street bridge was the first of the five to be removed and was immediately replaced by an ornamental wooden bridge, which for many years thereafter was regarded locally as something of a work of art. A few years before the close of the canal this bridge was also taken down and replaced by an iron one.
The approaches to all five of these bridges, before the construction of the swing ones, represented sharp grades, varying in degree from the approaches to the College street bridge, which was the least difficult of all to mount, to the Easton street bridge, where the approach from the north amounted to quite a hill extending from the bridge to the house now owned and occupied by William Skinner, while it was next to impossible for a heavy loaded team to make the bridge from Canal (now Green street), so sharp was the grade at that point.
There were three store or warehouses in town for the handling of canal freight. The most important of these was situated where the steam laundry now stands, and for nearly twenty years after the abandonment of the canal, was used for other purposes, but was finally destroyed by fire on May 29, 1895.
The second storehouse in importance was known as the brick storehouse, on account of the material of which it was constructed, and occupied the site of the present Phoenix block. This building was also eventually destroyed by fire, the date being Dec. 17, 1884.
The third of the storehouses was a frame structure which was known as the Black storehouse on account of the color it was painted. This building is now owned by Peter Hand, and is used as mechanics’ shops; it never figured prominently, however, as a leading storehouse, which was due to its situation, it being on the towpath side of the canal.
There were no elevators for the handling of grain and in fact there were no elevators anywhere along the Chenango, all grain being unloaded from the boats by buckets raised and lowered from hoist chains. The first coal yard in town was situated at the south side of the eaton street storehouse. This was superseded by a large yard with extensive sheds near where William E. Clark now lives; this last named yard was finally removed to the other side of the canal at a point several rods farther south than the old one, here buckets and cranes were used for the unloading of coal for the first time.
Lumber yards were established at several points in town along the line of the canal with good docking facilities in connection therewith. In fact there were good docking facilities nearly the entire distance between the Pleasant street and Eaton street bridges.
Adjoining the Eaton street storehouse on the north side was a large canal basin originally constructed by the management of the Eagle hotel for the accommodation of passenger packets, but was later used by all boats for turning around. The Crocker basin, so named from its builder, was a much larger affair and was situated on the east side of the canal just south of Kendrick avenue; it was originally intended to proved this basin with an elaborate system of docking, but that idea was finally abandoned at the basin was never much used for the turning of boats, it being too far removed from the freight handing section of the village.
Madison County Leader and Observer
February 3, 1916
Early Days on the Chenango Canal
The first canal boat that ever came to Hamilton was “The Dove of Solsville,” built and owned at Solsville. It came on the opening day of the canal in June, 1836, and its coming was made the occasion of a big jubilee. It came in ballast, carrying no freight, but had a goodly number of passengers, who had embraced the opportunity to be the first voyagers on the waterway.
The last boat to enter Hamilton was the “Prudence,” owned by Ephriam Keyes of this place, but leased and operated on that occasion by the late Thaddeus Leonard, and was laden with coal. Between the comings of the two boats above mentioned the canal was the ever the scene of great activity during the seasons of navigation, and especially so before the construction of the railroads through the valley a few years prior to its abandonment.
At the outset there were great expectations in regard to the introduction of passenger packet lines, and such lines were established running both north and south, but conditions were against them. On the Erie canal there two levels each sixty miles in length, and other very long ones, and in consequence the passenger service flourished there while the excessive leakage between this place and Utica soon caused an abandonment of the packet service to the north of us on the Chenango, and while the service was continued more or less uninterruptedly from here to to Binghamton during the first twenty years of the canal. It was never able to successfully compete with the stage line and was finally completely given up.
The Chenango canal then was essentially a freight traffic route, and this traffic three classes of boats were employed, the so-called bullhead boats, the lake boats and the scows. These boats were all sixty feet in length, with sixteen feet beam, their difference in carrying capacity being determined by depth of hold; this, too, was the size of all boats on the several canals of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with the exception of the Erie and Champlain canal boats, which were larger.
The bullhead boat was especially constructed for the transportation of grain, but owing to its height above the water line and narrow beam it was not adapted for lake transit and rarely ever ventured off the canal proper. These boats had a depth of hold of between eight and nine feet and were provided with six tight-fitting deck hatches to facilitate the loading and unloading of grain.
All these boats were almost without exception night and day boats, and provided with but one cabin which was situated at the stern of the boat and was the largest of any class of boats on the canal. It was divided into compartments, one furnished with sleeping berth for the crew and the other a living apartment. As night and day boat they carried double crews, working in shifts of eight hours each. Two towing teams were also carried and for the feeding and resting of the horses a stable compartment was provided in the forward part of the boat.
This class of boats was ever least in numbers of either of the classes and its range was usually between Binghamton and Buffalo, carrying grain east and freight west. The two best known of this class that ever traversed the Chenango were without question the Baker and the J.B. Anderson.
The lake boats were the aristocrats of the canal and were constructed as their name implies for service on the lakes and rivers as well as the canal, and the range of their activities was limited only by the limitation of connections with minor navigable waters. They were almost without exception day boats only on the lateral canals, but some of them when navigating the Erie canal worked as night and day boats, and on such occasions employed drivers and teams for towing from one of two firms doing special boat towing along that waterway; one of these firms, the Conboy line, gained a great reputation in those days for the excellence of service.
The lake boat had a less depth of hold than the bullhead; higher starboard and larboard rails and had a bow cabin or forecastle where the mail members of the crew were lodged, but all hands took their meals in the stern cabin, which otherwise was reserved for the captain and his family. There were four deck hatches on this class of boat and they, together with the cabin hatches, were provided with watertight fittings to prevent the intake of water in case of rough seas while on the lakes or rivers.
While the bullhead boats were usually painted white all over and the scows some dull color, the laker was just as sure to be highly ornamented in brightest of colors. While a large percent of the lakers were called canal tramps, penetrating to all points where it was possible for them to reach or at least so far as it might be necessary for them to obtain cargoes, yet a goodly number were always connected with regular lines plying between certain specified terminals, and this class of boats were the only ones on this canal which operated as line fleets.
The best known ope4rating on this canal was the Chenango Lake Boat Line, plying between Binghamton and New York via Utica and Troy. The most popular agent at the New York end of the line which this company ever had and who held the position for many years, was a Mr. Miller of Sherburne, who was noted not only for his special ability as such agent but for his refinement and exceeding politeness, the last named trait never for a moment forsaking him under the most trying circumstances. The best known and most valuable boats of this class were the America, Constitution and Salina.
The cargoes carried by the lakers were farm products, manufactured goods and general merchandise. The railroads not yet having been built the merchandise was put up for shipment with special reference to canal traffic, where hoist chains and tackles were used for loading and unloading; consequently molasses all came in great hogsheads, crockery in large crockery crates, flour in barrels, sugar in large barrels (or sacks), cod-fish in bales, raisins in large boxes, tea in chests, etc.
The scow boats, designed for the transportation of coal, iron ore, building and lime stone, lumber, etc., were the least costly or attractive in appearance of any of the classes of boats, and at the opening of the canal were the least in numbers, but their numbers, increasing with the development of the coal trade, they at last became much more numerous than both of the other classes combined.
Like the lakers they were provided with cabins, fore and aft, but they were open deck boats, and when loaded the decks were but a little above the water line and they were therefore wholly unfitted to go upon the lakes or rivers, but they made up in part for this by a wide range through the numerous canals of the state.
The two best known boats of this class that ever navigated the Chenango were first the Johnnie Evans, whose tonnage capacity was the greatest of any boat on the big ditch and whose deck, when the boat was fully loaded, was but eight inches above the water line. The other was the Lemon Squeezer, owned at Greene. This boat was fitted up with watertight compartments so arranged that it cold be taken apart at Binghamton, transported by rail to the coal fields, there loaded, returned to Binghamton, and by special shutes prepared for it, unloaded from the cars to the canal, where it was again reassembled.
Madison County Leader and Observer
February 10, 1916
Boats and Their Navigation
Hamilton - All canal boats in the days of which we deal were obliged to obtain clearance papers fro the stations established for that purpose for the payment of tolls and the inspection of boats. The stations on the Chenango canal, and which were known as collector’s offices were located at Utica, Oxford and Binghamton, the last year of the canal was $3,441.
The inspection of boats was made by measurement for the purpose of determining the amount of water drawn, the law requiring that the boat should not be loaded down beyond a certain depth into the water.This mode of inspection was in vogue upon all of the canals of the state except the Erie, where boat and cargo were weighed instead of measured. Weighlocks were provided for the purpose at Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and Troy.
Boats were run into these locks passing above great chains arranged for the purpose; the chains were then drawn taut and all of the water was drawn from the lock and boat cargo were left suspended in the air by the chains which were attached to the great arms of the scales which recorded the weight, which ran all of the way, boat and cargo included, from 100 tons to 300 tons. After the weighing the water was again let into the lock, the chains loosened, the lock opened and the boat proceeded on its way providing, of course, that the inspection was found correct.
The least important member of a canal boat crew was the driver and often quite small boys were trained to perform this work. He was required to properly manage team and towline in crossing the towpath bridges and the navigation law relating to the meeting and passing of boats. The teams on the towpath, when two boats met, passed to the right of each other as vehicles do upon the highway, but the two boats passed to the left of each other. The outside team when it met the other team stopped, which allowed the line to which it was attached to drop upon the towpath and sink into the water, and this enabled the other boat and team to pass over it.
At the lower end of all locks and just outside of the gates was a plank extending from jaw to jaw for the accommodation of lock tenders and boatmen, and this made it necessary for the bowman to cast off the tow-line and for the driver to gather it up, pass it under the plank and return the boat end of it to the bowsman.
Boats docked on the towpath side of the canal were always an impediment to navigation, but in this case the crews of the boat so docked carried the line of a passing boat over their own. The bowman, as the name implies, was the deckhand in charge of the boat of the boat; among his several important duties was the are and management of fenders, which were devices used for the purpose of preventing or minimizing damage from collisions with boats, docks, etc., such collisions being of frequent occurrence. He also had charge of the windlass and operated it when it was used to warp boats in turning basins, in and out of locks and elsewhere, but his most important duty was the low line, a large line which, not in use, he kept exactly coiled.
With this line he could bring the boat to a stop by a process called snubbing, in which he threw the line around strong dock and lock posts provided for the purpose, using a half hitch and only allowing the line to be slowly drawn through his hands while the boat was brought to a full stop. The present mode of snubbing a dock, and not a lock, is entirely different. In such cases the bowman now remains upon the deck of the boat and throws a loop made at one end of the line over the post and passing the other end one-half way around a block on the boat, brings the craft to a stop.
The bowsman, when the boat was entering the lock from the lower level, was require to jump with the heavy coil of rope on his arm from the deck of the boat to the jaw of the lock, and there were numerous involuntary baths in the experience of nearly all beginners. the steersman was the principal deckhand of a boat’s crew and would always command from $3 per day upwards. There was no companion boating in those days as now practiced on the Erie canal; that is operating two boats together with only one motive power; each boat was then navigated alone by itself.
The wheel was not then used on canal boats for steering purposes, all being steered by the tiller system. At night a large light with a powerful reflector was placed upon the bow and in the daytime some ornamental device designed to give the steersman the exact center of the bow of the boat.
Boats cleared for the Hudson river left their towing teams at Troy unless they were to enter the Delaware & Hudson canal at Kingston or the Delaware or Raritan canals by way of Newark, in which case the teams were sent ahead on steamboats. The boat’s water casks were filled with sufficient fresh water at Troy to last until the return to that place.
The boats then went out into the river where they were made up into a “tow,” not as now with from three to ten boats attached to a tug by the long hawser system, but with from an anywhere from twenty to forty boats, four to five abreast, lashed closely and securely together, enabling the several crews to step from boat to boat ands travel all over the tow if desired. This system gave ample opportunity for visiting between boat families and crews which was taken great advantage of. Each of these tows were drawn to New York by a single tug boat in two days and one night or two nights and one day as the case might be. On arrival at New York all the boats of the Chenango Lake Boat Line were docked at Peck’s slip near the Battery and all others in the immediate vicinity.
Tows going up the river were usually made up in the evening, and to make up the tow the boats were shoved out from the piers into the harbor and there gathered together by the tug. On such occasions the shouted commands of the many captains seemed like a second Babylon to the uninitiated, but to those of experience in such matters it was all in like with perfect discipline. On Lakes Champlain, Oneida dnd Seneca the long hawser system of towing, as now practiced on the Hudson, was then used.
When going upon Lake Champlain the boat horses were left at Whitehall and at Geneva when going upon Seneca Lake, but when traversing Oneida Lake the horses were carried upon the tugboat.
In our next we shall deal with the economic effects of canal activities long the line of the Chenango and of incidents and adventures of canal life and canal days.
Madison County Leader and Observer
February 24, 1916
Regarding Building of Chenango Canal
Editor of The Leader:-
We have read with much interest the letters written by your Hamilton correspondent in regard to the Chenango Canal. Bouckville being located on the banks of the canal that was, we therefore wish to add a few words:
After the state legislature passed the bill, Feb. 23rd, in the year 1833, for building the Chenango Canal, 1,500 men were engaged and brought here from Ireland to do the work. This was before the days of steam shovels and Italians, so it was pick, shovel and wheelbarrow from sunrise to sunset for nearly three years.
The summit level, commencing a short distance south of Solsville, extended south a distance of three miles, the depth of cutting being twenty feet and the width forty feet at the top. The canal was finished in October, 1836, at a cost of a little more than four million dollars.
The completion of the canal was the beginning of a new day along the summit level district. Pior to that time the valley here was a veritable cedar swamp, but the canal drained it and transformed it into one of the most fertile valleys in the Empire State. It was just following that time that the popular idea of under-drainage reached its maximum. L.W.G.
Bouckville, Feb. 23rd
Madison County Leader and Observer
February 24, 1916
Hamilton - We resume the story of canal days with the statement that the members of the boat crews were rarely even employed in the loading and unloading of boats. Along the line of the Chenango, at least coal and grain boats were unloaded by local gangs of six men each, who by constant practice became experts at the work. The coal heavers or grain handlers would unload a boat in a single day; the coal heavers received eighteen dollars for their job and the grain handlers fifteen dollars for unloading a boat in the daytime and eighteen dollars if the work was done at night.
Merchandise, etc., was handled by the regular employers of the warehouse companies, and lumber by such laborers as the lumber companies could secure. This work of course furnished a goodly amount of employment at all of the principal ports along the canal. Then, too, the boat crews as a matter of course were obliged to live from hand to mouth; food for the entire crew had to be purchased in practically every town they entered or passed through.
“Boat Barn” was a conspicuous sign at all points along the waterway, and signified places for the care and feeding of boat horses, and which in most instances yielded a goodly revenue. Boat horses must be shod, harnesses repaired, and a hundred and one things needed must be obtained, all of which helped trade and added to the general prosperity of every canal town, and what was of fully as much importance, those towns and the adjoining country received the advantage of canal freight rates which were slightly less than one-half of those by railroad, which in the case of coal, for instance, amounted to considerable, as anyone can readily see.
The first boatload of coal that ever came to Hamilton was consigned to Sanford Gardner, father of the late Dr. James Gardner. At the same time Mr. Gardner was made agent for some small heaters for burning the coal, his instructions being to give the coal away to those who would consent to try it and sell or rent the heaters, as he might see fit. Several citizens consented to make the trial, and their homes were the gathering places of all of their neighbors when the trails were made, but at first the verdict was overwhelmingly unfavorable to the new fuel; the principal cause of complaint being it consumed the vitality of the air to such an extent as to cause dizziness and intolerable headaches for all of those who were subjected to its influence.
To obviate this imagined great fault kettles of water were shortly after placed upon the top of the heaters so that the steam arising therefrom might supply the place of the moisture removed from the air by the coal heat. Later still heaters were made with urns on top for holding the water and some of these can still be found in old garrets and other out-of-the-way places. Coal as a fuel had to fight its way into favor, and was a long time in doing it.
Canal life had its humor and its perils as well as the Great Lakes and the sea. Collisions were much more frequent than on the larger bodies of water, and often resulted in the sinking of boats and the destruction of their cargoes. Fire however, was the danger most dreaded by the boatman, for in that case he was practically helpless where water was a-plenty. There were no force pumps on the boats, and there were no chemical grenades in those days.
If a boat fire could not be extinguished in its incipiency by the application of a little water, the boat was pretty sure to burn to the water’s edge. As a matter of record we should here state that the Prudence, the last boat to enter this village, passed on to Pecksport [north of Hamilton] and was there destroyed by fire at her dock.
There were many other dangers also. In 1885 a large tow of boats, including several from the Chenango, were on their way down the Hudson one night when a great storm burst upon the river. Many of the lashings connecting the boats were broken by the strain caused by the force of the waves, thus endangering the entire tow to such an extent that all lines connecting the boats had to be cut, and so each boat was left alont to fight its individul battle with the waves.
Seven of the boats were driven upon the rocks and dashed to pieces, but fortunately no lives were lost. Steamboats, tugs and rowboats, which had hurried to the rescue, had been extremely fortunate in their efforts to save the endangered crews. Steamboats from New York picked up most of the other craft the following day, and towed them to the city. but two canal boats failed to be picked up and floated down the river past New York and bought up at Jersey City.
Madison County Leader and Observer
March 2, 1916
More Incidents on the Canal
Hamilton - In 1856 a break occurred in the Erie Canal at a point a little east of Rochester and where the canal is elevated considerably above the surrounding country. The break came so sudden that three boats in the vicinity, one of which was a Chenango boat, wee caught and swept by the onrushing waters through the break and far out upon the fields beyond. Such were some of the perils of canal life.
There were others where the serious and the ludicrous were combined, as for instance: On one occasion Richard Rodenhurst, one of the best known captains of the Chenango, and who for many years after his retirement therefrom was proprietor and landlord of the hotel at Lowell, Oneida county, was navigating his boat on the Oswego canal one evening ad was at the moment attempting to pass through a portion of the canalized Oswego river and where the current was very rapid and many dangerous rocks peeped up and threatened destruction.
Captain Rodenhurst, who knew every inch of this dangerous stretch of water, took the tiller in his own hands, not being willing to trust it in those of another, but the bowsman on duty at the time became nervous and kept calling back: “Be careful, captain, there’s a rock on the right; now there’s one on the left,” etc. Now such admonition, unless called for by the captain, are a rank violation of navigation laws and discipline, and the captained called out to him: “You take care of your end of the boat and I will take care of mine.”
Instantly he heard the bow anchor let go, the bow of the boat came to a sudden stop and the stern swung around helplessly in dangerous proximity to several rocks. Captain Rodenhurst called out: “What on earth are you doing there?” to which the bowsman replied: “Carrying out your order; I’ve taken care of my end of the boat, now you can take care or yours.”
On one occasion Miss Ann Leonard of this village was visiting her brother and family in New York, and upon expiration of her visit there it was decided that she and her sister-in-law should come to Hamilton together. Desiring to arrange an extra enjoyable trip they secured passage on a Chenango boat bound for this place and were assigned quarters in the stern cabin, where there was a good bed overlooked by four stern windows of one pane of glass each.
The night they were to leave the city was a tempestuous one; the hatches wee sealed down and the boat shoved out into the harbor, preparatory to making up the tow. The rolling and pitching of the craft very soon threw the two ladies into violent fits of sea sickness and both ensconced themselves on the bed, but scarcely had they got there when a big wave knocked out all of the four widows and salt water to the full capacity of the openings made poured in over the two women, the bed and cabin floor, thus making their misery complete, and never to their dying day did either lady forget that delightful trip which they had so carefully arranged.
Madison County Leader and Observer
March 9, 1916
Hamilton - One of the many drownings which have occurred in the old Chenango canal and its tributary waters none, perhaps, ever excited more of the local sympathy than that of a little boat child who was drowned at the lock at the south end of the summit level between forty and fifty years ago.
The boat upon which the child was on was bound southward.
Darkness had set in, but the captain, who was the father of the child, had determined to reach Hamilton before tying up for the night. As the boat was being lowered in the lock and when the deck had reached an exact level with the top of the lock the little one stepped off the boat onto the ground. Nothing was thought of this by the crew as the child, like many others reared upon the boats, knew the exact moment to leave the deck or mount it; could even run the balance beams of the locks without assistance and do a hundred and one things in seeming safety, such as no child except one raised in the same manner could do.
Therefore, no further attention was paid to the child until after the boat was locked through It was then discovered that the little one was missing, and as it did not respond to the calls of the crew and they at once realized that the baby, for it was but little more than a baby, had attempted to cross the lock upon the gate tops and in the darkness had missed its footing and fallen into the lower jaw of the lock, a plunge of twenty feet, where it had been quickly swept to death by the great force of the waters escaping from the lock.
By the aid of pike poles the body was recovered, but too late to permit resuscitation. The parents and crew were overwhelmed with grief, and Mrs. Emma Abbert, now residing on Montgomery street in this village, but who at that time was a young lady living with her parents only a few rods from the scene of the death, took charge of the tiny body and with the assistance of oner of her sisters prepared it for the grave. Upon the arrival of the boat in Hamilton it was visited by a great number of our citizens, who were deeply touched by the sad incident and were desirous of expressing their sympathies to the grief-stricken parents.
From the above incident it will be seen that even the child reared upon the boat was able to perform feats which would be more or less hazardous for full-grown men without such training, and in the case of experienced boatmen it was necessary to keep constant practice in order to perform some of their feats with any degree of accuracy.
Many of the bowsmen upon the boats would close one of the gates at the end of a lock and then run upon the balance beam and lock top leap with their heavy bow-line coiled upon their arm to the other side of the lock, and close the other gate, and some could do even a little better than that. Among such was Dock Hall, brother of our present townsman, Madison Hall. Doc would start the gate and while it was still swinging into place would make the run and leap. Finally he retired from boating and engaged in other pursuits in this village.
After two or three years he decided to show the boys the trick which had brought him fame on the canal. He procured a large coil to represent a bow-line, and accompanied by a party of men and boys, repaired to the second lock near College street. The water was let down in the lock and then Doc came to the conclusion that before trying the big feat it might be better to try once without carrying the line and with one gate firmly closed.
So the gate was shut and Doc mounted the balance beam and ran to the edge of the lock. There he commenced to walk, but slower and slower until he arrived at the end of the gate. Then he looked down, the water being twenty feet below him. He did ot jump across; no, he got down upon his hands and knees and crept backwards to land again, and declared in trembling voice that any man must be a fool to engage in the calling of a boatman.
Norwich Sun
March 22, 1927
Brother of Norwich Man Recalls Days on Abandoned Chenango Canal
____
An interesting account of the old Chenango canal days given by Nuel Stever of Binghamton, who is a brother of John Stever of this city will be read with considerable interest by many Norwich residents, who are familiar with the time when lumber and whiskey were boated to the city.
With long brown hair straggling over his shoulders, gray mustache he looked like a pioneer of the Old West dropped down in the East. But as he talked he peopled the almost legendary old Chenango canal with hosts of canalboat men, fleets of barges again lined its shores; the towpath was alive again, and all along the course of the canal moved the lumbering craft of other days.
“Some thought the old canalboat men gone, but I am here, and very much alive, too,” he laughed. The long-haired man stripped his coat. Without bending his knee he bent over and placed the palms of both hands flat on the floor, then bent still farther and laid the backs of both hands flat on the floor. “I’d like to see any man no matter what his age - do that last one,” he challenged, “And I’ll be 73 in May.”
That’s Nuel Stever, Binghamton man, product of the old canal, and a cigar maker for 56 years except during four years in his twenties when he toured with shows as an acrobat and gymnast.
Stever’s long hair makes him conspicuous. He explained that after many years of headaches he started letting his hair grow eight years ago. Once since then he has been shorn. That was four years ago when his family persuaded him to get a haircut to attend the funeral of his son, a dry agent, shot near Elmira. “But I at once let it grow again,” he chuckled.
“I practically lived on the canal until I was 17 years old,” he went on. “My father was captain of a canalboat. I was born on New street in May, and as soon as the canal opened the next April my mother took me and joined him on the boat. When I was five, I began driving canalboat teams on the towpath pulling the boats. Such work was common to boys of that age. I can remember driving a team hour after hour up the towpath for 20 miles when I was five. When I was tired, I’d rest my weight on the tow-rope; it seemed to rest me.
“My father was at the helm. But when I became 10 I took my term at the helm and a younger brother drove the teams. Whole families lived on the canalboats. I was the oldest of 21 children.
“We canalboatmen - I was rated a man tho’ only 12 when the war ended - boated the Civil War troops to Mill Hill, where they were camped until a detachment was ready for the south.
“In those days we loaded coal over State street near where the railroad crosses the river. Help was scarce after the war, so I wheeled coal into barges for 50 cents a day. As much as 500,000 tons was dumped on the ground from the trestle 30 feet overhead. But then the coal pockets wee built, loading directly into the canal boats.”
The canal veteran fired up his cigar and continued:
“We often made long trips. We’d go to Utica, then Troy by canal and then down the Hudson to New York behind a tug pulling a whole fleet. Then we’d go to Syracuse and then to Oswego, where we’d load lumber for Bartlett’s mill in Binghamton.
“Hamilton was the highest point, and where the canal froze up first in the fall. Often as many as 82 boats loaded with lumber would be tied up. When the freeze was just beginning Bartlett would bring up several teams, hitch them to a bunch of stumps and drag them through the canal to break the ice so boats could get lumber to his mill.
“Canalling was a varied business. for instance, we’d take a lot of firkins and get them filled along the way with butter for the merchants. We’d boat gray up to the big stills at Hamilton, Pecksport, Bouckville and Solsville and bring back loads of whiskey which the merchants sold or shipped away. We only did the boating. Whiskey then sold for 25 cents a gallon. “It was a busy canal in those days. Three years before the canal closed - about 55 years ago - 120 boats carried coal.”
Mr. Stever is a real Binghamtonian. He recollected that about 60 years ago his father’s boat brought down from Brisben, then known as East Greene, the flagstones that lie in front of the store of Hills, McLean & Haskins, Inc., and in front of what is now the Chenango Valley Savings Bank in Binghamton, as well as stones for the walks. About 3,000 to 4,000 tons was transported, he said.
“Tell you another thing,” he remarked. “Father’s boat brought down the first load of lumber for the first wood block paving on Court and Washington streets in Binghamton. And I took a job helping to saw the blocks, because my younger brothers now could help father on the boat.
“When I was 14, my father and his two brothers moved six buildings from Court House Square to what is now Kenwood avenue. Kenwood avenue now is a residential district; then it was awful, all the people poor and 500 to 600 pigs running all about it.”
Stever said he quit the canal at 17 to learn the cigar making trade in Charles Butler’s factory at Washington and Court streets in Binghamton. Butler, twice mayor, was employing 100 cigar makers, he said. Stever said he stuck to his bench until he was 22, then went stage struck.
“From a boy of 6 or 7, I had kept exercising, that’s why I am so limber now, for I keep it up,” he explained. “I was on the opening bill at Stone’s Opera House doing tumbling and horizontal bar work. Bert Toyer, Lou Hennessey and Benny Bush, dancers, were other dancers in the show. I was on the road four yeas. Times got so hard that actors scarcely could get enough to eat. I returned to Binghamton, married, and went back to my bench. It was 56 years ago Thursday that I started to learn the cigar making trade, and I have been an independent maker 44 or 45 years.”
A spry man at 72 is Stever. “I think nothing of walking 20 or 30 miles across country in a day selling my cigars,” he remarked. Mr. Stever lives with is wife at 53 Circuit Drive, Binghamton, and here he has his little cigar factory. His two younger sons, Nuel, Jr., a D.L. & W. freight ouse employee, and Francis, live at home. Another son, Clifford, is in the municipal engineering department and lived on Port Dickinson Road. His one daughter Katherine, is the wife of Phil Richards, an army recruiting office stationed in Buffalo. His fourth son, a dry agent, was killed near Elmira four years ago.
Of his 20 younger brothers and sisters only four live, Arthur Steven of Westover, Norman Steve of Union Center, John Stever of Norwich, and a sister, Miss Mary Steven, a Binghamton cigar maker, living on Vestal avenue.
Binghamton Press
April 23, 1928
(Excerpt from article: “The Roaming Reporter Drops in on Port Crane”)
M.A. Youngs, whose father used to tend the canal lock and a grocery store, remembers the last event in the history of Port Crane as a canal port. He saw the last Chenango Canal barge pass southward over that famed waterway. It was a big, white boat called “Ino,” owned by Dick Shaw.
Mr. Youngs tells us that the Baptist church at Port Crane was built of materials from the first Baptist Church in Binghamton, some 50 years ago, and that Dr. Allerton’s father, Isaac Allerton, built the steeple. According to Mr. Youngs, the present post office was a dance hall when he was a youngster, and the canal men used to have many knockdown and dragon fights in and about that building.
Those Chenango canal mule drivers were all Jack Dempseys’ Binghamtonians used to attend the dances and a good many spirited clashes occurred between the canal hands and the visitors. One canaler could lick a half dozen city fellers, no holds barred, and mayhem allowed.
Binghamton Press
April 10, 1929
Long Sought as Great Aid to Progress,
Soon Gave Way to Rails
_____
Bells of Village Tolled Glad News When Legislation
to Build Canal to Utica Was Adopted - First
Boat Reached Here in 1837
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Arteries of travel have always been recognized as threads running through the history of progress. They denote man’s constantly changing mode of travel and his means of transporting products from field and factory to the market.
Canals have played an important part in the story of transportation. Perhaps they still have a role to fill. For the most part, however, they seem to belong to an age already long past. They are threads broken and replaced by newer and stronger threads.
Among the broken threads is the old Chenango canal. The scenes and activities that characterized the canal when it was regarded as a valuable asset to this part of the state have little in common with the age which stresses above all large-scale business and rapid transportation. Powerful locomotives and massive trucks, not to mention airplanes, have forced into discard the picturesque canal boats that once were drawn by mules back and forth between Binghamton and Utica.
Canal boat days saw farmers driving hogs and turkeys along dirt roads to the wharves where they were loaded. The modern age sees state highways, busy freight yards. The two scenes have little in common; they belong to different centuries.
Few Binghamtonians of today as they walk along State street ever pause to think that below them is the bed of the old canal - a flourishing water highway 92 years ago. And still a highway, but showing the progress of time, asphalt has replaced water.
With the completion of the Erie Canal - “Clinton’s Ditch” - connecting the Hudson River with Buffalo, in 1825, the feasibility of linking Binghamton and Utica began to be considered. Possibility of forming such a link had been discussed in the Legislature as far back as 1814.
After years of discussion and investigation the Legislature passed a bill authorizing the building of the Chenango Canal on Feb. 22, 1833.
The “Northern Stage” brought the news to Binghamton. Crowds had gathered at the post office to learn the fate of the bill which was known to have been before the Legislature.
“The news,” according to an editorial in the Broome County Courier, “was electric.” Passage of the bill was the subject of the issue.
“The four principal bells of the village,” the editor of the Courier relates, “commenced a simultaneous peal and in a short time, a thousand persons, as was judged, were assembles in the streets, full of that joyous excitement which the intelligence was calculated to inspire. But a few moments more elapsed before a pice of ordnance, a nine-pounder, was brought up from the gun-house and stationed in Court street, at the crossing of Second street, the very center of the village; and while it was clearing itself to speak, the fire engine, Company 1, Captain Weed, made its appearance and commenced “a merry play of water, which was dealt out in no sparing quantities, in all directions, and without any very extraordinary consideration as to the ultimate destination of the fluid.
“Meanwhile the band of music had organized, and amidst flourishes of National and patriotic airs, the waving of flags, and immense shouts and cheering, the firing commenced. The first guns named aloud, ‘Governor Marcy’s Gun,’ and was a rouser as all sorts of glass , from the English Crown to the green 7x9 can testify, if there be now enough panes left unsheltered in the place to serve as legal witnesses.”
Parades formed immediately. Speeches wee made by Daniel S. Dickinson and other town notables, culminating in a great celebration at night.
Among the last acts we noticed,” a Courier report writes, “were long ladder, borne on shoulders through the streets, each of which sustained on its center a barrel of flaming pitch. Sunday was a quiet time until the arrival of the Northern State, the Mail Coach. It came down the valley, horns blowing and an ensign flying at its bow, ran the Chenango Bridge, and brought up at the post-office in fine style. The flag proved to be one forwarded by our good friends, and future co-workers, at Hamilton. It was elegantly wrought, with the Eagle, the Stripes and the Stars, with the words ‘CHENANGO CANAL,’ on its center, in capitals.”
It was a real old-time celebration. Another story says: :Owing to the business of Town Meeting, we had almost forgotten to notice the fine boat rides enjoyed by our citizens on Thursday last. These boats were built expressly for the occasion - the Governor Marcy of Conklin; the General Jackson built by our townsmen at Williams, four miles up the Chenango; and the Farmers’ Enterprise from Hasbroucks’ Mills, in the same vicinity. There were all fine boas, well-painted, and lettered, with cabins carpeted and curtained; and mounted on runners, with from four to six good hoses attached to each.
“The Marcy ahead, flags flying, and music cheering, quite a proportion of the day was passed, sleigh riding in Packet Boats, to the evident enjoyment of the hundreds who took part in the amusement. We should perhaps do injustice to the ingenious architect, if we neglect to make mention of a miniature Ship of War, finely executed,, that every now and then saluted the spectators with a minute broadside of cannon.”
Three years later - 1836 - the canal 97 miles long was completed at a cost of $4,737,743. Seventy-six locks were necessary to lift canal boas from Utica to the highest point above tidewater, reached at Bouckville, an altitude of 1,128 feet. On the Binghamton side, 38 locks were needed to lower boats to the junction of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers.
From the Susquehanna northward the canal followed the course now traversed by State street. The bed of the canal may be rightly called the cradle in which the present State street was born.
The first boat reached Binghamton over the canal, May 6, 1837, after a roundabout voyage, which began at Crooked, now Keuka Lake, by way of the Crooked Lake canal and followed through Seneca Lake and the Seneca, Erie and Chenango canals.
This event was the occasion for several days of celebration rivaling the merry-making at the time the canal bill was passed in the Legislature. Speechmaking was plentiful and red fire in large quantities provided the illumination.
Deacon Wattles of Chenango township had the distinction of making the first trip over the canal. he chose the new waterway as a means of moving his family west. It soon became the chief avenue of communication between Binghamton and points east and west.
Boats 60 feet long and 12 feet wide pulled along the canal by mules, usually two or three hitched tandem. The crew in some cases consisted of a captain, two steersmen, a cook, often husband and wife, whose versatility enabled them to take over most of the duties on the small craft. Cabins, dining saloons and state rooms could not be luxurious - they were often one and the same. Baggage was stored under the bunks. The galley - a boat’s kitchen - was in a small corner in the stern underneath the stairs which led to the deck.
Berths, accommodating one person, were placed in tiers of three, and in six sections on each side of the boat. Garish calico curtains were stretched across the middle of the cabin to separate the men from the women, curtains were stretched across the middle of the cabin to separate the men from the women, curtains were hung before the berths.
The space through the middle has to hold the chairs, tables and other furniture of the room. But even then there was more room than provided by modern Pullman cars. Berths were wider and the large separating curtain in the middle allowed for more freedom. The table d’hote did not include very many delicacies. It was accepted because it was substantial.
The canal was at its height before Binghamton became an incorporated city. In 1860 the village of Binghamton had a population of only 13,124, according to a legislative manual of that year. The total population of the 12 towns then in the county was only 36,650. Colesville was second largest with 3,135. Windsor with 2,637 was their while Conklin had a population numbering 2,539.
Traffic over the Chenango canal between Binghamton and Utica was heavy for the day. Boats made 23 stops between the two cities. Between Binghamton and Norwich stops were made at Crocker’s Mills, Port Crane, Pond Brook, Chenango Forks, Greene, Hayne’s Mills and Oxford. Collections of tolls, penalties and clearances during the year 1859 were $18,273.48, of which Binghamton collected $8,512.36. Utica collections were $4,566.15.
The fare for passengers was four cents a mile. Schedules were elastic. “You started when you started,” as one old-timer put it, “and you got there when you got there.” The speed boat on the canal was “Buckshot” Adams’ steam packet. It cost more to ride on it or ship goods, bit but it made up for the extra expense in what was then considered real speedy transportation.
Times on the Chenango canal were never quiet. There was rivalry between boats, and whenever one tried to pass another a race, if not a fight in which the entire crew participated, resulted. “Buckshot” was a canal character. In a;; fights he could be found in the middle of the pile.
“Right of way” problems did not come with the automobile. They were here with the canal. It was part of the canal traffic law that the loaded boat had the right of way, often translated “fight of way” - over an unloaded boat. In such a case the unloaded boat often had to “sink its line” so that the loaded craft could be pulled over it. If, in the process, the line of either boat were broken, fists flew.
Halfway between the present Curt and Henry streets was the famous Mathews Lock. On the present site of the Western Union Building was Whitney’s Pork Packing House where hogs were unloaded from the boats. There were draw-bridges at Hawley, Henry and Chenango streets, a graded bridge at Court street and a flat bridge at Lewis street.
“Saloons,” reads a commentary of the period, “had followed grade Chenango canal into the village of Binghamton; and for a beverage the canallers favored whiskey rather than water. “
A decade after the canal was opened boat captains and crews were discussing railroads. The New York Central was now running almost parallel with the Erie Canal. The handwriting on the wall was becoming visible. By midnight, Dec. 26, 1848, narrow rails of steel had entered Binghamton. The Erie railroad had arrived and the Chenango canal was on its way to extinction.
Buy an act of the Legislature, May 20, 1872, Binghamton was authorized to use that part of the canal between the Susquehanna river and the north line of Prospect avenue for a public street. Six years later a commission appointed to study canal conditions, favored its abandonment in a report and the city was authorized to take over the entire canal beds within the city limits for street purposes.
The Chenango canal was now becoming a memory. Since 1876 no boats had run through. No one was at the locks. Huge gaps began to appear in the canal walls.
Definite abandonment came by an act of the Legislature. Narrow rails of steel had taken precedence over a stream of water. A new era of transportation was under way.
Clinton (N.Y.) Courier
May 27, 1937
The Old Chenango Canal
The following brief sketch of the Chenango canal, showing its origin, object and other facts concerning it, will be read with interest at this time, as questions are constantly arising regarding it:
The work of constructing the Chenango canal, connecting the Erie Canal at Utica with the Susquehanna River at Binghamton, was authorized February 23, 1833, commenced in July, 1834, and finished in October, 1836, at a cost of $2,782,134. The canal is 97 miles long exclusive of 13 3/4 miles of feeders, none of which are navigable.
It was carried over a high divide between the waters of the Mohawk and Susquehanna, having 1,015.3 feet of lockage up and down. The locks were built of rubble stone and cost on the average $8,000 each. The canal was calculated for boas from 50 to 70 tons. The ditch was made 40 get wide at the surface and 124 at the bottom.
It was provided with 116 locks with dimensions 15x90 feet. There are about 20 miles of then canal ditch in Oneida county, and it passes through the city of Utica and towns of New Hartford, Kirkland and Marshall, and across the southeast corner of Augusta. It crosses the Sauquoit Creek near the village of New Hartford, and from Clinton follows the valley of Oriskany Creek to the county line.
Reminiscences
In 1832 or ’33. the writer, whose home was about a mile from the village of Clinton on the Utica road, saw surveyors at work staking out the line for the Chenango Call, which was completed in 1836 or ’37. It was built chiefly as an outlet for the conveyance of lumber from southern counties of the state, and central Pennsylvania; and later furnished the coal supply for Central New York and for towns along its line from the mines.
As the depth of water in the canal was only four feet, and the locks almost within speaking distance of each other, the boats were of moderate size, and their speed scarcely averaged four miles an hour.
The first lock-tender appointed for the several locks in the village was Samuel Foot, familiarly known as “Uncle Sam.” The first boat expected on the new canal was looked for with great interest for several days before making its appearance. “Uncle Sam” was not a little vain of his office as lock-tender, and was noted for his excitable temperament, which the “boys: about the village were fond of stirring up.
Late one Saturday evening several of the said boys arranged to meet at the lock below the village and blow a horn to call “Uncle Sam” to is official duty. He, supposing the first boat had arrived, responded in great haste, puffing and wheezing to “get there” in time to lock the boat through. But alas! there as no boat in sight. The boys had secreted themselves behind the bank and were fully repaid for their pains by listening to “Uncle Sam’s” stentorian anathemas, five giving him such a tiresome chase for naught.
While the building of the canal was in progress the laborers in town, who were mostly Irishmen, for some cause, “struck,” and because they demands were not granted, threatened to thrash the who town, inasmuch that Mayor General Samuel Comstock ordered out the “militia” to appear strife sad equipped as the law directs,” to quell the rebellion, where the rural population became greatly excited over the prospect of a bloody contest. The trouble, however, soon subsided without the use of a flintlock or shillalah.
The prospective business which the canal would create, encouraged the building of two storehouses in Clinton, one on Water street, the other on College street, each getting its share of patronage. At the storehouse on College street a basin was constructed to allow the boats to turn around. “Uncle Sam” magnified his office, and imagined himself the sole proprietor of the state waterway. At one time the writer, (a small boy), passing said basin, threw into it a few small pebbles.
“Uncle Sam” seeing this shouted in one of his characteristic “whispers,” “if you throw another stone into that basin, I’ll throw you in!” The building opposite the storehouse, at this point, was for several years occupied buy J. L. Cook and later by Cook and Thompson, who, as commission merchants, bought of the farmers of this and adjoining towns, all kinds of farm produce, paying cash for the same at satisfactory prices. Canal freights being low, coal was also furnished by this firm. It was therefore a blue day for the farmers when the old canal was abandoned and the profitable and extensive home market ceased to exist.
After having served the state about forty years as a lateral branch of the Erie canal, by an act of the Legislature the Chenango canal was abandoned, May 1, 1878. J.B.S.
Binghamton Press
Thursday, August 31, 1938
Old Binghamtonian Recalls Days of Travel
Between This City and Utica by Water Route
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George W. Carman Reminisces on Time When
Coal was Transported via the Chenango
and Erie Canal
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Whinnying horses and he-hawing mules drowned out the pound of hammers and rasp of saws in the bustling boat-building shop of S.J. Carman on the bank of the Chenango canal.
A gruff “giddap,” the swirl of motionless waters parted by the slow-moving prow of a bulky barge and the farewells of husky, duet-covered barge workers signaled the start of another barge-load of coal up the canal from Binghamton to Utica.
Such is the 75-year-old scene so vividly recalled today by sedate, mustached George W. Carman who, when eight years old in 1864, stepped onto the broad platform of a canal boat to begin a 48-year career of service the Chenango and Erie canals.
The 83-year-old resident of 4 Bevier street, whose father built canal boats for years in a shop located at what is now the corner of State and Chenango streets, resigned from a business which, via the Erie canal and Hudson river, supplied ice to New York City residents 35 years ago and moved to his birthplace, Binghamton, with his wife.
When 12 years old he began work on the Chenango canal as a steersman on coal barges running between Port Dickinson and Utica, later working into the ice business and obtaining two tug-pulled canal boats of his own - the Silver Key and the George W. Carman, named after his oldest son.
Reminiscing of the years of travel beehive pokey mules, sweating horses and chugging tugs along the New York State waterways, the aged Binghamtonian fingered his wing collar and neatly-knotted tie as he admitted that his only hobby is “helping Mrs. Carman around the house.”
There was a certain romance to the old canal days that most of today’s Binghamtonians will never know, remarked Mr. Carman. Seven former large operators on the Chenango canal, which was thrown out of use in 1876 with development of the railroads, have died since Mr. Carman returned to live here.
In 1904 the veteran sold his remaining boat, the Silver Key - the other was smashed up in s “tow” on the Hudson - and moved to Binghamton where he and Mfrs. Carman opened a grocery business at the corner of Oak and Dickinson streets. Twenty-three years ago they closed the business to retire at their present home.
Mr. Carman said he never had been involved in any serious accident during his years of work on the canals, but many times had experienced in handling the horse and mule teams under to propel the bulky vessels in the early days. On the Erie canal boats, two teams were carried, he explained. One team rested in stables aboard the boat while the other worked. When the time came to change the teams, the hatch was lined and the horses run off the boat on a narrow wooden gang-way.
“If you pulled the hatch open too quickly, the darned critters would jump right into the canal without even waiting for the gangway,” he chuckled. “No, my horses never did that, but I’ve seen it happen.”
Most of the time spent on the canals, he said, was during the period when tugboats had replaced horses as the motive power.
The trip to Utica used to take three or four days, he recalled. “It’s nice to be able to dash up there in a few hours sign an automobile - but not half so pretty,” he signed.
Binghamton Press
July 19, 1937
Steamboat on Susquehanna!
Those Were Good Old Days
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John Rider Recalls the ‘Lyman Trueman’ ‘Coming
Around the Bend’ in Seventies to Dock at Court
Street; 11 hours to Norwich by Canal
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“We left Bingamton at 7:30 in the morning and at 6 o’clock that night the captain blew a mighty blast on his bugle. We had reached Norwich!”
That was whirlwind traveling on the Chenango canal as recalled by John A. Rider of 15 Arthur street, 86-year-old Binghamtonian who grew up with the city.
Former Broome county treasurer from 1834 in 1903. Mr. Rider is a walking volume of fact and fable concerning this region’s history. He can quote dates, places, names and events by the hundred as he tells of changes hereabouts during the last three-quarters of a century.
His eyes lighted up and he smile delightedly when show an old photograph of the “Lyman Trueman,” a steamboat that once plied the Susquehanna between Binghamton and Owego.
“Yes, I remember where she used to dock at Court street,” he chuckled. “We boys would watch for her and sing out: ‘There she comes around the bend!’when we saw her smokestack puffing. Once in 1878 we paid passage and rode to Owego. And I want you to understand, that was a pretty trip!”
The “Lyman Trueman,” named for its owner who was a wealthy Owego resident, was a pleasure craft that made the voyage, Mr. Rider said, only a few days or weeks during high water in the spring.
He laughed uproariously at thoughts of riding on the horse-drawn Chenango canal packet when it took nearly 11 hours to make the 40 miles to Norwich. The horses plodded quietly along the towpath and “you could get there faster by walking.” During the canal day from 1837 to 1872 the artery ran through what is now State street and a bridge over it at Court street was so narrow and high that “you had to walk up and down steps at either end to get across on foot.”
He recalled, incidentally, that merchants in those days used to go by four-horse stage to New York by way of Delhi and Newburgh, buy their merchandise and ship it back by way of Albany, Utica and the Chenango canal. The goods got here two months after the buyer left Binghamton.
Mr. Rider dates himself with the Erie Railroad. Its Susquehanna division from Susquehanna to Hornellsville, now Hornell, was completed shortly before his birth in 1851. “My father and other farmers around here,” Mr. Rider said, “used to drive their teams to Deposit and haul back rails a few at a time when they were laying the track.”
Too young to fight in the Civil War, Mr. Rider has vivid memories of it. His brother, George, was a chum of Marvin Watrous, one of the first to enlist in the 89th New York Volunteers from Binghamton and for whom the local G.A.R. post is named. “Marvin persuaded my brother to join with him and I remember the day that George came in the house and went upstairs to get his clothes,” said Mr. Rider.
Then he nodded as a far away look came in his eyes and he went on: “Yes, I can see him now as he came downstairs and stood at the kitchen window drumming his fingers on the table. I can see my mother, too. She sat in the rocker crying because George was going to war.
“Then father spoke up and promised George that if he would stay, he’d let him go to Carter’s school that was open in Cortland that fall. George always wanted to be a teacher. He was 17 years old then. So he stayed behind and Watrous went away to war without him.
“George went to school and taught school, too. But he died of typhoid fever the next March and Marvin Watrous was killed at Suffolk, Va., two months later.”
Active in politics and a staunch Republican, Mr. Rider said he chose his party affiliation the day the word came North that Abraham Lincoln had been shot. “I heard some man growl: ‘I’m glad they killed him’ - and I decided then and there to be a Republican.”
Binghamton Press
February 14, 1944
Bromley’s Railroad Book Stimulates Memories
To the Editor of the Binghamton Press:
The book written by our fellow townsman, Joe Bromley, proved to be not only very interesting, but also quite a stimulus to memory - as regards to some of us.
Joe commenced his railroad experience on a wood-burning locomotive. Most people will identify this type of railroad equipment only by pictures in the Currier and Ives prints, showing the “engine” with its funnel-shaped smokestack. This type had passed away around here before Joe made his first trip to our city, inasmuch as the railroads here had access to coal supplies. Nevertheless, some of us remember the old woodburners.
The last one I saw was at Watertown. Whether it was on the R.W. & O. or the U. & B.R., I do not know. It might have been the one on which Joe had “fired.”
Joe was evidently impressed on his first trip to Binghamton by what remained of the old Chenango Canal, inasmuch as he noticed what was left of the ditch and the embankment at various places. The canal was a highway of commerce up until the time that the Utica and Chenango Valley Railroad was opened from Utica to this city. Previous to that, the canal had transported vast quantities of coal to Utica and intermediate towns, and to points on the Erie Canal, and had also brought large quantities of merchandise from up-state to this city. The building of the railroad was the death knell to the canal.
I remember that prior to 1872, my mother at times got “us kids: together, and hustled up town to the canal landing just above the “lock,” at about the point where the Westcott block now stands in State Street. From there at 6 a.m. we took the “packet” boat which made a trip to Norwich every day, and disembarked us at Port Dickinson, where mother’s sister lived. In the late afternoon we took the boat which made the south-bound trip back to Binghamton. Each trip took a full hour.
Besides the lock mentioned, there was another about half way between Court Street and Hawley Street. On the south side of Hawley Street there was a “basin” where boats could turn around, since the canal was not wide enough for that operation. This basin adjoined Bartlett’s Mill, and quite an amount of lumber was unloaded there. There was another basin about where the Armory Hotel now stands, and adjoining it was a “lime kiln.”
The canal boats brought stone from Madison County which was converted into lime at the kiln, and all the limestone for the substantial Phelps Block - present site of the First National Bank - came in the same manner.
The canal not only afforded safe boating for boys in those days, but in winter, made a good place to skate, providing enough water had been left in the ditch at the close of “navigation.”
EDWARD H. TITCHENER
Closing of the Canal
Binghamton Press, Aug. 20, 1934
W. E. Ganoung of Port Crane recalled: “Back in 1876, just before Thanksgiving I took the last boat to Utica along the Chenango Canal with a cargo of 87 tons of coal. The canal already had been ordered abandoned and as my team of horses tugged the boat along, the old swinging bridges were ‘spiked’ as fast as we passed them. The railroad era had arrived and the canal was no longer to be used - hence the ‘spiking' or closing of the swinging bridges along the route. We arrived in Utica on Thanksgiving Day and it was a cold day. The canal was freezing up and we had to break ice all the way from Oriskany Falls to Utica. The lock tenders had quit. I had worked on the canal for two years, repairing locks and working on the swinging bridges.”
Note: He was born in Trumansburg March 18, 1840. When he was four years old his parents, Mr. and Mrs. David K. Ganoung, moved to Binghamton, remaining there five years.
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