Chenango Canal

[From: Next Stop, Galena - A Historical Perspective of North Norwich, New York 1849-1999 ] Carpenter Hotel in  North Norwich. Notice Post Office sign at far left side of building. Mr. and Mrs. Sam Hayes are among those on the porch balcony. Chenango County Historian's office                                                                               By Mildred Hazard     Stephen Merritt built a two-story hotel in 1816 on the southeast corner of Main and Cayuga Streets. In its early history it was called Tavern Stand. Merritt kept it until about 1840, and then sold it to John Wight. (1)     In 1865, a North Norwich native, Lewis E. Carpenter, became the proprietor for 12 years. He was a popular and entertaining landlord of what became known as the ...

Binghamton Press November 24, 2015                                                 By Gerald Smith, Broome County Historian     When you try to describe where things are in a particular area, you begin to fall into the common habit of speaking in the vernacular — using the local lingo to tell that person how to get somewhere. Of course, those of us who have grown up here have no problem with that, but consider the stranger and the often-confused looks we see after using that local description.     In two instances, we might get those strange looks. It has happened to me when I tell them about taking the Brandywine Highway up past Port Dickinson and then Port Crane. In the first instance, some people are aware that the village of Port Dickinson was named in honor of Daniel Dickinson, our leading political figure for muc...

  Philip Danforth Armour Sr., the famous meat packing magnate,  was born in Stockbridge, Madison County, on May 16, 1832. He was the son of  Danforth Armour and Juliana Ann Brooks and one of eight children who grew up on his family's farm.  Armour was descended from colonial settlers of Scottish and English origin, with his surname originating in Scotland. He was educated at Cazenovia Academy until the school expelled him for taking a ride in a buggy with a girl. Among his first jobs was that of driver on the Chenango Canal.       Mrs. Fannie J. Bailey who celebrated her 103rd birthday January 27, 1935, was a student at Cazenovia Seminary in 1847-48. Wholesome good times were enjoyed by male and female students, despite the seminary’s strict rules. Buggy rides and walks were popular. Her first boyfriend was Armour. But she gave up her friendship with him because “I couldn’t stand the grease he used on his hair.”    When Armour...

                      Landmark Tavern Dates to Canal Days                                        The history of the beautiful and historic Landmark Tavern building begins with the efforts to procure a canal route from Binghamton to Utica. This route would join the coal fields of Northern Pennsylvania with the recently-opened Erie Canal.    The farms, hamlets and villages of the Chenango and Oriskany river valleys, through which the proposed canal was to be constructed, had the potential for great prosperity if this new transportation route were built.   The canal would also bisect the Third Great Western Turnpike (today’s Rt. 20), which ran through the hamlet of Johnsville.  Johnsville was later renamed Bouckville.  Johnsville in the 1820’s and 1830’s was a small cluster...

     Model of a Chenango canal boat displayed at Hamilton Public Library made by Lee Brown Coye. Note the sweeps on the sides to enhance navigation.                               It is so easy to whisk up the Oriskany Valley these days in a motor car that you probably don’t think of the place as ever having been isolated. But back in the 1820s, when the main stream of Erie Canal commerce was passing it by, the hinterland folks began to get a persecution complex.     Obviously what was needed was a canal for everybody. And particularly a North-South canal connecting the Erie with Binghamton, the Susquehanna, and the Pennsylvania coal country.    So up and down the Oriskany and the Chenango, folks organized themselves into a mass “pressure group.” They hired their own engineers to make surveys. They sent out promotion “literature” to everyone of any importance. ...