The Delaware Canal Page 4

  According to The Death of a Great Company by W. Julian Parton, the accident and death rate at the LC&N was consistently below the industry as a whole. “Management carried out excellent safety programs and did everything possible to train miners to work safely.” Yet mining was extremely dangerous, even under the best of conditions, and miners who were not injured or killed on the job often developed black lung disease.

  It is not unfair to say that the Pennsylvania miners of the eighteenth century are among the true heroes of the Industrial Revolution.

  The Molly Maguires

  Working conditions in the early years of the anthracite mines were indisputably hard and often brutal. Whenever men work under cruel conditions for long enough, rebellion follows. Sometimes revolt comes in the form of union activities, sometimes in criminal activity—oftentimes, both, and from both sides of the argument.

  In the 1700s and early 1800s, the miners were primarily Irish immigrants. Back in Ireland, in response to what the Irish farmers believed were unfair practices by landlords, a clandestine organization called the Molly Maguires was formed to correct transgressions. How the organization got its name has always been more folk tale than factual. One story is that “Molly” was a widow who had been evicted from her house and inspired defenders; another is that Molly was a young woman who led men on nighttime raids; and still another was that Molly owned a tavern where the secret society met. Some say that the name came about because the men in the secret society disguised themselves as women when on their raids.

  Philadelphians will find it interesting that in this last assumption, the Molly Maguires took on a form of the Irish practice of “mummery.” (During festivals, men would blacken their faces, wear women’s clothing and walk door-to-door demanding food, money or drink as payment for a performance.)28

  In the coal region of Pennsylvania, a society of miners organized themselves in the same manner to intimidate the coal mine owners and bosses who they believed were abusing them and their sons in the mines. They tried to unionize legally and called strikes, but failed. They believed that seeking to present their grievances through the courts was a waste of time since judges, lawyers and policemen—who were mostly Welsh, German and English—deliberately caused delays and injustices because of their strong anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiments. As the miners became more frustrated, the Mollys’ activities became more violent, and the coal mine owners answered the violence in like manner.

  One Pinkerton agent, an Irish immigrant named James McParlan, went undercover in the Molly Maguires to spy on them. Based on his reports, and for the most part solely on his hearsay and testimony, twenty men were arrested and ten sent to the gallows.

  There isn’t much written about the Molly Maguires’ activities in Mauch Chunk, except that four men were convicted and hanged there in June 1877. They were convicted of killing two mine bosses. A Carbon County judge, Judge John P. Lavelle, later described the trial in this way:

  The Molly Maguire trials were a surrender of state sovereignty. A private corporation initiated the investigation through a private detective agency. A private police force arrested the alleged defenders, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state provided only the courtroom and the gallows.29

  On the day of the hangings, miners and their families gathered at the scaffold and stood in complete silence to show their support of the convicted men. Security was very high for these executions. The wife of one of the men who was to be hanged arrived just after the gates had closed, and despite the fact that she collapsed in sobs, begging to be allowed in, the guards would not allow it.

  No one knows for certain which of these men were truly guilty and which were “guilty by association.” Chances are good that both are true.

  One of the men hanged in Mauch Chunk that day was Alexander Campbell, a hotel owner and liquor distributor. He avowed his innocence throughout his trial. Campbell left his handprint on the wall of cell number seventeen in Mauch Chunk jail as he was being led to the gallows. He said that the handprint would remain forever as “proof of his words. That mark of mine will never be wiped out. It will remain forever to shame the county for hanging an innocent man.” After 130 years, the handprint still remains on the wall of the cell. According to several accounts, the wall has been painted over numerous times, yet the handprint reappears. To dispel the myth once and for all, the wall was torn down and rebuilt in 1920. When the sheriff went in to look at the new wall the next day, he was shocked to find the handprint had reappeared.

  The Slow Burn

  With other mines being opened and operated in the mountains of Pennsylvania and privately owned waterways being built to transport that coal, the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company needed to be competitive. After making the transportation of coal more practical on the Lehigh River, they had to convince the general public—especially Philadelphia society—to purchase it. They knew that once the prominent families of Philadelphia started using anthracite coal regularly, the rest of the region would follow.

  Anthracite coal was difficult to ignite and was inefficient as fuel in conventional fireplaces and stoves that had been designed to burn wood. Josiah White and Erskine Hazard began a public relations campaign to convince consumers that anthracite would save them money in the long run. It burned longer, hotter and without smoke. But people needed to have the correct stoves to use the anthracite effectively or the marketing campaign would not be successful.

  In 1800, Oliver Evans received a patent for an anthracite stove, but it didn’t take off as expected. Before White, Hazard and Hauto took over the Lehigh mining concern, Jacob Cist, facing the same predicament, had designed an anthracite stove simply by converting a Franklin stove. Cist had provided the stove and coal to several prominent families to gain testimonials. It was moderately successful; still, it was difficult to market to the average consumer.

  Josiah White sent anthracite to Eliphalet Nott in Schenectady, New York, one of the country’s leading combustion experts and stove manufacturers at that time. Nott worked for several years to design an anthracite stove, but didn’t file the patent until 1826, which was followed by eleven patents with various improvements.30

  In the end, the Lehigh stove was the first anthracite stove on the market, and it was cast at the Mary Ann Furnace in Bucks County by Reuben Texler.

  In 1825, Walter R. Johnson, a professor who worked at the Franklin Institute, developed an air furnace for the stone coal and essentially initiated central heating for homes. Not long after heating stoves were invented, coal stoves for cooking were introduced to Americans.

  With an abundance of coal being mined from the mountains and anthracite stoves in many of the homes in Philadelphia, New York and other major cities and surrounding towns, the LC&N had only one more obstacle to overcome—the Delaware River.

  Chapter 3

  Josiah White’s Waterways

  The LC&N used the Delaware River from Easton to Philadelphia, and in fact, the company’s arks spent more time on the Delaware, which they didn’t control, than on the Lehigh, which they did. The Delaware was more navigable than the Lehigh, yet the company was still susceptible to loss because of flooding and drought.

  Josiah White decided to petition the Pennsylvania legislature to improve the Delaware and turn it into a huge canal with extensively large locks that could accommodate steam-powered ships. He brought in two men, Canvass White (no relation to Josiah) and Benjamin Wright, canal engineers who worked on the Erie Canal, to look over his plans and to inspect the work that had been done on the Lehigh. They read his proposal and were very impressed with his plans, but they admitted that they lacked the experience to help produce a canal of this grand a scheme.

  Josiah’s extravagant proposal met with many objections—one of which was that the Pennsylvania Assembly was already planning a transportation network across the state. Pennsylvania citizens were calling for a system of public transportation to provide access to Philadelphia, not just
for the mining industry, but for timber, pig iron and other manufactured goods throughout the commonwealth. In 1825, the legislature established the first official Board of Canal Commissioners, and a second act was passed in 1826 to formally initiate the construction of public canals and railroads. The act gave the commissioners power to begin construction at three points: along the Susquehanna River to the Juniata River; along the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh to the Kiskimineta River; and down the French Creek to connect with Conneaut Lake. These were called the Main Line canals and encompassed 726 miles of waterways, associated railways and inclined plains.

  Not ready to give up, Josiah and Erskine offered to construct the Delaware Division Canal at the expense of their company and not charge tolls, but again they were rejected.

  Courtesy of Pennsylvania Canal Society Collection, National Canal Museum, Easton, PA.

  In April 1827, the state decided to build a small canal along the Delaware that would be part of the Main Line canal system. It would be built in the Erie Canal style and would measure 11 feet wide. The canal would link Easton with Bristol at a length of sixty miles and have twenty-four lift locks to correct the 180-foot elevation differential.

  As a result, Josiah and Erskine began construction on a less imposing canal along the Lehigh than they had originally wanted to build, although it was still larger than the plans drawn up for the Delaware Division Canal. The Lehigh Canal would be wide enough to accommodate two boats passing each other. It was to be sixty feet wide and five feet deep, and because it was more conventional, Canvass White agreed to oversee the building of the Lehigh Canal. It utilized a series of slack water pools (meaning that boats would leave the canal to go into the river), with a total of forty-four lift locks, five guard locks, three guard lifts, nine dams and several aqueducts over the forty-six miles of navigation.

  The Delaware Division Canal, which would run from Bristol to Easton, where it would connect with the Lehigh Navigation Canal, was started a few months after the Lehigh Navigation construction began, and although it was launched with great excitement in Bristol, the preliminary construction of the Delaware Division was essentially a disaster from the beginning.

  First, there were confrontations about where the terminus should be located. Bucks County was a rural and agricultural region just north of Philadelphia. Bucks Countians knew that wherever the terminus of the canal would be located, prosperity would follow. The residents who lived in Tullytown believed that Scott’s Creek would be the best spot for the canal’s connection with the river and appealed to the commissioners. Bristol residents argued that, as it had been a major port since the seventeenth century and the depth of the water in Bristol was sufficient to float vessels carrying five hundred tons (as opposed to two hundred in Scott’s Creek), locating the terminus in Bristol made more sense. The commissioners agreed.

  Contractors needed to be hired. In their contract, the Board of Canal Commissioners required that the contractor furnish all the tools as well as the men, and a portion of his payment would be withheld until the work was approved. Contracts went to the lowest bidders, not always the best and most reliable.

  On October 27, 1827, Bristol was ready to celebrate the turning of the first blade of earth in construction of the canal with great pomp and circumstance. William T. Swift, who had been appointed the grand marshal, marched five hundred men to the spot that would become Lock Number 3 for a prayer by the local Episcopal priest, followed by an address by Peter A. Brown, a prominent member of the Philadelphia bar.

  Two men, George Harrison and Peter Ihire, appeared with a pick and shovel and a wheelbarrow. In a symbolic ceremony, Ihire began to dig a trench and throw the dirt in the wheelbarrow, while Harrison wheeled it a short distance away and dumped the dirt in a heap. Swift congratulated the citizens of Bucks County in yet another speech, and the band played “Hail Columbia,” followed by a deafening three cheers by the attendees.31 The crowd then went to the Delaware House, which was owned by Charles Bessonett, to continue the celebration—an appropriate venue considering that it was and still is the oldest continuously operated establishment in Bucks County, although it is now called the King George II.

  Thomas G. Kennedy was the superintendent of construction and awarded contracts to dig the canal to David Dorrance and Richard Morris of Bristol for the first eighteen miles, from Bristol to Yardleyville (now Yardley). The canal was built primarily by Irish immigrants, who were for the most part unskilled. Local farmers also hired out to dig sections of the canal. The work was very difficult. Their tools were pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows, and the laborers were paid between forty to seventy-five cents a day, no matter how many hours they worked. These wages were occasionally supplemented with a bottle of whiskey as a bonus. If they were strong enough and willing to do the work, they were paid extra for digging out tree stumps. At twenty-five cents a tree stump, a hardworking, capable digger could make as much as five to twelve dollars a day. The laborers had the reputation of drinking hard, fighting hard and working hard. They endured bad housing and food and long hours of work. During the construction of the canal, many men died or were killed in accidents. The summer months brought Asiatic cholera, which erupted violently and could kill within days, taking the lives of many laborers, who were quickly replaced by new immigrants waiting for jobs.

  After groundbreaking for the Delaware Division Canal in Bristol, a celebration took place in the Delaware House—the oldest continuously run tavern in Bucks County, now called the King George II. Author’s collection.

  Skilled artisans built locks, aqueducts, dams, waste weirs, towpath bridges and weighing locks.

  Unlike the privately built and owned Lehigh Navigation Canal, which had Josiah White and the men hired by the LC&N to work under him, the state didn’t have as much access to, or they chose not to hire, truly qualified engineers. To be fair, engineers were few and far between in this country since none of the schools offered engineering except West Point. Building canals in this country involved new technology, especially the design of the locks and aqueducts, and as a result, completion of the Delaware Canal took longer than expected.

  Faulty workmanship and errors in design continuously interfered with the construction and opening of the canal. In 1830, it was declared complete, but the locks were too small for the boats and there wasn’t sufficient water supply to fill the waterway to capacity. Eager to have the Delaware Canal completed because not having access to the lower canal was costing the LC&N huge sums of money, the company tried to help by damming the Lehigh where it met with the Delaware, creating a pool of water to feed the Delaware Canal. Unfortunately, the canal was so badly constructed that when the water entered, it leaked dry and the canal had to be closed.

  The canal was built with picks, shovels and wheelbarrows predominantly by Irish immigrants and local farmers. It required constant maintenance, which was usually conducted in winter months. Courtesy of Pennsylvania Canal Society Collection, National Canal Museum, Easton, PA.

  Desperate, the state turned to Josiah White in 1831 and requested that he take over the reconstruction of the canal. The longer it took to complete the Delaware, the more money the LC&N lost, so although he was still mourning the death of his son, White agreed to come out of semiretirement and act as chief engineer.32 He went to work immediately. In a letter he wrote to John Carey Jr., the superintendent of the Upper Division of the Delaware Canal, he left no doubt about the speed with which he wanted to complete the major repairs that were needed.

  I have just received a letter from the Commissioners directing us to make any and all repairs in situations as breaks and leaks, without waiting for specific orders, and with all possible dispatch. As Rocky Falls is the heaviest job in thy section, I particularly wish thee to proceed there with a strong force and get it to hold water.33

  And in another letter to the Pennsylvania Board of Canal Commissioners, it is clear that he is disgusted by the way the canal was built in the first place.

  I ha
ve advised the Board, and wish to proceed with certain changes in the water wheels and fixtures for supply of the canal with water below New Hope. Please inform me by early mail whether I am to direct the work to be executed according to the earlier design or whether I am to have the liberty to make such modifications as I may deem best for the purpose intended…All my experience has gone to prove the impolicy of multiplying machinery when it is not absolutely necessary.34

  Although there is no mention of it in any of his letters, White must have been infuriated by the fact that had the state allowed him to build the canal when he requested, it would have been completed earlier and correctly. He spent time and energy repairing the canal, addressing the inconsistencies in the locks and aqueducts and trying to fire the men who were not doing their jobs effectively.

  By 1832, under the direction of Josiah White, the Delaware Division Canal was repaired properly and was open for use. It was one of the first sections of the state public works to be completed and, in the long run, perhaps one of the best built. The Easton Whig reported in November 1833, “The Delaware Canal is in the full tide of successful experiment and the Lehigh Canal is stout and strong.”35

  The work Josiah supervised corrected the leakage problem, and the Lehigh was feeding the upper canal properly, but the engineers building the waterway found it necessary to introduce other feeders of water into the canal for the lower level. One of the most industrious and unique was the use of a lifting wheel located at the Union Paper Mills, just south of New Hope, which raised water from a wing dam into the canal. It was built by Lewis S. Coryell and, except for one overhaul in 1880, this water wheel continued to feed the canal without trouble throughout the life of the canal. There were essentially two wheels. The outside wheel was built with paddles that were turned by the flow of water. This controlled the inside wheel, which caught the water in trough-like buckets and emptied into a sluiceway under the mill and into the canal on the other side. The canal was now fully watered.