USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 23
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The Play for a State
by the College statesmen. But New Hampshire now had the wayward towns at her mercy. The Assembly refused to accept any but unconditional submission.
In May five River towns on the west side -Hartford, Norwich, Moretown (Bradford), and Newbury,- through their committees meeting at Thetford, also petitioned for admission to New Hampshire. Thereupon the Assembly expressed the willingness of the state to extend her juris- diction to the Green Mountains, provided the " generality of the inhabitants thereof should desire it," and that New York should settle a boundary-line upon the mountains - thus absorbing Vermont. Nothing came of this. In due time the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont was permanently fixed at the west bank of the River. Thus New Hampshire possesses the River's bed.
With the final reabsorption of the east side towns by New Hampshire the College statesmen returned to their books and their professional work. They played no more at state-making or state-guiding. Occasionally they reap- peared on the political horizon concerned in such issues of local import as questions of taxation, when their skilful pens were again employed in shaping argumentative memorials. The Assembly of Vermont continued to come to the Valley for frequent sittings - mostly at Windsor, meeting once at Westminster and once at Norwich -till the close of 1785; and in the autumn of 1789 the New Hampshire legislature assembled at Charlestown, when Governor John Sullivan and the council were grandly en- tertained at Abel Walker's tavern, where Governor Chitten- den with his council had "put up" seven years before. But the college men had slight interest in these goings on.
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Bitterness against the College party still continued to be cherished by the dominant party in New Hampshire for years after. It was carried into the generation that followed, when it culminated in 1815 in the attempt to wrest the control of the College from the corporation established by the royal charter, and vest it in the legis- lature ; the setting up of the rival " Dartmouth University " by the side of the College; and the waging of the hot Dartmouth Controversy, finally settled by the United States Supreme Court with the decision for the College, - a story which moved a Dartmouth orator to advise the inscription above the door of the institution : "Founded by Eleazar Wheelock : Refounded by Daniel Webster."
J- Dunham del.
A front View of DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, with the CHAPEL & HALL.
Dartmouth College in 1790. From a print in the Massachusetts Magazine, 1800.
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II ROMANCES OF NAVIGATION
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XXI An Early Colonial Highway
The River an important Thoroughfare through Colony Times - The first White Man's Craft on its Waters- Dutch and English Trading Ships - Wil- liam Pynchon the first River Merchant - Prosperous Traffic in Furs, Skins, and Hemp - The earliest Flatboats operating between the Falls- Seventeenth Century Shipbuilding - River-built Ships sent out on long Foreign Voyages- The Rig of the Flatboat as developed by Colonial Builders - System of Up-River Transportation in the latter Colonial Period - Lumber Rafts - Early Ferries.
LL through colonial times the Connecticut was a highway of importance for pursuits of trade and of
war. At first its navigation by the white man's craft was confined to the sixty miles between the River's mouth and the head of tide-water below Enfield Falls. Soon after the coming of the English colonists, however, the flatboat, or scow, was contrived which could run the Enfield rapids at high water, and then navigation extended to Springfield. Above commerce was carried on only through the Massa- chusetts Reach by means of canoes or rafts or flatboats be- tween the falls, till the middle of the eighteenth century. But long before that time the craft of the white hunter and trapper, the frontiersman, the scout and the soldier had navigated the far northern reaches; while the Indians, the River's first navigators, were paddling its sinuous length in their bark canoes and dugouts on fishing or hunting expe- ditions, or on predatory incursions against the New England frontiers. And during the tragic years of the French and Indian wars it was the great military thoroughfare.
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Connecticut River
The year 1633, with the establishment of the rival Dutch and Pilgrim trading houses, is usually given as the date of the opening of the River to commercial navigation. But in this statement no account is taken of the presence of Dutch trading vessels here for a decade before. It were closer to the record to say that in 1633, when English ships first came in and began to compete with the Dutch for its trade, the River was opened generally to navigation. Very soon the English were in successful competition with their rivals, and their little vessels were taking out rich cargoes of the Valley products, mostly to port at Boston for ship- ment to England. The Dutch ships carried their cargoes to New Amsterdam generally for shipment to Holland ; and it is said that some of them sailed direct from the River to the home ports. The earliest Dutch craft in the River have been described as "yachts," small sloops and periaguas. The earliest English vessels of record were barks, lighters, pinks, pinnaces, and shallops.
Although the Plymouth men were the first English traders in the River with their " great new bark " and other ships, the Bay Colony men were " close seconds," as we have seen. William Pynchon, with his foundation of Springfield in 1636, was the first to establish a systematic River busi- ness. He had then the advantage of exclusive privileges, being one of those to whom the standing council of Massa- chusetts Bay farmed out all trading with the Indians in beaver and other furs for a specified term. To facilitate transportation between Enfield rapids and the Springfield settlement, Pynchon built a storage warehouse on the shore below the falls which gave its name to Warehouse Point. Here was the up-river landing of his first trading shallop (the same that was later impressed for the Pequot War). After the Pequot War the River's navigation to Warehouse
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An Early Colonial Highway
Point increased, and trade became profitable to the colon- ists, especially the Pynchons - William and Major John, his son, who succeeded him.
The earliest traffic was in furs, skins, and hemp brought in by the Indians. Major Pynchon and his associates sometimes sent out in a single ship to England, a thousand pounds' sterling worth of otter and beaver skins. The beaver trade remained for a considerable time in the hands of Major Pynchon and a few merchants in the lower towns to whom the Connecticut court committed its exclusive charge. An abundance of beaver then inhabited the lower streams which flow into the River. Many beaver and other skins were also brought down the River by the Indians from the distant west and north. Major Pynchon's account books, which are preserved in the Springfield City Li- brary, covering a period of thirty years from 1650, give interesting details of the River's early trade and shipments. During that time the major packed, mostly in hogsheads, many thousand beaver-skins, worth about eight shillings sterling a pound in England. Other skins shipped by him were of the grey and the red fox, the muskrat, the raccoon, the marten, the fisher, mink, wildcat, and moose, the latter skins weighing from twelve to twenty-five pounds each.
When the flatboat was first employed on the River is not definitely known, but it was probably very early in use, working between Warehouse Point and Springfield. The first flatboats were built by the earliest Springfield colonists, and men soon became skilful in running them over the rapids. Later on there were Hadley and Northampton boats and boatmen in regular service. As settlements ad- vanced up the River above the Massachusetts line, larger flatboats were operated between the various falls, the
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freight being unloaded at the foot of each fall, and trans- ported around it on shore by teams, - ox-teams at first, - to be reloaded on the boats above. Thus a definite and remunerative occupation in addition to farming was af- forded the dwellers near each fall. Warehouse Point was the place of transhipment of freight from sloops to the flatboats through the colony period, and afterward till the opening years of the nineteenth century. The erection of the first Hartford bridge across the River, in 1809, ob- structed the passage of the larger sloops, and then Hart- ford became the principal port of transhipment.
The canoes first used for River service were fashioned after the Indian dugouts, from trees cut on the River's banks. It was early found necessary to protect "canoe trees " from spoliation, and orders were passed by Spring- field, nd probably by other settlements, prohibiting the felling of such trees within the bounds of the plantation without general consent. These canoes, used in crossing from shore to shore or in passing between the settlements, as well as for freightage, and mingling with the graceful birchen craft of friendly bartering Indians, must have brightened the River about the lonely plantations. But there could have been no more heartening sight than the spectacle, in the spring of 1638, of the fleet of fifty Indian canoes sweeping down from the Indian village of Pocumtuck (Deerfield), all heaped up with luscious corn, for the relief of the lower River towns impoverished by the Pequot War of the previous year and in danger of starva- tion. "Never was the like known to this day," wrote chivalrous Captain John Mason in his history thirty years after.
Many of the seventeenth century vessels in the River's navigation were built on its lower banks, from native
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An Early Colonial Highway
timber. Among the first were ketches, pinks, and shallops. A policy for the encouragement of shipbuilding was very early adopted by the Connecticut Colony. Before the middle of the seventeenth century Hartford men were sending out River-built ships on distant voyages, freighted with the products of the Valley to be bartered for the commodities of foreign parts, all sorts of necessities for a new country, among them much " rumme " and occasional wines. These vessels, says a local chronicler, were sent forth " on to Boston, Newfoundland, New York, Delaware, Barbadoes, Jamaica ; or, occasionally, to Fayal and to the Wine and Madeira Isles." By 1666 vessels on the stocks were exempted from taxation. In 1676 Hartford had among her craft a ketch of ninety tons; and Middletown, a ship of seventy tons. By 1680 ships, ketches, and pinks of from fifty to eighty tons, with smaller sloops and barques, were navigating the River to Hartford and Warehouse Point.
The flatboats as developed by the colonial builders were generally provided with a square mainsail set in the middle of the craft and extending some feet each side of it, and a topsail which was useful only before the wind. Three sails were sometimes carried, the third sail rigged above the topsail in very light winds. When the wind was unfavorable these boats were propelled by poling, or " snubbing " along shore, with " setting poles." The poles were of white ash from twelve to twenty feet long, with a socket-spike in the lower end. The polers came to be called spike-pole men. They worked one on each side of the smaller boats and three on each side on the larger. The operation was slow and laborious. Each poleman, placing the spiked end of his pole firmly on the river bot- tom and pressing the head of the upper end against his
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Connecticut River
shoulder, walked from the front of the boat to the mast- board, shoving with all his force as he walked. The inside oarsmen worked with the shorter poles. The captain did the steering in the stern, in the smaller craft using a wide- bladed oar. The poling was the hardest kind of labor. Each season great thick callouses as large as the hand were raised on the front of the polers' shoulders, lacerated and bloody at the beginning of the work. The boats were flat- bottomed and drew only from two to three feet of water. The freight carried was packed around the central mast.
Before the close of the colony period the system of transportation above tide-water by flatboats between the successive falls and by teams on shore around them, had been advanced many miles northward to meet trade demands or supply the necessaries of life to the developing up-river settlements on the "New Hampshire Grants " and the growing northern country. At the approach of the Revo- lution the head of boat navigation had reached the then new village of Wells River, in the Vermont Newbury, lying in the deep narrow Valley at the confluence of Wells River and our stream, the unusual picturesqueness of which to-day invites the traveller as he gazes down upon it from the Wells River Junction of railways. The flatboats of that time, bringing up miscellaneous cargoes of merchan- dise, with iron, salt, molasses, and much rum, were returned down river laden with shingles, potash, and other products of the region, for Hartford and below. Rafts of lumber were also piloted down, in " boxes," sometimes sixty feet long and a dozen feet wide. Many men were engaged directly or indirectly in the River service. Passengers as well as merchandise were occasionally transported up the riverway on the freight boats. Household goods were also carried up for new settlers.
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A Typical Chain Ferry.
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An Early Colonial Highway
There being no bridges at any point across the River till after the Revolution, the ferry was an important insti- tution in the advancing settlements and the ferryman a useful and important personage. The chain ferry, still seen at intervals along the River, was early in use, suc- ceeding the canoe and the raft ferry.
XXII
Locks and Canals
The first River in the Country to be Improved by Canals - The Initial Charter issued by Vermont in 1791-First Work in the Massachusetts Reach - Locking of South Hadley Falls in 1795 - A Remarkable Achievement for that Day - Unique Features of the Construction - The System as Devel- oped Northward - Wells River Village Head of Navigation - River Life then Animated and Bustling -Improved Types of Freight-Boats - Schemes for Extending the System with great Rival Projects -Final crushing Competition of the Railroads.
V ERY soon after the close of the Revolution, when internal improvements were planning in various parts of the new nation, large schemes were formulated by Connecticut Valley men for increasing the navigability of the River northward by means of a system of canals around the principal falls ; and by 1795, before the establishment of similar enterprises elsewhere in the country, the first work in a projected series was finished. Thus the Con- necticut was the first river in America to be improved by canals. It has the further distinction of having been navi- gated above tide-water, during its career of activity, more than any other river in New England.
The institution of the canal system was stimulated in part by the rivalry between the seaport towns of Massa- chusetts and the lower River centres of Hartford and Springfield for the control of the trade of northern New England. With the substitution to an appreciable extent of unobstructed up-river navigation during the open sea- sons for the cumbrous system of part water and part land
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Locks and Canals
carriage, the lower towns, brought commercially nearer to the upper country, would gain a distinct advantage. Accord- ingly their merchants and shippers were quick to encourage the scheme, and moneyed men stood ready to invest in the undertaking, new and untried in the country as it was, as soon as its feasibility was demonstrated to their satisfaction.
The first charter for a canal, however, came from the north. It issued in 1791, with the virile acts of the first legislature of the finally admitted state of Vermont, sitting at the Vermont Windsor. It was granted to two upper- Valley men of affairs - General Lewis B. Morris of the Vermont Springfield, and Dr. William Page of Charlestown, opposite, as "The Company for rendering the Connecticut River Navigable by Bellows Falls." But early in the next
year, 1792, before this company had become established, Massachusetts chartered "The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals on the Connecticut River," for the purpose of making the stream " passable for boats and other things," from the mouth of Chicopee River throughout the state ; and this corporation put the first work through.
The Massachusetts proprietors contemplated at the out- set the locking of the two great falls in the Massachusetts Reach, - the South Hadley and Turner's Falls. It was a strong organization composed of men of leading in several lower Valley towns, principally Springfield, Northampton, and Deerfield ; with a few of Berkshire. In the list one observes such representative central and western Massa- chusetts names as Worthington, Lyman, and Dwight of Springfield ; Strong and Breck of Northampton; Williams and Hoyt of Deerfield ; Moore of Greenfield ; Sedgwick of Stockbridge. John Williams of Deerfield, a great-grand- son of the " Redeemed Captive," was largely instrumental in its promotion. Capital from Holland, at that time the
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financial centre of Europe, was brought into the enterprise, and Mr. Williams was associated with Stephen Higginson of Boston, the merchant grandfather of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, as agent of the Dutch firms investing. Routes for both canals were marked out and surveyed in the sum- mer of 1792, while at the same time surveys were making for another company proposing a canal from Boston to the Connecticut at Deerfield, -a plan which developed no further. The South Hadley work was the first to be completed.
The construction of this initial enterprise, the germ of the great hydraulic works of Holyoke to-day, was a remarkable achievement of that time. Its builders, with no precedent in the country to follow, were obliged to execute it largely on original lines. Benjamin Prescott of Northampton, in after years a superintendent of the arsenal at Springfield, was the supervising engineer. Most of the way the cutting was through solid red slate rock, and proved costly. The canal began at a point by the South Hadley end of the present great dam, and extended two and a half miles along the River's trend north ward, entering the River above a wing dam projected obliquely outward. The capacity of the waterway was equal to the transportation of boats or rafts forty feet long and twenty feet wide. The style of machinery provided for propelling craft through was unique. As described by Dr. Josiah G. Holland a half-century ago: "At the point where boats were to be lowered and elevated was a long inclined plane traversed by a car of the width of the canal and of suffi- cient length to take on a boat or a section of a raft. At the top of this inclined plane were two large water-wheels, one on either side of the canal, which furnished, by the aid of the water of the canal, the power for elevating the
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Seal of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals. Showing the contrivance first used at South Hadley for passing boats.
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Locks and Canals
car and for balancing and controlling it in its descent. At the foot of the inclined plane the car descended into the water of the canal, being entirely submerged. A boat ascending the river and passing into the canal would be floated directly over and into the car, the brim of the lattter, of course, being gauged to a water level by its elevation aft in proportion to the angle of the inclination of the traverse way. The boat being secure in the car, the water was let upon the water-wheels, which by their common shaft were attached to the car through two immense cables, and thus, winding the cables, the boat passed out into the canal above. The reverse of the operation . . . transferred a boat, or the section of a raft, from above downwards."
The completion of the work and the successful passage of the first boat through the canal, in 1795, were matters for great congratulation to the proprietors. But the out- look was not all rosy for them. The expenditure had been much heavier than anticipated, - an assessment of over eighty thousand dollars on the shares of the stock was large for those modest days of financiering,-and profits were uncertain. Litigation, also, followed the erection of the first dam, since it was so built as to set the River's water back for some miles, thus flowing the Northampton meadows, and causing an epidemic of intermittent fever. The structure was condemned as a nuisance, and all but the oblique section had to be torn down. This trouble scared off the Dutch investors, and they sold out their holdings at a sacrifice. The stock ultimately came to be held by a few hands, and thereafter was profitable. Mean- while commerce through the canal had steadily increased, and the lowering of the bed for deeper water was impera- tive. This work was undertaken with funds raised by a lottery authorized by the Massachusetts General Court of
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Connecticut River
1802, the system still in favor then for aiding the con- struction of quasi public works as well as for building bridges and turnpikes. The deepening was accomplished by 1805, with other improvements, among them the sub- stitution of the simple lock system for the device of car and cable.
The Turner's Falls canal was opened for service in 1800. Its completion fell to a second company, "The Proprietors of the Upper Locks and Canal on Connecticut River," incorporated in 1794, when the interests of the original corporation were divided, the lower work being all that it could comfortably carry. The stockholders in the two corporations, however, were practically the same. This canal was about three miles in length, extending from the junction of the Deerfield with the Connecticut, to a point just above the present dam at Turner's Falls, and had ten locks.
The works at Bellows Falls were the third in chrono- logical order, the canal here being ready for business in the autumn of 1802. This was a short canal, as compared with the Massachusetts concerns, and had eight locks. The company incorporated by Vermont to build it subsequently obtained a charter from New Hampshire. Dr. Page of the original corporators executed the work as civil engineer ; but the capital came from England. It was furnished- by a wealthy Londoner, Hodgson Atkinson, who never saw the works, for he never came to America. The property remained in the Atkinson family for seventy-four years. Hence the name of Atkinson applied to one of the present thoroughfares in the picturesque village of Bellows Falls.
Two small upper canals next built completed the sys- tem northward. One of these was at Water-Queeche, now Sumner's Falls, midway between the towns of Hartland
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Remains of the Old Olcott Falls Locks, New Hampshire Side. Two miles north of White River Junction.
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Locks and Canals
and North Hartland on the Vermont side. The other was about three miles above White River Junction, where now is the Vermont village of Wilder. The latter work made it possible for boats to approach Barnet, Vermont, at the foot of the Fifteen-Miles Falls, two hundred and twenty miles above Hartford. Although early chartered, first by Vermont in 1794, and afterward by New Hamp- shire, these northernmost canals were not in operation till after 1810.
The five sets of works now established constituted the canal system through a large part of the period of the greatest activity on the River above tide-water, for the sixth of the series - the Enfield canal around the lowest falls, - was not opened till 1829, a decade only before the advent of the railroad in the Valley, which changed speedily the whole aspect of things.
The River life was most animated after the introduc- tion of the canal system through the first third of the nineteenth century. Numerous towns along the River's banks in the upper states, now serene and retired with the dignity of a prosperous past, were then brisk and bustling places. The River became a main artery, and the turnpike the land-thoroughfare between the seaboard and the northern country, with the river-boat, the stage-coach, and the great goods-wagon as the popular means of transportation. The landings established at various points along the River were then the favorite gathering-places for leisurely townsfolk and villagers to " see the boat come in," as the rural rail- way station in after years became at " train time." Then was the day of the " River gods," a term applied to expert handlers of boats and masters of transportation, as well as to the Valley political leaders. The men then in the River service were "the stoutest, heartiest, and merriest " in the
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