USA > Maryland > Cecil County > History of Cecil County, Maryland, and the early settlements around the head of Chesapeake Bay and on the Delaware River, with sketches of some of the old families of Cecil County > Part 32
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The next matter that claims our attention is the project of connecting the waters of the Chesapeake and Delaware bays by means of a canal.
As long ago as 1680, when Augustine Hermen was lord of Bohemia Manor, the construction of a canal to connect the waters of the two bays was contemplated. The earliest settlers along the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays felt the want of a better method of transportation than they then had, and no doubt the far-seeing and clear-minded Hermen was quite as much influenced by the prospective canal and the advantages to be derived from 'it as he was by the superior quality of the soil when he made choice of Bohemia Manor and settled upon it.
In 1769 some of the enterprising citizens of Philadelphia induced the American Philosophical Society to order a sur- vey to be made with a view of constructing a canal across the peninsula, but the Revolutionary war began before any
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active steps were taken towards the construction of the work, and it was not chartered by the State of Maryland until 1799. It appears from the charter that Maryland was the first State to move in the matter, for the charter con- tains a proviso that it is to be of no force until a law is passed by the State of Delaware authorizing the cutting of the canal through that State, and until a law is passed by the State of Pennsylvania declaring the river Susquehanna to be a highway, etc. The company was authorized to raise $500,000, in shares of $200 each, for the construction of the canal, and Tobias Rudulph and William Alexander, in Cecil County, in connection with two other persons in each of the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland, and other persons in Baltimore, Wilmington, and Philadelphia were authorized to open the subscription books and inaugurate the enterprise.
About the year 1801 Benjamin H. Latrobe,* Cornelius Howard, and John Thompson surveyed various routes across the peninsula for the proposed canal, and the direc- tors of the company decided to adopt the one between Welsh Point, at the junction of Back Creek and Elk River, and running in a northeast direction from there to a place on Christiana Creek, then called Mendenhall's Landing, about four miles west of Wilmington. It was the intention of the engineers that located the canal in this place to supply the water necessary for the purpose of navigating it
* B. H. Latrobe was of French Huguenot extraction, but born in Eng- land. He came to Philadelphia in 1800, and soon afterwards married the daughter of Isaac Hazlehurst, the law-partner of Robert Morris, the financier. While engaged in constructing the feeder, he resided in a house which stood north of the Elkton and Christiana Turnpike and east of the State line. He was one of the most eminent architects and civil engineers of his time, and was employed in supervising the old Capitol building at Washington, and also the Exchange, which is now used for the Custom House, in Baltimore. Ile was the father of J. H. B. Latrobe, Esq., a distinguished member of the Baltimore bar, and the grandfather of F. C. Latrobe, the present mayor of that city.
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from the Big Elk Creek, by means of a feeder constructed for the purpose of carrying the water of that creek into a vast reservoir,* covering a hundred acres of land, from which the water could be taken when needed for the pur- pose of locking the various crafts through the canal. About a hundred thousand dollars was expended upon the con- struction of the feeder, which was intended to carry the waters of Big Elk into the proposed reservoir, which was to be located about a mile west of Glasgow, in Delaware. The work was constructed under the supervision of Benjamin H. Latrobe, who was chief engineer.
The canal company was obliged to purchase the right to use the water of Big Elk from the Elk Forge Company, whose forge was then located where Elk Mills factory now stands, near which the feeder was to start, and also the water rights of all the mills between the forge and the mouth of the creek. Due bills or promisary notes, similar to bank notes, were issued for the purchase of the water rights, and work was commenced on the feeder in 1802. Some of the plans of the engineers of that time seem quite curious and strange when viewed through the light of the experience since acquired. The canal company only purchased the right from the forge company to use the water of the creek, when needed, for the purpose of supplying the canal, the forge company reserving the right to use the water of the creek during the winter months, when it would be imprac- ticable to navigate it. The water of the creek was taken out of the head-race of the forge and taken across the channel of the creek in an aqueduct constructed for the purpose. It would seem to have been a great deal more practicable to have taken the water directly from the cast side of the dam and to have dispensed with the aqueduct, but probably there
* Owing to a misunderstanding of his instructions, the engraver of the map accompanying this book located this reservoir too far south. It should have been at the junction of the feeder and the canal, which is some distance west of Glasgow, which is called Aikentown on the map.
Y
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were reasons that do not now appear, that caused the engi- neer to adopt the plan he did.
The work upon the feeder was done in a superior manner. Several of the arches, through which the water of small streams was to pass underneath it, are still standing, and quite a large one intended for a roadway across it is yet ex- tant. It is said that when the late Daniel Lord was con- structing the factory which is near the arch, being in want of stone, he ordered his workmen to take the arch down, and that after many fruitless efforts to do so, they concluded it would be easier and cheaper to quarry the stone they wanted. This old arch is now standing, and looks strong and durable enough to stand at least a century longer.
For a short time the water of the Big Elk was admitted into the feeder, and the stone used in the construction of the arches, some distance from the upper end of it, were transported to the places where they were used upon scows from the quarry near the forge. Many stones were quarried and nicely dressed for the arches, which, after the work was abandoned, remained near the forge and were used in the construction of the railroad bridge across the Big Elk, near Elkton, which was recently covered by the embankment, after the construction of the new iron bridge in 1876.
There was much diversity of opinion in regard to the proper place for the location of the canal. This was the reason that the company after finishing the feeder to the site of the proposed reservoir, near Glasgow, were forced to discontinue the work, which they did, for want of means, in 1803. The feeder passed within about two miles of Elk- ton, and it is stated in a history of Maryland and Delaware, published in Philadelphia in 1807, that barges were then used upon it. This is untrue; though the people of that day entertained the opinion that it was practicable to use the feeder as a canal, and the canal company at that time intended to establish slack-water navigation upon the Big Elk, north of the forge, by erecting a system of dams and locks for that purpose.
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The laborers employed in the construction of the feeder, who were principally Irishmen, became involved in a riot while the work was in course of construction. There was a race-course at that time in the field near Gilpins Bridge, on the southwest side of Big Elk. Many of the Irishmen from the feeder were at a horse race on this course, which was no uncommon thing, for horse racing was quite com- mon in Cecil County at that time, and the races were recog- nized by the law of the State. It was customary for those who wished to do so, to obtain license to sell liquor at the races, and no doubt it was sold at this one, and that the too free use of whisky led to the riot, which began in this wise: A negro was on the ground, who was proprietor of a gambling arrangement, called " Treeket the Loop." It consisted of a stake driven into the ground in the centre of a circular ex- cavation of probably a foot or eighteen inches in diameter ; a cent was placed on the top of the stake by the proprietor, and those who wished to participate in the game were fur- nished with a club or shillalah and required to stand some yards from the stake, and if they could throw the club and knock the cent off the stake, so that it would fall outside of the pit in which the stake stood, they won the money; if the coin fell inside of the pit, which it probably did in nine cases out of ten, the player forfeited a cent to the proprietor of the pit. A dispute occurred between the negro who was the proprietor of the pit and an Irishman who was playing, which came from words to blows, and the negro is said to have fractured the skull of one of the Irishmen who soon afterwards died. This riot, like all others, was easier started than stopped, and from the accounts which have come down to us, was quite a serious affair. Many other negroes on the race ground became involved in the fight before it was over. The Irishmen pursued them to Elkton, and a reign of terror was inaugurated which lasted for a considerable time, during which several lives were lost. The late Dr. Evans, who was then a student of medicine with Dr.
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George E. Mitchell, is said to have been instrumental in pacifying the infuriated Irishmen and saving the lives of some of the negroes.
In 1803 work was discontinued upon the feeder, and the enterprise was allowed to slumber until 1812. The probability of a war with England appears to have been the great incentive that impelled the Legislature of Maryland to pass a supplementary act to the original charter of the canal, for at the session of the General Assembly in the winter of 1812-13, the following supplement to the act of in- corporation of 1799 was passed :
"Whereas, During the time of war against the United States of America, the completion of the work of the Chesa- peake & Delaware Canal would be beneficial to the United States, by forming the great link of an inland navigation of six or seven hundred miles, and thereby establish a per- fectly safe, easy and rapid transportation of our armies and the munitions of war through the interior of the country, and which would ever tend to operate as a cement to the union between the States: And, whereas, the prosperity and the agricultural interest of the State of Maryland, the Com- monwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Delaware State, are more deeply interested than their sister States in the useful work of opening a communication between the Chesapeake Bay and river Delaware, by means of the said Chesapeake & Delaware Canal; therefore, in order to enable the presi- dent and directors of the said canal to prosecute and finish the important work of the said Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, That if the United States shall subscribe 750 shares, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 375 shares, the State of Delaware 100 shares, in the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Co., in such case the treasurer of the western shore be and he is hereby authorized and directed to subscribe in behalf of this State 250 shares in said company, and the money necessary to be paid in consequence of such subscription
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shall be paid by this State, and the treasurer of the western shore, for the time being, shall have the right to vote for president and directors of said company, according to such number of shares in person or by proxy appointed by him, and the said treasurer shall receive upon the said stock the proportion of the tolls which shall from time to time be due to the State for the shares aforesaid.
" And be it enacted, that this act shall not take effect, unless the Legislature of Pennsylvania shall pass or shall have passed a law declaring that in consideration of the act of the Legislature of Maryland incorporating said canal company, the river Susquehanna from Columbia to the Maryland line shall forever hereafter be a highway, and that individuals or bodies corporate may at all times remove obstructions therein."
The war that the Legislature apprehended took place, and nothing more was done toward the completion of the work until about 1822 or 1823, when the project was again revived. There appears to have been much diversity of opinion in regard to the supply of water to be obtained from the Big Elk Creek, and various estimates were made of it. In 1804 Mr. Latrobe estimated it as equal to one hundred and ninety locks full per day. In 1823 John Randel, Jr., civil engineer of Albany, New York, then in the employ of the company and under whose superintendence the route for the canal had been surveyed, estimated it as equal to seventy-nine locks full per day on an average of a whole year, but as only equal to thirty locks full per day in the months of July, August, September, and October, which only allowed the passage of six vessels per day through the canal. Mr. Randel was accused of under-estimating the quantity of water in the Elk Creek, with a view of having the canal located further down the peninsula, where it now is, so that he could have an opportunity of obtaining a lucrative contract for its construction. The people of Wil- mington were apprehensive that if the canal was located so
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as to reach the Delaware River, without using the Christiana Creek for that purpose, it would injure the trade of their city, and as was very natural, they looked upon the diffi- culty of constructing it, very complacently, and the news- paper press of that city continually prophesied its ultimate failure.
Mr. Randel, the engineer, upon whose surveys and esti- mates the work was undertaken, recommended the cutting of the canal so deep that the supply of water could be ob- tained for its use from the Delaware River at high tide, by means of tide-locks at either end of the canal, so constructed as to prevent a current in it, and also to admit the water of the Delaware River to enter it at high tide. This was a grand scheme and worthy of the ingenious and scientific man that originated it. He contemplated using the Atlantic Ocean as the reservoir from which the canal was to be sup- plied with water. This plan, had it been adhered to, would have saved the expense of the steam-pump which now has to be used to supply the canal with water; but probably owing to the great cost of excavating so deep a channel it. was abandoned and the present system of locks adopted in its stead.
It is worthy of remark that the canal company resumed work, which had been suspended for twenty-one years, under the presidency of the same person who presided over it when work was suspended, and that the due bills for a large amount of the indebtedness of the company, which was con- tracted in its early efforts, were paid at their par value.
The canal company employed Mr. Randel to excavate the greater part of the canal and executed articles of agreement with him for the construction of the work on the 26th day of March, 1824. The work was commenced on the 15th of April following upon the deep cut near where the Summit Bridge formerly stood. Randel was allowed until the 1st of May, 1828, to finish his contract, but for some reason the company took the work out of his hands, and in the fall of
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1825, contracted with other persons for the completion of the unfinished part of it. This action of the company caused Randel to sue it for damages, and after years of litiga- tion he recovered damages in January, 1834, to the amount of more than two hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. The suit between Randel and the canal company, which was tried in the Superior Court at New Castle, is one of the most notable cases ever tried in the State of Delaware, being celebrated as well on account of the amount of money in- volved, as on account of the eminent counsel employed by the parties concerned in it. John Randel, Jr., by which cognomen he was known until the day of his death, was pos- sessed of much skill as a civil engineer, though strange and eccentric, and full of Utopian schemes and projects. He afterwards became the proprietor of "Randalia," which was a large tract of land on Bohemia Manor, near the mouth of Back Creek. His success in prosecuting his suit against the canal company appears to have made him fond of litiga- tion, and for many years after he became proprietor of " Randalia" he was seldom without a law suit on hand. Owing to his success in this suit with the canal company, he was placed in possession of a competency, most of which he squandered in the prosecution of wild, chimerical schemes for self-aggrandizement, which it would have taken many hundreds of thousands of dollars to have brought to a successful conclusion. He was also the originator of elevated railroads, which have recently been erected in some of our large cities. At one time, while Mr. Randel was proprietor of Randalia, he had a steam saw-mill in opera- tion there, and somehow he unfortunately lost a breast-pin which he valued very highly. Work was immediately stopped at Randalia, and everybody in his employ was set to work hunting for the lost breast-pin. The hands at the saw-mill were set to work sifting an immense pile of saw dust, the accumulation of years, in order to find the lost jewel. After much tribulation the long-lost and much-esteemed
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bauble was found in the possession of some person, who said he found it along the road some distance from Randa- lia, where no doubt its owner had dropped it. The chance for a law suit was not to be lost, however, and the conten- tious Randel laid his case before the next grand jury with the intention of having the person who found the breast-pin indicted for theft, but the grand jury very wisely dismissed the case.
Though Randel was the engineer who surveyed the routo for the canal and made the plans and estimates for its con- struction when he became contractor for the performance of the work, the company employed Benjamin Wright to act as engineer, under whose superintendence the work was completed on the 17th of October, 1829. This important work is thirteen and five-eighths of a mile long, and was made at the cost of $2,250,000. Its construction was a work of great difficulty, owing to the peculiarities of the land through which the eastern part of it is made. Large sec- tions of the embankments along the sides of it are said to have sunk as much as a hundred feet below the adjoining surface, which caused the bottom of the canal to rise as much as forty feet above its natural position. This led to much trouble and delay in the completion of the work ; nor was this the only trouble, for the earth taken out of the deep cut, which at the summit is seventy-six and a half feet deep, was deposited too near the channel of the canal, and it is estimated that during the construction of the work three hundred and seventy-five thousand cubic yards of it slid back into the canal and had to be again removed. For many years after the completion of the work, these immense mountain-like piles of earth had an ugly habit of sliding into the canal, and at one time the company had many acres of them thatched with straw, like an Irish cabin, to keep them dry and render them tenacious enough to main- tain the position in which they were originally placed. Much stone was required for walling parts of the canal, a
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great deal of which was obtained in the vicinity of Marley Mill and Cherry Hill, and which was hauled to the western part of the canal in four-horse wagons. This stone was purchased by weight and weighed upon immense scales con- structed for the purpose. The scales were large enough to hold a wagon loaded with stone, and were constructed with a wooden beam similar to a steelyard; the loaded wagon was driven upon the platform and weighed, and after being unloaded weighed again, the difference in weight showing the weight of the load of stone. The Summit or Buck* bridge, across the canal at the deep cut, was nearly ninety feet above the bottom of the canal and two hundred and forty-seven feet long. It was considered a stupendous structure fifty years ago, when the Pacific Railroad had not been thought of and our vast system of public improvements were in their infancy. People that were school children forty years ago will recollect the picture of this bridge that was in a popular geography which was much used at that time.
The enlargement of the Susquehanna Canal seems to have given a great impetus to the growth of the town (now Port Deposit) just below its southern terminus, or probably it would be more correct to say, that the success of that enter- prise led to the building of the town. As early as 1729, Thomas Cresap, who took such an active part in the border war a few years afterwards, had a ferry there, which is be-
lieved to have been called Smith's Ferry, probably because it was near the uppermost point on the river which was reached by the adventurous Captain John Smith, who ascended it when engaged in exploring the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. It was afterwards called Creswell's Ferry, because it was owned by Colonel John Creswell, the grandfather of the Hon. J. A. J. Creswell, who owned two
* This bridge was often called the Buek bridge, because there was a tavern near it with the sign of a Buck.
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large tracts of land contiguous to it, much of which is yet in possession of the Creswell family. The town, if there was any town there, must have been quite small in 1813 when the British visited Lapidum, for they made but little exer- tion to enter it, though it was a place of some importance, and the citizens and the people of the vicinity had erected a fort for its defense, and probably would have given them a warm reception.
Philip Thomas then owned large quantities of land ex- tending from near the ferry, which was about midway of the town, a considerable distance down the river, embracing the tracts called Mount Ararat, and Yorkshire, which was immediately below the former and some others. He died in 1811, and his property not being susceptible of division, was purchased by his son Philip the next year, he agreeing to pay the other heirs their shares of the value placed upon it by the commissioners appointed by the court for that pur- pose. Mr. Thomas caused the lower half of the town to be laid out into streets and building-lots by Hugh Beard, an eminent surveyor of that time, who made a plat of it, which may be seen among the land records of the county. This plat is dated October 21st, 1812, and purports to be the plat of a town at Creswell's Ferry. But at the session of the Legislature held the next winter, the name of the place was changed to Port Deposit. This change was made, as stated in the preamble to the act, to prevent the inconvenience arising from the different names by which the place was then called. There is reason to believe that the town had, previous to this time, been also called Rock Run.
The next year Edward Wilson, of Philadelphia, purchased for six thousand dollars the site of the mill at the lower or tide locks, of the canal, which included an insignificant amount of land and the right to water sufficient to run six pairs of mill-stones of six feet diameter, to be driven by water-wheels of not less than fifteen feet diameter. The quantity of water was to be ascertained by actual experi-
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ment after the mill was erected. This mill subsequently came into the possession of James Bosley, of Baltimore, who, in 1831, became involved in a quarrel with the proprietors of the canal in reference to the quantity of water he used. Bosley used more water than was agreeable to the proprie- tors of the canal, who advertised in the Baltimore papers that they would permit the use of the water of the canal only in accordance with the agreement in the deed given to Wilson. Bosley set the proprietors of the canal at defiance, and one day started the machinery at its utmost speed, in consequence of which the mill caught fire and was entirely consumed. This ended the quarrel.
Previous to the construction of the canal, most of the lumber and produce which came down the river stopped at Lapidum. This was because the water was deeper on that side of the river. After the construction of the canal, the business was diverted to the other side of the river, and the want of some better means of crossing than that afforded by a ferry became necessary. This led to the first efforts to erect the Susquehanna bridge, and resulted in the formation of the first Port Deposit bridge company, which was incor- porated in 1808. Of the incorporators, five were from Bal- timore City and County, six from Harford County, and six were from Cecil, as follows : James Sewell, Adam Whann, Henry W. Physie, William Hollingsworth, Thomas W. Veazey, and Thomas Williams. The commissioners were authorized to raise $250,000 by subscription, in shares of fifty dollars each, for the purpose of building a bridge over the Susquehanna River at the most suitable place in their judgment between Havre de Grace and Bald Friar Ferry.
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