USA > New York > Wayne County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 9
USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 9
USA > New York > Seneca County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 9
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 9
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As far back as 1791 waterways were used as avenues to Central New York. But it took fifteen to twenty days to bring a ton and a half of freight from Schenectady as far as Seneca Lake. In that year the Western Inland Lock and Navigation Company was formed to improve transportation facilities. On the Mohawk, between Schenectady and Little Falls, a distance of fifty-six miles, no serious obstructions were found. But at Little Falls a carry or portage was unavoidable. Light boats and canoes were carried by hand, while the heavier craft and bateaux were drawn three quarters of a mile around the falls by ox teams over a difficult and rocky pathway.
The craft used in those days were generally from twenty to thirty feet long and four to six wide, flat bottomed and of light draught. On the upper edge and on both sides of these boats ran a walk or plank their entire length, upon which the boatman, whose power alone propelled the vessel, could walk. The mode
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when moving against the current was to place one end of a pole upon the bottom of the stream and the other against the boat- man's shoulder and then by pushing, the craft would glide along while the pilot walked the boat's length.
After passing Little Falls the next obstruction was the shoals at German Flats, now Herkimer. From there to Utica an easy passage was found. But from Utica to Rome the river was more shallow and obstructed by logs and trees felled by settlers as an easier way to dispose of them than by burning. At Rome or Fort Stanwix, a carry was necessary to reach Wood Creek, a small stream, which instead of emptying into the Mohawk, less than three miles distant, with an elevation of land of only two feet between them, flowed by a circuitous route of nearly thirty miles into Oneida Lake, and thence by the Oswego River into Lake Ontario. From the Oswego River the boats slipped into the Seneca River, passing Montezuma, the stopping place for Cayuga County. The Seneca River, as outlet of the Finger Lakes, opened up a wide territory by water.
The Western Inland Lock and Navigation Company pursued a vigorous policy and in two or three years constructed locks at Little Falls, improved the passage at German Flats and removed obstructions between Utica and Rome. The company built a canal at the latter place to connect the Mohawk and Wood Creek, thus shortening the distance to Oneida Lake. By this artery, the first to presage the canals to follow in Central New York, settlers came pouring in.
To improve navigation of the Seneca River between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, the Seneca Lock Navigation Company was incorporated April 6, 1813. Work on the improvement pro- gressed favorably and on June 14, 1818, the first loaded canal boat was locked through at Seneca Falls.
But it was not until the War of 1812 that in the center of the state a realization of the value of water navigation was force- fully impressed upon pioneers. Congress had an embargo on British commerce, during the war, so that the plaster business along Cayuga Lake, centering at Union Springs, was greatly aided. Heavy demand thus sprang up, as this was the only large
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plaster quarry in the United States then known. The stone was shipped by boat to Ithaca and then in wagons thirty miles to Owego, where it was put on boats and transported down the Susquehanna. During this period more than fifty of Philip Yaw- ger's plaster boats at Union Springs were seized by the govern- ment and sent to Sacketts Harbor to transport troops to Can- ada. But the plan was abandoned and the boats, in a great fire, were consumed.
The war so vividly proved the value of lakes and rivers for defense and trade that on April 15, 1817, the Legislature au- thorized the construction of the Erie Canal. This was the great- est engineering undertaking in the new world and gave a new strength to the development of Central New York. Digging was begun July 4. By 1822 there were 222 miles of channel open to navigation and in November, 1823, the schooner, Mary and Hanna, owned by enterprising farmers on Seneca Lake, carried a cargo of wheat from Hector Falls, Schuyler County, to New York, a distance of 350 miles. The start was seventy miles from the Erie, but the connection was made by way of Seneca River through the private locks of the Seneca Lock Navigation Company at Waterloo, Seneca County. This company in 1813 had received a charter to connect Cayuga and Seneca Lakes by canal and finished the job eight years later.
The full line of the Erie Canal was not completed until Octo- ber 26, 1825, when the waters of Lake Erie were admitted and the first boats left Buffalo for New York. There was then no telegraph, but along the route, cannon were fired, bringing the news to the metropolis in just an hour and twenty minutes.
The Seneca Chief, which in 1828 came to Seneca Lake as its first steamer, led the canal fleet. The craft was gaily decorated and carried a distinguished party, including Governor DeWitt Clinton. Crowds gathered at every hamlet, bells rang and pa- rades filled the streets. When the Seneca Chief later made its maiden voyage from Geneva to what is now Watkins Glen, great demonstrations were repeated. The boat plied Seneca Lake for twenty years.
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Construction of the Cayuga and Seneca Canal was author- ized by the Legislature April 20, 1825, to extend from Geneva to Montezuma on the Erie Canal, a distance of twenty-one miles (principally in Seneca County). The state purchased the in- terest and improvements of the old Lock Navigation Company and began work on the canal in 1826. It was opened November 15, 1828. The canal had twelve locks in a descent of seventy- four feet from Geneva to Montezuma and cost $214,000.
The instantaneous success of the Erie Canal stimulated im- mediate plans for connecting it with other sections of Central New York by water. None were more interested in the projects than farmers whose grains went to eastern markets. General George B. McClure, a leading pioneer in the development of Central New York, operated warehouses at Dansville, Penn Yan and Pittston, purchasing wheat from the settlers. This he con- signed annually in large arks and on rafts through the Cohocton and Susquehanna rivers to tidewater at Baltimore. General McClure is credited with having been the first man to undertake commercial navigation on Lake Keuka. He built a fourth ware- house at Hammondsport, at the south end of the lake, simulta- neously placing into operation there a schooner, The Sally, of about thirty tons burden.
The Sally was used in carrying grain purchased from settlers in the vicinity of Canandaigua and Penn Yan over the length of Lake Keuka to Hammondsport. From that point it was hauled by team to Bath where it was shipped by raft over the Cohocton River. But the construction of the Erie Canal changed this route of transportation by the rivers, diverting freight to the northward to meet the canal, instead of southward by the Susquehanna. Lake Keuka, then known as Crooked Lake, advanced to immediate importance from the standpoint of navi- gation.
The Bath agents of the Pulteney estate, which once com- prised a large portion of the western part of Central New York, accepting wheat from settlers in payment for lands purchased, began shipping by barges from Hammondsport to Penn Yan, whence the grain was hauled to Dresden on the west shore of
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Seneca Lake and consigned to lake barges there, finally reaching Geneva and the Erie Canal. To obviate the unloading and re- loading of the grain at Penn Yan and Dresden, the importance of a canal connecting Keuka and Seneca Lakes was recognized by the passage of a bill by the State Legislature in 1831 au- thorizing the Crooked Lake Canal, extending from Penn Yan to Dresden. The length of the canal was seven miles and the "ditch" was completed in 1833. The canal bed proper is now used by the New York Central Railroad as a roadbed. This line was the Fall Brook Railroad before the Central acquired control. Where the old canal bed is not used, the tracks are laid along the towpath. Some of the tracks run through original locks of the old canal, one being located near the old Cascade Paper mill, now the site of the extensive chemical plant of the Taylor Chem- ical Company of Penn Yan and New York City.
There were twenty-eight locks of the lift pattern and the canal was fed by the waters of Lake Keuka. The main lock for the letting in or shutting off of the water was located at Main Street, Penn Yan, where the present bridge crosses the street, and close by, a few feet to the south, was a second bridge over the Minnesetah River, the outlet of Lake Keuka, which flowed into Seneca Lake.
The Crooked Lake Canal was completed at a cost of $137,- 000. Laden canal boats from any point on Lake Keuka were towed over the lake by the early steamboats, to the canal junc- tion at Penn Yan, where they were taken in charge by horses or mules over the canal. When the boats reached Seneca Lake, there were five steamers, operating either north or south. They were The Elmira, S. T. Arnot, P. H. Field, Duncan S. Magee and Canadesega. Large quantities of grain, lumber and farm prod- ucts not naturally perishable within the period of navigation were conveyed over the canal during the thirty-seven years it was in operation. Merchandise was transported on canal boats on their return trips from Albany and New York to the villages in the Lake Keuka region, thus supplying a large number of merchants with their stocks of goods. And the canal boats in
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the seven mile channel lifted their freight up an elevation of 270 feet between Seneca and Keuka Lakes.
The Crooked Lake Canal was abandoned in 1869 or 1870, as a result of a drop in clearances and tolls consequent to railroad competition. The beginning of the end of the canal came with the construction in 1850 of the main line of the Erie Railroad through the southern part of Steuben County, and then the com- pletion in 1852 of the Corning-Avon road, now the Rochester division of the Erie system.
Simultaneously with the completion of the Crooked Lake Canal was the completion of the Chemung Canal. In the spring of 1825 canal commissioners were appointed by the Legislature of that year to determine the best route for a canal from Seneca Lake to the Chemung River. On April 15, 1829, the sum of $300,000 was appropriated by the state for construction of the canal and in 1830 work was started. Colonel Hendy, the pio- neer settler of Elmira, turned the first spadeful of earth at fitting ceremonies marking the start of the building task.
The canal, extending from Watkins Glen on Seneca, to Elmira on the Chemung was extended through a navigable feeder from Horseheads to Corning, making the total length thirty-nine miles. The total cost of all was $344,000, there were fifty-three locks and a rise of 516 feet. Completion of the canal feeder led to the building of the Tioga and Blossburg Railroad leading to Pennsyl- vania coal mines. The canal proved the great outlet for vast lumber operations that employed much capital and labor, and gave the waterway its profits. Just about the time that the lum- ber operations began to wane, the Junction Canal connected it with the Pennsylvania coal regions and inaugurated another era of prosperity. The Chemung canal, by using the inlet of Seneca Lake, also had a spur that reached Montour Falls, three miles from Watkins.
Before the days of the railroads, there were several abortive canal projects launched in various parts of Central New York. They never were brought to fruition but they denoted the ambi- tious character of the builders of the cities and villages of the district today. Typical of these movements to link up with the
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Erie Canal by water was a proposition put forward in Auburn in 1822 for building a canal from Auburn to Port Byron, on the Erie. Meetings were held, speeches made and an influential committee named. But time sped by with no results. Seven years later a new committee was appointed and the project re- vived. The Auburn and Owasco Canal Company was organized and $100,000 subscribed toward the development. The com- pany was incorporated April 20, 1828. Then the proposition of connecting with the Erie was agitated and the matter even reached the State Legislature, but nothing was done upon either canal.
In June, 1835, the Auburn and Owasco Canal Company was reorganized and a big celebration was held in Auburn prelimi- nary to inauguration of the Auburn and Owasco Canal to Port Byron. Work on the Big Dam commenced and an excavation was made as a start of a canal basin. The project failed and the company sold its property on the Owasco River, but it had given the city a dam twenty feet high that added greatly to the utiliza- tion of the water power of the stream. As late as the Twentieth Century, there was agitation to build a canal from Auburn to connect with a new Barge Canal, an outgrowth of the old Erie, but again failure resulted.
Another abortive canal project bobbed up in Cortland County where it was proposed to construct a canal from Syracuse to Port Watson. In 1825 the canal commissioners were instructed to make the necessary examinations as to the feasibility of the project. But nothing came of the idea. In that period it was looked upon as a remarkably poor season for canals when two or three new waterways were not projected and discussed.
Some years after the Erie Canal became a reality, Gen. Wil- liam H. Adams, a prominent citizen of the town of Galen, Wayne County, organized a company to build a canal connecting Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario with the Erie at Clyde. Some work was done on the enterprise and the general's entire fortune was ex- pended on the project, but the canal never materialized.
As years went on, the inadequacy of the old Erie Canal be- came apparent. In 1884 the locks were lengthened. This
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proved a mere makeshift and in 1903, by popular vote, New York State authorized an expenditure of $101,000,000 to convert the Erie into a wider and deeper Barge Canal. Actual construction began in 1905 and the waterway was opened to traffic May 15, 1918. Today the canal system represents a cost of more than $140,000,000. Three fourths of the state's population resides within a half hour walk of the Barge Canal system, and in 1929, a total of 2,876,160 tons of merchandise was transported through the system.
There are three chief branches of the Erie Barge Canal, one of which, the Cayuga and Seneca Canal, lies wholly within Cen- tral New York. This waterway connects Cayuga and Seneca Lakes with the water lanes of the world, Ithaca on Cayuga and Watkins Glen on Seneca being the southern termini. The Cayuga Seneca Canal provides a waterway ninety-two miles long.
Present giant locks of the canal are operated by electricity, with gates that can be opened or closed in thirty seconds, some of the lock gates weighing more than 200,000 pounds.
The original canal was four feet deep and forty-two feet wide. The modern waterway has a twelve feet depth and in most places is at least 200 feet wide.
Boats on the old Erie Canal, drawn by horses or mules, surged slowly along carrying about thirty tons of freight. The new canal has a growing fleet of huge cargo carriers, motor driven, capable of carrying up to 2,100 tons, a load comparable to that carried by many ocean tramp steamers.
Day and night they slip rapidly from one canal level to an- other, guided by green and red signal lights that resemble those controlling railroad trains. Electrically operated locks reduce locking delays to a minimum.
Long, slim and seaworthy, these newest cargo carriers re- semble ordinary ocean ships, lying low in the water and without tall masts or superstructure. Capable of lakes and ocean naviga- tion, this type of canal boat last year traveled regularly from Philadelphia into the state waterways, voyaging up the Atlantic Coast from Cape May, and on through the canal and Great Lakes to Chicago.
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Other fleets of smaller boats have grown up. These operate on fast schedules and move regularly between Buffalo and New York or between other points.
As a result of this improved equipment the canal in recent years has been able to handle greatly increased traffic. In 1925 the canal moved 2,344,013 tons of freight and in 1930, 3,605,457 tons. Last year the total tonnage increased to 3,722,012.
Central New York has two admirable harbors on Lake On- tario today at Fair Haven, Cayuga County, and at Sodus, Wayne County. Thousands of tons of coal are shipped yearly from these ports to Canada. When a proposal to convert the St. Lawrence into an ocean canal becomes a reality, ocean going craft may dock at these two Central New York points.
As early as 1826 the Pocket Gazetteer, of the United States, published in New Haven, says of Sodus Bay: "The best harbor is on the south shore of the lake. It is six or seven miles long and from two to four wide and of sufficient depth for vessels of great burden."
Before the days of the artificial waterways, some of the smaller rivers of Central New York were used for navigation, the first settlers coming along their winding courses in canoes. The Tioughnioga River formed such a water highway for Cort- land County. In the spring and fall when there was usually a freshet, the turbid torrent of this stream carried many arks, filled with produce of settlers, down to the Susquehanna and on to Harrisburg and points on Chesapeake Bay. Some of these arks were ninety feet long with a depth of six or seven feet. After the building of dams was commenced in the river, the arks gave way to scows or flatboats.
An act of the Legislature passed April 15, 1814, provided that the "western branch of the Chenango River, commonly called the Onondaga branch, from the Forks on Lot 66, in the town of Homer, Cortland County, to the upper bridge, on Lot 45 in said town, be and the same is hereby declared to be a public highway." The Tioughnioga flows southward across Cortland County.
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In Wayne County the Clyde River was followed by craft of pioneers and it is significant of the value of navigable water- ways that most of the settlements of the district were along Ganargwa Creek, which branched off at what is now Lyons. The Ganargwa, more commonly known as Mud Creek, was by legis- lative act in 1799 made a public waterway linking eastern mar- kets with the frontier.
CHAPTER IX EARLY RAILROADS.
CAYUGA & SUSQUEHANNA SECOND ROAD IN STATE-HORSES DREW FIRST TRAINS ON AUBURN AND SYRACUSE-SOME LINES LINKED UP WITH STEAMBOATS- ANECDOTES OF EARLY BUILDING PROJECTS-LIVELY CAREER OF LOCOMO- TIVE "SAM PATCH."
The stage coach and the Erie Canal had been magnificent ex- pressions of an indomitable courage, but it was the railroads, spanning hill and valley in Central New York, that first gave evidence that time and distance had definitely come under the control of man. In April, 1834, the first railroad in Central New York was opened. The Cayuga & Susquehanna Railroad, second road chartered in this state, ran its first train between Ithaca and Owego. The road had been chartered still earlier, in 1828, with a capital stock of $150,000. In 1837 the road failed and was sold for $4,500. Today, substantially this same old line chartered to bring lumber, salt and plaster to the Susquehanna and its barge fleet, is known as the Cayuga division of the Dela- ware, Lackawana & Western.
The second railroad into Central New York-the Auburn & Syracuse-was incorporated May 1, 1834, a month after the opening of the Ithaca-Owego line. Its authorized capital was $400,000 and it was to be a continuation of the first road in the state, that from Albany to Schenectady. Settlers scoffed at the idea that a railroad could cross the hills about Auburn. Sub- scriptions had to be forced, the public fearing the competition of packet boats on the Erie Canal. Constant effort among residents between Auburn and Syracuse finally resulted in all the stock being subscribed, but $350,000 of the $400,000 was taken by Auburnians.
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The company organized in 1835 and by 1838 the road was practically completed. The first excursion train upon it made the trip of twenty-three miles January 8, 1838, the train being drawn upon wooden rails by horses of Col. John Sherwood, stage coach magnate. On June 4, 1839, a second excursion went to Au- burn to celebrate the completion of the entire distance, but this was drawn by an engine.
The Auburn & Rochester Railroad Company was organized in 1836 to complete the line from Albany to Rochester. Ground was broken in 1838 at the western end, construction this time working eastward. The first train left Rochester for Canandaigua on Thursday, September 10, 1840, but owing to some hindrances caused by an unfinished track, it did not arrive there until Sun- day and started the return trip on Monday. On September 22 the first time table was issued, after due schedule experiments. These were for freight and passengers, three trains a day. The first conductor on the road was William Failling and the first baggageman Herman G. Miller. The fare from Rochester to Canandaigua was nine shillings, which was afterward reduced to five and then advanced to six.
Soon it was proposed to complete the road eastward to Geneva by May 15, 1841. The work was hurried and the road continued on to Seneca Falls. The first passenger train east to this point ran July 4, 1841. The bridge over Cayuga Lake was completed in September of the same year and during November the road was finished to Auburn, lining up with the Auburn & Syracuse. Two tracks were built between Geneva and Canandaigua, but one was found sufficient and the other taken up. The track con- sisted of scantling about four inches square and laid on top of the ties, upon which were placed strips of half-inch thick, two-inch wide iron, spiked. Often the strips would come loose as the wheels ran over them, and would run through the bottom of the cars. Sometimes these mishaps caused fatalities.
The first train that left Geneva consisted of two coaches and an engine. Each coach would hold fifteen or sixteen people. It was a free train to test the road and it returned the same day, running about ten miles an hour and stopping often. Wood was
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used as fuel. Many people along the line had a great antipathy for the cars. A colored woman, Old Annie Lee, as she was called, had such hatred for the strange conveyance that when the first train came through she armed herself with an axe and, standing in the center of the track, defied the engineer to come farther under danger of having his locomotive cut to pieces. Many times afterward she greased the tracks, making it impossible for trains to proceed until the rails had been cleaned.
In 1853 the direct road from Syracuse to Rochester passing through northern Cayuga County and Wayne County, was com- pleted with a single track. Today it is the four-track main line of the New York Central.
Both the old Auburn & Syracuse and the old Auburn & Rochester now form the Auburn branch of the New York Central.
The early roads often utilized stage and steamboat connec- tions to solicit business. An ancient poster, dated Geneva, June 14, 1849, advertising a "new line from Geneva to New York by the Seneca Land and New York and Erie Railroad" evidences this enterprise and stresses the words "through in twenty-four hours." Instead of the modern steel leviathans of the rails, the poster indicates that the traveler of that age went to a Geneva steamboat office, purchased his ticket, boarded the steamer Rich- ard Stevens, and steamed up Seneca Lake to Jefferson, now Watkins Glen. There he entered a four-horse stage coach, mounted on leather springs, and headed for Owego, there to transfer to the New York and Erie Railroad. Then the traveler was whisked to the metropolis at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. All the advantages of rail, water and stage travel were available for six dollars and fifty cents one way.
The Erie was extended to Elmira in 1849 and to Corning the following year, as it advanced steadily toward Lake Erie. It was on May 14, 1851, that the road was opened to Elmira, which turned out to welcome Millard Fillmore, President of the United States, there for the occasion. Daniel Webster also came, with the president and directors of the road and other notables.
At the Brainard House, now the Rathbun, was the President of the nation, Attorney-General John J. Crittenden, Postmaster-
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General Hall, Senator Douglas of Illinois and 300 others. At Haight's Hotel were Daniel Webster, William H. Seward, Secre- tary Graham, Christopher Morgan and 200 others. From a balcony of the Brainard the President addressed the throngs. It was one of the biggest days in Elmira's history.
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