Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 16

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

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During the last few years a remarkably fine and expensive roadbed has been constructed under New York Central auspices, known as

the Franklin & Clearfield railroad. It has a fine double trackbed, has many tunnels and bridges. It seems designed as a connecting link between the Lake Shore at Franklin, and other parts of the New York Central east. At present it is used as a freight line. A part of this track is also used by General Miller's road, as it is named here, and the part so used carries both passengers and freight. This road is known as the Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion Railroad.

We have thus the following great systems of railways entering Venango county and ram- ifying to every nook and remotest corner of our vast territory :

Ist, The New York, Lake Erie & Western. 2d, The Pennsylvania.

3d, The New York Central, including the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.

It is evident that Venango county is as well supplied with railroad facilities as any county in the country. It has close connections with all the lines in the United States. The busi- ness here is increasing to such an extent that notable improvements for handling it are in contemplation.

CHAPTER VI INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

TOWN OF FRANKLIN-ROADS-WATERWAYS-ALLEGHENY RIVER AND FRENCH CREEK-CANALS- SCHOOLS-CONTEMPLATED HIGHWAYS

The creation of the town of Franklin, by act of the legislature April 18, 1795, was the the first internal improvement made by the State in the territory afterward known as Venango county. The town thus antedates the county, of which it is the capital, by five years. In pursuance of this act, Andrew Elli- cott and William Irwin were appointed com- missioners to attend to the survey and to the division of the section into lots, streets, alleys and parks. In 1789, when the Commonwealth was locating the territory to be used as dona- tion lands, Andrew Ellicott had recommended the survey and reservation to State uses of sections, not exceeding three thousand acres each, at the mouth of French creek, of the Conewango, and at Presque Isle. This had the effect of withdrawing these lands from settlement. Therefore the act of 1795 was

passed with the object of hastening the settle- ment of the lands hitherto held in reserve for State purposes. The commissioners acted promptly, and in the same year the plan of the town appeared upon the map. The governor was authorized to sell, or cause to be sold one- third of the lots, after duly advertising the time, place and terms of sale for at least eight weeks in one paper in every county of the State in which a newspaper was published. The lots were to be sold at public auction. The condition was that the occupants within two years should erect a house sixteen feet square, having a brick or stone chimney, upon each and every lot by them purchased. This con- dition was generously waived by the State, later; it was said that the settlers in the early purchases had assumed a liability of two dol- lars to eighteen dollars for each lot. The

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terms, easy as they seem now, were difficult then; a man might start a home on a four- hundred acre tract by paying a dollar down; and secure a hundred acres in fee by making the necessary improvements within two years.

The duty of the governor in advertising, as required by the act, would be discharged by printing the announcement of the sale in a small number of papers. At that date there were less than two hundred newspapers in the entire country. Of the twelve published in Pennsylvania, the majority were in Phila- delphia county; York had issued one since the beginning of the Revolution, and Berks probably possessed one; Pittsburgh and Harris- burg, where, ten years before, the country was a wilderness, were at this time just on record as each possessing a newspaper. It is prob- able, therefore, that the Commonwealth set forth the method of obtaining a lot in Franklin in six or seven different newspapers for eight successive weeks. The result of this act was a finely planned town essentially as it is to-day; except some additions of territory that have been effected. The place was now ready for settlers. The legislature fittingly acknowledged its value as a county center, while three different national governments had recognized it as a point of great strategic im- portance. The settlers were slow in coming. It was not till 1828 that Franklin attained the dignity of a separate incorporated borough. But having made all needed preparations the State could wait, so could the town, for the planting and growth of homesteads.

ROADS

Early in the history of the county the State assumed the responsibility of assisting in the building of roads. It has already been noted that in the land warrants granted to settlers or to land companies there was included enough, in addition to the acres granted, to provide the necessary roads. The State sur- veyed and laid out at its own expense certain highways, known as State roads, which ex- tended across the county, connecting important points beyond the county limits on its opposite boundaries. As Franklin was at the center of the county, these roads were generally planned to pass through that place, then on by the most practicable route, to the terminus, a county seat or other desirable connecting point. This policy was of value to the county in a number of ways. It furnished different sections with roads to their county town or to further lines of travel; and at a time when they

could not have done it for themselves, very well. To their assistance came the skillful surveyors of the Commonwealth, wise to plan; and, from long experience and broad knowl- edge of the territory, expert in suggesting ways and means. They were the instructors of the people in road building; they were also the supervisors, directly, or indirectly, of the work done.

The State also expended considerable sums to assist in building these roads after they had been laid out and their construction had begun. In 1806, three hundred dollars was thus appro- priated and used in the county for the im- provement of the State highways. In 1807 the sum provided by the State was $1,300; in 1811, $500; in 1821, $4,000 ; in 1828, $2,000; in 1838, $5,600. The total of appropriations from 1806 to 1838 inclusive is $13,700, be- sides the expenses of surveying and of super- vision provided by State officials.

WATERWAYS-ALLEGHENY RIVER AND FRENCH CREEK

In this connection may be included an appropriation of one thousand dollars to im- prove the navigation of the Allegheny river and French creek, March 24, 1817. Previous to this date an appropriation was made by the legislature to improve French creek. But of what amount, or how it was used, no record can be found. But the later one of 1817 has a specific amount, and was undoubtedly applied fully in memory of the men who so recently had waded up stream backwards to push toward Erie the supplies for the building of Perry's fleet. Upon the beautiful valley then, as it does now, rested a halo of patriotism, bright by day as the sun, or gleaming at night as the constellations sweeping overhead touched the ripples with flashing light. The valley is filled with memories potent to quicken the life of the present with confidence in the future. What the river men and set- tlers along its banks accomplished in the hot weeks of June and July will never be blotted out of the nation's history. Their efforts sailed out across the bar with Perry's fleet and made possible the message, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." The water in French creek was unusually abundant till August, 1813. Had it been otherwise, the flatboats would have sailed into Erie upon the morning dews. They would have arrived. No other valley, so short, has been so fortified, so fought for. so prized by four successive peo- ples as Washington's French creek; not in

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worthy to receive wide recognition as were the shots fired at Concord a generation before.

our country, perhaps not in any other land. In this one instance, it was the artery from the heart of the people to the brain planning victory. The supplies for the ships were CANALS laboriously navigating the shallows, while the long train of covered powder wagons was The legislature, realizing the importance of a waterway between the Allegheny and Lake Erie, on March 30, 1823, passed an act ap- pointing Commissioners to explore a route to connect the waters of French creek with Lake Erie. An act passed April 9, 1827, directed operations to be commenced upon a feeder to summit level. Subsequent acts of April 11 and April 14, 1827, forbade the use of this feeder, respectively to the Allegheny and Conewango Canal Company, and to the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal Company. On March 21, 1831, $60,000 was appropriated by legislative action to make a canal or slackwater navigation up French creek from its mouth to French creek feeder. Feb. 16, 1833, an appropriation was granted to complete this canal; and on April 5, 1834, another appropriation "to complete the canal" was made. These appropriations amounted to one and one-quarter million dol- lars. Afterwards about fifty thousand dollars was spent upon repairs. After this the appro- priations ceased and the slackwater navigation of French creek entered a period of desuetude. It is recorded that only two boats passed up French creek from Franklin to Meadville in this canal. The first arrived on June 6, 1834. and the second, the "French Creek Pioneer," on Nov. 14, 1834. One only is usually credited ; but there were two. convoyed over the mountains, along old trails, through the woods, across fords. Both reached the little town on Lake Erie in time to help create a great victory. Sentiment was back of it all, brought it into being; the strong soul of a nation intensively willing to be free. That a self-indulgent, vicious king and court of pampered peacocks over the seas should as- sume to own them, affected these men like a horrible burlesque of the Deity Whom they had found under the arched roofs of the forest columns. A king or puppet princeling, could not supplant conscience and even God him- self. in the religion of the men of the early nineteenth century. A century later finds the old feudal autocratic idea emerging again in full panoply, devastating the fair earth with its devilish devices. The trouble begins when one man owns another. It is multiplied by millions, when the one owns a nation. There were prophets in the French creek valley in those days. They looked into the future and saw coming events. Throughout the country, the eyes of men were opened to the same vision. Impossibilities, as the invaders viewed it, occurred everywhere. Consider one illus- tration from a neighboring State, at that same time. A hemp hawser a foot thick and four hundred and fifty feet long was needed at Sackett's Harbor, on Lake Ontario, to outfit This work was begun when the policy of the State was to make internal improvements on its own account. Just then canals were thought to be the best institutions of the age. That thought was true then, and it is also true in this year 1918 A. D. In our country, which stretches across a continent, east and west, and a three-decker nearing completion there. Men, in relays of one hundred each, were needed to carry this rope of three tons' weight upon their shoulders through the woods for sixty miles. The enemy held the lake, there were no roads with possible means of conveyance ; but the hawser came. Men who looked into, two thousand miles north and south, where the future with imperturbable spirits, like those all our transportation systems are periodically blocked by the enormous amounts of freight requiring movement for long distances by our one hundred million inhabitants, canals are a growing necessity. This need has become acute since we have attempted to feed the war- blasted countries of the Old World. This will be more keenly felt under all conditions when our population has doubled, or trebled as it will during the next century. Canals were good then, they are necessary now, and will probably be built and used more and more in all large territories where the density of the population is constantly increasing. This old- est form of artificial waterway is getting ap- of French creek and of northern New York, were in all the States then, along the frontiers. Such men are not conquered; they may be outnumbered and die; but their souls are un- daunted. Had they been of the ancient Greek race or of the Iroquois, they would pass through the legends of those peoples with the attributes of gods. With us they are honored most by the qualities of their children's chil- dren a hundred years later. The glory of the deeds done in French creek valley in the sum- mer of 1813, was apparent to the Common- wealth and to the whole country in the October day of Perry's victory. Such efforts are as

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preciation again. Even at this moment a ship canal is planning to connect Pittsburgh with Lake Erie, to cheapen the handling of ores from the West. Water freight is less costly than any other, and when the needed articles begin to arrive in this way they will continue to come fast enough. The return trips from the cities need not be made with empty boats, for they can carry back as ballast the merchan- dise needed by those distant points, which to reach was the first aim in providing the canal. Thus freight carriage will be cheapened in both directions, commerce will increase to the de- velopment of each end of the line.

The French Creek Canal Company was mis- led by the memories of the older settlers upon the banks. They doubtless saw the waters yet through the halo cast upon them by the men in 1813. They forgot that those men were urged by the goddess they loved as they dragged or carried up the shallows the boats which floated only in the reaches of the still pools. Marks upon the landings were scored, below which the settlers believed the water did not fall in the driest seasons. The corporators therefore believed that by the construction of wing dams and channel walls over or at the side of the shallows, a way would be made for the passage of boats. But the water fell be- low the marks a foot or more, the first season, and the canal gave promise of becoming only a series of shallow, stagnant pools. The hopes of the company must have fallen with the water, but like the resourceful general who, when one plan fails, immediately tries some other, they abandoned the wing dams and channel walls and adopted the plan of making artificial pools with sluiceways. They built crib-dams, filled with stones across the bed of the stream at convenient intervals, with an arti- ficial channel at several points to the locks. The plan was to allow the dam to fill and over- flow till the water below was at its natural stage, then to open the sluiceway for the boat to pass out upon the flood thus produced, into the dam below. where the process was repeated down to the Allegheny. Passage for boats was furnished by this method, for some years, downstream. Pleasant, even exhilarating, must the trip have been, with its occasional stops, the glide through the sluice as the water fell away from the bottom of the boat, and the rapid run over the rippling waves of the brief flood, into the quiet water of the next dam. When the stream was just high enough, the truth of a classic saying appeared, "to descend is easy. but to ascend is difficult"-so difficult that after the first two boats succeeded, from

Franklin to Meadville, it was thought to be impossible. No sooner was the construction of the crib-dams completed in 1834 than the disadvantages began to appear. In high water the dams were not needed by the boats passing down. They were an obstruction and even dangerous ; for unless the sluiceways and locks were kept in working order and carefully at- tended, the boats might be carried over the dams, instead of through them in the way planned. It was also evident that the ap- proach of boats upstream to the locks would become impossible during high water. At- tempts demonstrated this. In the dry season, the water collected back of the cribs, only about as fast as evaporation and seepage dis- posed of it. So there were formed a series of stagnant pools in the bed of the stream. A last attempt to "repair the canal" was author- ized by the legislature by act of April 14, 1838, but with no result apparent.

Shortly after the last date mentioned, the Beaver and Shenango route had been fixed upon as the means of water communication between Lake Erie and the Ohio river, and that enterprise seemed sufficient for the north- western part of the State. The feelings of the people were naturally painful as they beheld the decay of public works from which so much had been expected, and found expression in informal action at mass meetings at various times. A meeting of this nature was held in Franklin courthouse on the evening of Dec. 3, 1842 : T. S. McDowell presided, with James S. Myers and Myron Park vice presidents, James Bleakley and Alexander Cochran, secretaries. The committee appointed to ex- press the sense of the meeting consisted of John W. Howe, Richard Irwin, Samuel Hays, Samuel F. Dale and James Ross Snowden. Several of the resolutions, with the preamble, presented by James Ross Snowden for the committee, were as follows:

WHEREAS, Various appropriations have been made by the Commonwealth since the year 1826 to her public improvements, among which is the French Creek division of the Pennsylvania canal, which is composed of the Franklin line and the French Creek feeder; and whereas the said work for want of sufficient repairs has become in a great measure dilapidated ; and not only the commercial advantages sought to be secured by the construction of the same have not been attained, but it is now causing an injury to the navigation of the stream by render- ing it more difficult and tedious than the natural navigation. And whereas, should the Erie exten- sion be completed and this line kept in repair the interests and property of the country bordering on the Allegheny and French creek and their tributaries would be subserved and encouraged and the gen- eral interests of the Commonwealth protected, and

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it is believed that further appropriations from the State Treasury in its present state of embarrass- ment can not reasonably be expected. And whereas, the importance of this work imperatively demands its preservation and protection and it would be un- just, unwise and impolitic to suffer it further to de- cay, and thus instead of subserving the interests of the county by promoting its commerce and naviga- tion, become an absolute loss by producing stagnant pools and obstructing the natural navigation; there- fore,

Resolved, That the restoration and repair of the French Creek division of the Pennsylvania canal is of the deepest importance to an extensive region of country, thereby affording an outlet to market to the citizens residing thereon for their various productions, as well as opening up an important channel to the commerce of the State. But we would especially refer to the market it would afford to the iron, which is now manufactured in large quantities by the counties of Armstrong, Clarion and Venango, and which may be enlarged to an al- most unlimited extent.

Resolved, That we view with alarm and surprise the startling fact that the water of French creek, a large and navigable stream to which God and nature have given us an indefeasible title, is about to be diverted from its natural channel and carried down the Shenango and Beaver creeks, through the partial policy of those who have been engaged in conducting the public works whilst the French creek division, although actually completed, has been suf- fered to go out of repair and become an absolute obstruction, rendering the navigation greatly in- ferior to what it was in its natural state; that if this policy and course are passively submitted to and further pursued, the water of this large stream during the season of the year when most required for navigation will be entirely diverted from its natural channel, and thus also its waterpower for mills and other works be entirely destroyed.

Resolved, That should this project be consum- mated and the French Creek division be thus de- stroyed, it would be an act of the most gross in- justice and a direct violation of all equitable and just principles, not only to the citizens generally who reside in this section of country, but especially to those who reside on the borders of the stream and who have paid for those rights which are now sought to be taken away.

It was further charged at this meeting, that the decayed state of the line was caused by the Canal Commissioners who failed to give French creek its share of the appropriation for repairs; and further, that the board had solemnly promised the representatives from this district in the session of 1840 that the line should be put in repair, in violation of which they had refused any amount whatever when the appropriation bill became a law. It was urged that the Shenango route had never been authorized except with the understanding that improved navigation should be simultaneously constructed to the mouth of French creek as a substitute for its natural navigation, and as an equivalent for the water to supply the Erie extension. Any other arrangement would be

an act of flagrant injustice, on the part of the Commonwealth, it was declared, depriving a large number of citizens of the benefits of natural navigation and bestowing upon others advantages which they had no right to enjoy. As the improvement of French creek was a matter of urgent necessity, and the condition of the public treasury would not warrant any help from that source, the most feasible means of procedure was thought to be the incorpora- tion of a company for completing the work already done and for making the necessary repairs. James Ross Snowden, Samuel Hays, William Elliott, Thomas S. Espy, and John W. Howe were appointed a committee to memori- alize the legislature at the approaching session, and prepare the address to that body. The Franklin Canal Company was incorporated by act of April 27, 1844. It was also authorized in 1849, April 9th, to elect officers on or before Aug. Ist next, and, irregularities cured, was authorized to build a railroad and to use the graded line or towing path as a road bed, and to extend lines to Erie and to Pittsburgh. This would have effected a most notable im- provement in the navigation of French creek. Samuel S. Adrain was authorized, act of April 18, 1853, to improve the navigation of French creek, but not to interfere with the rights of the Franklin Canal Company. The charter of this canal company was annulled by act of Jan. 28, 1854. But the roadbed already sur- veyed was of use later in getting the Atlantic & Great Western to extend a branch to Frank- lin. Thus in seeking to knot one thread, other threads are sometimes tied, as Victor Hugo wisely remarks.

The resolutions passed at Franklin court- house in December, 1842, did not result in any improvement in the French creek canal. An act of legislature passed Feb. 10, 1849, sought to promote free navigation by requiring owners of dams to construct chutes. This would seem to imply that some of the State dams had been sold, or that others had been built for manufacturing purposes. The Canal Com- missioners were authorized April 9, 1849, to sell the State dam at Franklin with lots of land attached to dam and lock, purchaser to keep dam and lock in repair.

The stream was used for some years for descending navigation. The dams proved to be a hindrance rather than a help, and were destroyed, with the exception of the one at the mouth of the creek, which still continued to be used for power purposes. This dam was broken down by a flood two years ago. The stream has now returned to its original con-

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dition, described in the resolutions of 1842, as "French creek, a large and navigable stream, to which God and nature have given us an indefeasible title." The only indica- tions of this brave attempt of the State are the remains of the dams. along the banks, consisting of mounds of earth and stones, from which the ends of timbers project, the finis of the cribs; and of channel walls, which were not required for the railroad bed, below the mounds. These channels are now usually dry, and from their beds are elm or swamp ash trees at least a foot in diameter that have grown up in less than the hundred years of opportunity. They are quite as large as the "great trees" which have ap- peared along Oil creek in and between the oil pits whose origin nobody knows, and it has therefore been imputed to the "ancient mound builders." Some of the channels hold shal- low pools, with beautifully-ugly, shiny-green, bulge-eyed, burlesque embodiments of the spirit of the pool sitting just above the water, intensely at home. As the incautious fisher- man passes, "it makes a noise like swallowing its own throat twice," as a boy said, and dis- appears with a splash. Or with a quiet ap- proach, a red bass-fly may be dropped in front of the grotesque thing, which may be drawn across the pool after it has nailed the fly with its tongue and shut its broad mouth with a "plop" faintly heard through the ripples' mur- mur.

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Venango County, Pennsylvania: Her Pioneers and People (Volume 1), Part 16

Author: Babcock, Charles A. Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Babcock, Charles A.
Publication date: 1879
Publisher:
Number of Pages: