The Middlesex Canal: Boston’s First Big Dig (episode 225)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to hub history, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 225, Boston’s First Big Dig.
Hi, I’m jake! This week, I’m talking about the Middlesex canal.
In the last decade of the 18th century, a group of investors turned a crazy idea into reality.
After some initial stumbles, they were able to successfully build a navigation canal from boston Harbor to the Merrimack River and Lowell,
in an era before highways and airports became the first practical freight link between the markets and wharves of boston and the vast interior of New England in Central Mass and New Hampshire.
However, its perceived success was short lived with the coming of the railroad spelling doom for the canal business.
Stay tuned to learn how the Middlesex canal against all odds became an unparalleled feat of engineering while remaining a commercial failure.

[1:07] But before I talk about boston’s first big dig, I want to pause and thank everyone who supports hub history on Patreon.
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And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:32] Regular listeners might recall that our last episode was about john Hancock and his shenanigans as a smuggler, culminating in the Liberty riot in june of 17 68.

[2:44] At the time we introduced, Hancock is an ambitious young merchant with an enormous fortune and an eye for politics.
There have been a lot of water under the bridge, however, and the 25 years in two weeks that passed between the Liberty Affair and the signing of the charter for the Middlesex canal,
Hancock signed the articles of confederation led 6000 members of the Massachusetts militia in the Battle of Rhode Island, which didn’t turn out well.
He got elected as the first governor under the state constitution, written by his colleague, john Adams, resigned as governor, got reelected and immediately pardon the rebels who fought in Shay’s Rebellion during James Baden’s brief interregnum.
Along the way, he got elected as the president of the confederation Congress, but declined to serve lead the massachusetts ratifying convention that replaced the articles of confederation with the constitution,
And ended up running for president under that constitution in 1789.
Maybe you’ve already heard this, but he didn’t win.
Instead, he got soundly beaten by George Washington and vice president john Adams when Hancock signed the charter establishing the Middlesex canal, he was in the final year of his final term, though he didn’t know it yet.
A few months after the charter was signed, John Hancock would pass away in October 1793 at age 56.

[4:14] When he signed the charter, Hancock was signing on to do the impossible.
It probably goes without saying, but throughout North American history, right up to the mid 19th century oceans, lakes and rivers were the best way to travel.
English colonists arrived on ships and quickly adopted canoes from the indigenous population for traversing inland waterways through centuries of colonial wars, control of rivers and lakes could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
That’s why so much of the revolution was fought along the Hudson champlain corridor connecting new york city with Montreal.
And the years after independence, rivers like the Hudson, the Connecticut, the Delaware, the Susquehanna and the potomac allowed other cities to carry on valuable commerce deep into the interior of the country.

[5:06] The problem with rivers of course, is that they don’t go everywhere that you want to.
The mighty Charles River only goes as far as Hopkinton and not all of that length is navigable.
The neponset pretty quickly peters out in Foxboro.
The closest river that allowed trade deep into the interior was the Merrimack which winds its way north in New Hampshire past Nashua Concord and Manchester.
The problem with the Merrimack was a series of rapids and falls, each of which required goods to be offloaded off. A boat carted around the obstacle and loaded back onto boats on the other side, adding costly delays to shipping.

[5:47] It was these delays that the Middlesex canal would try to bypass pretty quickly. After arriving on the continent, massachusetts, colonists started digging canals.
As we saw an episode 59, colonists in Dedham dug an industrial canal called the mother Brook.
By 1640, navigational canals were trickier in order to get around rapids, waterfalls, and other impossible stretches of a river.
Canal, boats somehow had to be raised and lowered while keeping the water level on either side.
Just a few years before Hancock signed the charter canals, it seemed like a practical impossibility.
In 1760, Hancock’s ally and occasional rival John Adams have been amazed by a description of the canals and locks. In old England.
Writing in his diary, Cranch says he has seen the works for conveying ships of a cataract as that between tops of an exeter vessels are conveyed along uphill.
So three miles they rise uphill as far as from the bottom of the long wharf to the top of Beacon Hill.
They have walls of great thickness and strength built across the river with gates of timber fortified with irons in the middle.

[7:04] These gates are opened and the vessels float within the wall.
The gates are then shut, and the fresh running water of the river let down into that apartment where the vessel is, which soon raises the vessel as high as the top of the lower walls.
When the gates of the second wall are opened and the vessel is floated within that then the second gate is shut and the fresh it raises the vessel up another stair.

[7:29] These gates have several smaller sluice gates in them that slide up and down.
These slide up and let out as much water as they can before they pretend to open the great gates.
This whole passage, in conveyances artificial for the natural course of the river was at some distance.
The whole channel was cut by art, What an expense to cut such a channel for three miles to erect such and so many walls across the river to build such gates and such machines to open them.

[8:01] The first navigational canal in the US. Open along the Connecticut River in South Hadley in 1795,
It had to traverse a 53 ft drop known as great falls Instead of the locks that Sean Adams had described 35 years earlier.
The proprietors of the South Hadley Canal used an inclined plane To raise a lower large, flat boats on carts that kept them level as waterwheel driven chains, pulled them up or down over the course of about 15 minutes.

[8:32] Before construction began on the Middlesex Canal. Further, small canals have been constructed along the Connecticut and Turners Falls, and m bellows falls up in Vermont and a handful of canals were under construction in the Southern States.
None of these, however, could hold a candle to the Middlesex in an 18 oh seven report on internal improvements like roads and canals, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin praised the Middlesex canal is it neared completion, writing,
the Middlesex canal, uniting the waters of that river with the harbor of boston is the greatest work of the kind which has been completed in the United States.
That canal 12 ft wide and 3.5 ft deep, draws its supply of water from sub barrier concord river, a branch of the Merrimack,
and from the summit ground extends six miles with the descent of 28 ft to the Merrimack above the Pawtucket Falls and 22 miles with the descent of 107 ft to the tidewater of the harbor of boston.

[9:35] The descent to the merrimack is affected by three and that to the tidewater by 19 locks, They’re all 90 ft long, 12 ft wide of solid masonry, in excellent workmanship.

[9:50] In order to construct this canal that would eventually connect boston with Lowell The proprietors would have to overcome a lot of obstacles, but it would be worth it.
The canal would benefit both Bostonians and new Hampshire rights by making trade between them easier and more economical.
The only loser would be Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimack which would dwindle in importance for the first time.
The canal would make it cost effective to ship granite from Chelmsford to boston, or it was prized for its light, almost white color compared to the granite that had been previously available soon.
Quincy Market MGH and many other majestic public buildings were built of Chelmsford stone.

[10:37] The canal would carry animal hides trapped in maine, as well as the tree bark harvested in new Hampshire that was used to tan them.
Farm products like cheese, butter, fresh and salted beef and pork, flour, cider, and hey could be sold for a profit.
At boston’s haymarket, manufactured goods were sent up the canal from the port of boston, and later sent in both directions from the new mills.
At Lowell inland, farmers got access to cod salt and other foodstuffs that couldn’t be produced locally imported.
Building materials like lime and plaster, went up the canal, and timber came back down huge timber harvests could be floated down the Merrimack tributaries, down the main river and then down the canal.
As noted in an article from the Medford Historical Society in the beginning, Medford was to be the natural terminus of the canal.
Boats and barges would continue down to boston by the Mystic River.
This made it possible for lumber from new Hampshire forests to come immediately into the village for the use of the new shipbuilding industry.

[11:47] This important industry flourished in Medford for a quarter of a century after the passing of the canal break from the Medford brick yards, went up the canal and helped to build mills and Lowell in New Hampshire,
who knows how many private houses up country were built with the same bricks, which came out of Medford’s clay pits along with bricks.
The canal would carry machine parts to Lowell were enormous textile mills were built to harness the very rapids and falls that the Middlesex canal bypassed.

[12:18] It would carry raw wool and cotton to the mills and carry finished cloth and garments back to boston’s port.
It would even carry the components of the first locomotive for the boston and Lowell line that was assembled in Lowell and eventually drove the canal out of business.

[12:35] Before all that potential could be realized. However, somebody had to dig the canal.

[12:42] The charter that John Hancock signed 228 years ago this week established the company that would take on the project and it named the officers of the company.

[12:53] Be it therefore enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled,
that the said James Sullivan Oliver, Preska, James Winthrop, Loammi Baldwin Benjamin Hall, Jonathan, Porter Andrew Hall, Ebeneezer Hall,
Samuel toughs, Junior, Aaron Brown, Willis Hall Samuelson, Jr.
And Ebeneezer Hall, Jr.
Their associates and successors are hereby incorporated and shall be a corporation forever under the name of the proprietors of the Middlesex canal.
And by that name may sue and prosecute and be sued and prosecuted to final judgment and execution and shall be and hereby are vested with all the powers and privileges which are by law incident to corporations of a similar nature.

[13:42] Corporations were still a fairly new invention at the time,
As we learned back in episode 115 about the earliest bridges connecting Boston to the mainland.
The 1785 Charter establishing the Proprietors of the Charles River Bridge, created the First Corporation of Note in Massachusetts.
Now, less than 10 years later, another public works program would be carried out by a new corporation,
surprisingly, although the charter gives the corporation the name proprietors of the Middlesex canal, nowhere does it specify what exactly the company is supposed to do?
It doesn’t say what the canals meant to be used for, or where it would go to and from.
It does get somewhat into the details of what it takes to build a canal.

[14:30] Provided that, whereas it may be necessary in the prosecution of the foregoing business, that the property of private persons may, as in the case of highways, be appropriated for the public use,
in order that no person may be damaged by the digging and cutting of canals through his land by removing mills or mill dams, Diverting water courses are flowing his land by the proprietors of four said, without receiving full and adequate compensation.
Therefore, Be it enacted by the Authority of Force?
Said that in all cases where any persons shall be damaged in his property by the said proprietors for the purposes of force, said,
in a manner as as above expressed or in any other way, and the proprietors of force said, do not within 20 days after being requested there to make or tender reasonable satisfaction to the acceptance of the person damaged.
The person so damaged may apply to the court of the general sessions of the Piece for the county in which the damage shall have been sustained.

[15:29] It may not say where the canal is supposed to go, but the charter goes on for days like this, laying out exactly how damages and judgments should be brought against the company.
What the penalties would be for anyone who damaged canal property, who got to design bridges over the canal, and which river’s waters were off limits for filling the canal?
The document also implemented a 10 year deadline on construction,
Be it further enacted by the authority of Four, said that if the proprietors of four said, shall refuse or neglect for the space of 10 years after the passing of this act to build and complete such canal so as to be possible in manner of four said.
Then this act, so far as it respects the same, shall be void and of none effect.

[16:16] Further legislation would amend the charter in 1790 for extending the ten-year deadline to enable the company to connect the canal to Charlestown,
In 1795, increasing the dollar value of real estate the company was empowered to hold,
And in 1798, enabling it to buy and operate mills and adjusting the toll rates it was allowed to charge.
Another extension was passed in 1802, with the provision that the proprietors would enable canal boats to cross the Charles to Boston.
Further extensions were passed in 1808 and 1809, giving the company until 1813 to finish the canal from the Concord River to the Boston side of the Charles.

[17:00] Now that the corporation was chartered, you might think that it was time to start digging not so fast. Partner.
First, the proprietors had to figure out the route of the canal from Medford to the Merrimack And as an 1843 company history points out that wasn’t as simple as it sounded.

[17:20] The board of directors being duly organized. The next duty was to commence the necessary surveys of the most eligible route between Medford River and Chelmsford by the Concord River.
Here the committee were met by an almost insurmountable difficulty.
The science of civil engineering was almost unknown to anyone in this part of the country.
They were, however, determined to persevere and appointed mr Samuel Thompson of Woburn, who began his work and proceeded from Medford River at a place near the location of the present lock,
and followed up the river to Mystic Pond through the Pond and Sims River to Horn Pond and Woburn, and through said Pond to the head there of,
beating here bars they could neither let down nor remove.
They went back to Richardson’s Milan Sims River, and passed up the valley through the eastern part of Woburn to Wilmington,
and found an easy and very regular ascent until they reached the Concord River, a distance traveled, as the surveyor says,
From Medford Bridge to the Bill Rika Bridge about 23 miles, And the ascent he found to be from Medford River to the Concord 68 and 1/2 ft.

[18:34] The actual elevation, when afterwards surveyed by a practical engineer, was found to be 104 ft,
by the original survey from Bill Record of Chelmsford The surveyor says the water we estimate in the Merrimack at 16 and one half feet above that it They’ll Rika Bridge, and the distance six miles,
When in fact the water at Billerica Bridge is about 25 ft above the Merrimack at Chelmsford this report shows one of the many difficulties the directors had to contend with for the one of requisite scientific knowledge.

[19:13] That’s a critical error because the proprietors wouldn’t be able to get water from the Merrimack to flow uphill to Bill Rika.
Instead, they’d have to find another water source for the canal.
But before they committed to a water source, they needed a competent surveyor to provide a plan of the countryside with accurate elevations.
Unless they repeat the mistake.

[19:35] At this point, Loammi Baldwin would take control of the canal project.
From an engineering point of view, baldwin had commanded the Woburn militia during the Battle of Concord and Lexington that enlisted in the Continental Army and fought in the new york and New Jersey campaign,
including the famous crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton.
That followed After resigning from the Army due to ill health. In 1777, he became a local politician in Woburn.
Today. He is remembered as the father of american civil engineering.
Rowley basically stumbled into as a result of his investment in the canal project.
After the first botched survey, baldwin stepped in and took a stronger hand in the project because nobody else did.
As a 2017 article in the Journal of the American Society of Civil Engineering points out clearly the team needed an expert.
There was only one in the country. The englishman William Weston, who mary Stetson Clark wrote, had gained a high reputation in his own country for canal construction.

[20:43] He was in philadelphia overseeing the construction of the school and Susquehanna Canal.
So they had to persuade him to come to boston, Baldwin traveled to Philadelphia to make the pitch, bringing letters of introduction and offered a match.
His current salary and add $1,000 Baldwin secured one more critical item.
An early version of the Y level, which clark described as the first accurate leveling instrument made use of in America.
The device combined a magnetic needle, spirit level and telescope. It was used in conjunction with a graduated station staff.
It was the prototype of the present day transit and rod.

[21:29] If you’ve ever seen surveyors at work, you’ve seen a modern transit which measures elevation changes as well as the azimuth or direction of a line.
The older Y level was the first accurate way to measure elevation changes.
It consisted of a tripod base with a sighting telescope in a rotating mount on top of the tripod, a spirit level in the mount ensures the scope is perfectly level.
Then the surveyor looks through the scope insights through a cross hairs.
Two assistants hold staffs firmly to the ground with hash marks indicating their height.

[22:06] The surveyor first sites on one staff noting that the scope is level with, say, the three ft hash mark.
Then he turns insights on the other staff noting the scope is now level with the 8.5 ft hash mark.
The difference between the two means that there’s a 5.5 ft elevation change between the two staffs seems simple enough, but it was clearly beyond Samuel Thompson’s abilities in the first survey, The article continues.
The 2nd survey was more successful. Weston’s report in 1794, argued that the ground he and Baldwin surveyed was extremely favorable for cutting, being chiefly sand and peat, and though in some places rocky and irregular,
yet I know a few or no instances of canals of the same length and crossing the country in a direction perpendicular to the natural course of the waters that are conducted in ground as favorable as this,
he proposed to roots and eastern one through Reading and stone, um and a western one through Bill Rika.
The eastern route would have been cheaper, but the Western one was closer to towns in the area and hence easier to connect to roads.
Moreover, the Western route was 3/4 of a mile shorter and the planned locks could be built closer together, making passage through them faster for boats.
This is the route that the canal board joe’s.

[23:33] In a paper read before the Medford Historical Society in 1902 Moses, Witcher Man notes that the Concord River would be the ultimate water source for the canal.

[23:44] 11 streams of various size float across, and all but one below its course.
The Concord River at North Bill Rika crossed it at grade and being at its highest level, would supply it in either direction with water.

[24:01] Romans conquered. River crossing the canal would drop 25 ft in six miles to its northern terminus in Lowell And it would drop 106 ft over 22 miles in the other direction to Charlestown.

[24:13] In an era before steam power, the work of building the canal fell to men and horses.
And as the article in the Journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers points out, it was often subcontracted and a young country such as the United States, there was little in the way of professional labor.
Most of the work was done by landowners who had property along the canal route.
They enlisted their brothers, sons, friends, and neighbors, 1991 pamphlet from U. Mass. Lowell’s Center for Lowell History Similarly notes at the time of construction, the available labor pool was small.
The area was thinly settled and most people were farmers unable to leave their lands for extended periods.
In many cases, landowners were hired to complete the section of canal that ran adjacent to their property.

[25:07] Man’s paper goes on to describe what the finished product would look like and why it often wouldn’t be easy for the neighboring property owners to build the canal themselves Briefly described.
The canal was a ditch 30 ft wide and four ft deep below its banks.
Sometimes these were below the natural surface of the ground, but in many places artificial embankments were required to preserve the various levels Of which there were eight,
Between these ladder, which varied from 1 to 6 miles in length.
16 locks, like huge steps, were built, overcoming a rise of 104 ft from tidewater at Charlestown to the concord of Bill Rika And a descent of 26 ft to the Merrimack at Chelmsford,
Five others provided entrance into these rivers and also into the Mystic at Medford, while suitable waste weirs were placed contiguous to the natural water courses.

[26:05] Digging a ditch 30 ft wide and four ft deep is hard enough and clear soil, but once you add in rocks and boulders, of which plenty were deposited in Massachusetts during the last ice age.
And once you add in the work of building up embankments above grade. We’re talking about real work.
Our Civil Engineering Journal article describes how this work got done.
Pick axes were needed to dig into tough soil. Large boulders and rocks constantly had to be hauled away by wooden stone boats or drags which were flat rudderless sledges, usually drawn by oxen,
a block and tackle arrangement with an ox or horse furnishing power was often used to lift stones for the canal bed.
Meanwhile, the largest rocks were blasted with gunpowder as dynamite had not yet been invented.
Four workers were injured when a gunpowder explosion went off too soon.
The banks were built of earth brought in by horse drawn cards. Accrued railway of parallel planks was built to ease the cards passage of Iraqi and muddy land.

[27:13] That’s already an intense construction effort even before factoring in the difficult problems of raising and lowering canal boats through locks crossing the canal with bridges carrying the canal across rivers and aqueducts,
and constructing floating tow paths in Bill Rika in Charlestown.
First, let’s take a look at locks. The whole point of the canal was to bypass the falls and rapids of the Merrimack River,
avoiding strong currents and keeping the canal waters placid enough to allow boats loaded with 20 tons of goods to be moved by a single horse or pair of horses.
As described in our 1843 company history, The velocity of the water extending from the,
outlets of the great ponds at Framingham, wailing and natick a distance of 30 miles or more is so gentle that every substance not of the same specific gravity of the fluid,
must either float on the surface and be driven by wind to the shore or be deposited at the bottom.

[28:13] The canal commences at Bill Rika Mills, and before reaching Woburn at Horn Pond it passes through three levels of 12 miles distance.
The first level is four miles, the second two miles and the third six miles in length.
The water being slow in its motion, they thus constitute to a certain degree three settling ponds or reservoirs To keep the waters of the canal.
That placid it was constructed with 20 lakhs.
Over its roughly 27 miles, you probably know what a lock is, or maybe you just remember john Adams description from a few minutes ago, but just in case,
At the points where Loammi Baldwin and William Weston determined that the canal would transition from one level to the next.
A pair of wooden gates set in granite footings will be built 75 ft apart, the two halves of each gate met in a V. Shape and the visa at each end of the lock pointed toward one another to stand up against the water pressure within.

[29:16] When a boat came down the canal to lock, the lower gate would be sitting closed, acting as a dam that retained the high water above the lock.
The boat would then enter the lock and the second gate will be closed behind it.
That meant that the 75 ft length of the locks cap the size of the canal boats in the Middlesex at 75 ft, with both gates firmly closed, the water will be slowly let out of the lock, lowering the boat to the level of the canal below.
The lower gate would then be open to allow the boat to exit while the upper gate remained closed, acting as a dam and holding back the water at the upper level.

[29:55] Moses. Witcher man’s paper describes whose job it was to shepherd boats through the locks.
Generally the lock tender was the tavern keeper, who, in the interval between the passage of boats, found time to cultivate a garden and care for his domestic animals.
He had, however, to be on hand to answer the signal horn and to repeat to his wife who waited at the door The Boatman’s shout of dinner for two, or supper for four as the case may be,
By the time the boat arrived and keep in mind. This was written in 1902.
The good woman would be ready for guests, and ample justice would be done to the plane substantial fare.
If it was dinnertime the boatman would find on the return. The boat passed through the lock ready for the renewal of their trip at suppertime. They must remain unless the moonlight might serve to reach the next tavern.
None other than the lock tender could pass the boats through under penalty of $10 and a system of passports, or way bills that had to be endorsed at every lock served to keep the tenders at their places,
and to prevent imposition on the part of the boatman.

[31:11] Locks allowed canal boats to traverse the canal and relative ease by keeping the water perfectly level while aqueducts let the canal itself traverse obstacles that couldn’t be otherwise bypassed like river valleys.
An aqueduct in this context, basically just means a bridge that carried the canals water.
The 2017 civil engineering article that I’ve been quoting from lavishes praise on these aqueducts.
Perhaps the principal engineering achievement of the canal was seen in the aqueducts that carry the canal over the rivers.
A total of eight aqueducts were built, most made of wood, a material both economical and familiar to baldwin.
The most impressive was the aqueduct over the Shawsheen River It was 188 ft long and 30 to 35 ft above the river,
to build it, baldwin designed to abutments and three or more central piers of stone laid without mortar, supplemented by wooden braces between each outside stone pier and the abutments.
Large horizontal timbers embedded in the peer supported the lower ends of the structure.

[32:22] In 1898 and author writing about the remains of the canal, described the ruins of the Shawsheen-river acqua docked saying, To end abutments in a central Pier.
Olive stone supported a wooden trunk or box about 180 ft long, elevated 30 ft above the river, and of sufficient width and depth.
The apartment and pierre remain undisturbed to this day, with some decaying fragments of the oaken trunk still clinging to the pier.
The highway. An electric car line passed within a few feet of this monument moses Witcher Man also described the remains of the aqueduct.
Four years later the various locks and aqueducts were constructed of wood, and necessarily perishable what remains today as a monument, and granted the piers and abutments at the Shawsheen River Well worth the journey to see!
The wooden trough of the aqueduct has long since to come to the forces of nature.
The same silent forces have invested the granite walls, innocent of mortar, in their building, with a dignity that impresses the beholder.

[33:29] Both these accounts make it sound as though the aqueduct was on the verge of crumbling into dust.
But the piers and abutments are still worth the journey to see if you happen to be traveling up Shawsheen River in Wilmington, Almost 120 years after man’s account was written, the gran, its dignity remains basically unchanged.

[33:50] Aqueducts carried the water of the canal over rivers that it didn’t link to, while bridges would carry roads over the line of the canal,
man writes Some 50 bridges span the canal, part of which were for the highways.
The rest were to connect private property divided by the canal.
They were built with abutments of boulders and floors of wood, and the latter were known as accommodation bridges, although the canal would be jokingly known mostly after the fact as New England’s incredible ditch.
The complexity of the locks, aqueducts and bridges belies that nickname these technologies, that were developed by Loammi Baldwin to power.
The Middlesex Canal would help fuel a canal boom that lasted for the next three decades until canals were supplanted by railroads.

[34:44] In 18 oh two, the fourth of july fell on a sunday. So, massachusetts observed Independence Day.
On the fifth, the newspaper, The Columbian sentinel commented on a special event that occurred on that holiday, monday on monday last water was admitted to the Middlesex Canal, as far as we burn meetinghouse,
More than 120 ladies and gentlemen embarked upon its waters.
Although the party was numerous, the construction of the boat was such, that the accommodations were convenient.
This new mode of passing through a country diversified by almost every variety of landscape produces effects the most pleasing and agreeable.

[35:25] The proprietors deserve the highest praise for their enterprise. The choice of a superintendent demands commendation, unwilling to acknowledge dependence on any nation or any state, they proposed confidence in a citizen of their own.
His works declare his praise. Even massachusetts, a state already proud in science, will in some future age feel an increase of pride to acknowledge your son.

[35:52] That summer the first canal boats began hauling cargo on portions of the Middlesex Even as construction continued In 1914, Thomas M.
Recalled Hell, Canal boats on the Middlesex Canal worked for the Medford Historical Register, Then 84 years old.
He remembered the long tow had the horse at one end and the other was made fast to the top of a slightly elastic poll, which stood near, but not quite at the middle of the boats length.
Its exact position was scientifically important, for if it was rightly placed the boat, keep the middle of the water, and only at approaching a bridge or another boat. The boatman need to lean against his enormous steering oar.

[36:38] A pamphlet about the canal from the center for Lowell history, published in 1991 goes into much more detail about the types of canal boats that were used on the Middlesex and what they were used for.

[36:51] Three types of boats were used on the Middlesex Canal rafts, packet boats, and scowls.
The scowls, also called luggage boats, carried freight, such as furs producing coal from inland areas to Boston Harbor.
They also carried store bought goods back to New England residents. In 1886, General George Stark described the scowls as peculiarly constructed,
and their mode of propulsion was as peculiar as their model designed to meet the unique requirements of canal navigation.
They were flat bottomed with parallel sides and square ends Due to silting. What are the canal was seldom more than three ft deep.
The construction of the scouts allowed them to carry loads of up to 20 tons while drawing only two ft of water.

[37:44] A scowl was towed by a single horse. It’s line attached to a small mass, located a little forward to the center of the boat, a driver for the horse and a steer. Zeman, who used a large sweep or at the stern of the boat as a rudder.

[38:01] Lumber, much of which supplied the Charlestown Navy Yard.
In the shipbuilding yards, in the Mystic River was floated down the canal on rafts, While individual rafts, also called shots, could be no more than 75 ft in length, they can be joined together to form bands.
These bands could reach up to 500 ft in length, and we’re unpinned when passing through the locks, rafts were towed by a yoke of oxen.
One Yolk could draw 100 tons of lumber, a load that would have required 80 teams over land packet boats, which were towed by two horses, carried passengers.
These boats were typically painted with bright colors. The George Washington had a red whale above a white water line strip.
The whole was painted black, the quarter railing was a bright red, the posts light blue, and the interior was orange.
The cabin was large and comfortable with upholstered seats at one time, to packet boats that George Washington and the Governor Sullivan, both owned by the Middlesex Canal Corporation, operated on the canal,
one leaving from each terminal every morning,
later, only one packet was maintained.

[39:19] Journeys on the canal were a popular summer pastime. Passengers often sat on the top of the packet boats in order that they might site C, and the towpath was a favorite place for sunday afternoon strolls.

[39:32] 100 years after water was first admitted into the canal moses, witcher man wrote in 1902,
The shore of Medford Pond, or as it’s now termed Mystic Lake, was originally intended for the southern terminus, but the canal was built six miles further and ended at the Charlestown Millpond.
Special Legislation authorizing the extension.
But for this, the remaining distance would have been covered by the pond and the Mystic or is then called Medford River, Whether the shallowness of the upper river or its serpentine course caused the continuation of the artificial channel is unknown.
Either way, the canal was completed the Charlestown by 1803.
Its southern terminus was the Charlestown millpond, a damn thrown across the corner of the lower Charles River along Charlestown neck.
By the time the canal was dug to meet it, the dam had been used for tidal mills for almost 150 years, as you can learn more about my interview with Earl Taylor, an episode 1 30.

[40:38] Building a canal to Charlestown is all well and good, but we all know that until it connected with boston, it didn’t really count.
In a 2000 and eight article for the Middlesex canal associations towpath newsletter, David Dellinger describes what it took to get the specialist boats developed for use in canals across the Charles River basin to a wharf near boston’s Almshouse.

[41:03] With foresight.
The Middlesex Canal Company purchased the entire millpond complex and set about improving all its features.
For example, to cross the pond, a floating towpath had been introduced between the canal entry and the existing lock.
This was replaced by a permanent embankment.
The lock itself was improved, the mills were renovated and access improved.
That dam was reinforced, were needed From the Millpond Boston destinations could be reached by either of two options,
that is by loading cargo onto wagons and hauling them across Charlestown to the bridge, which had opened in 1786.
Alternatively, canal boats could be pulled across the Charles River to a worf in warehouse rented on the northern tip of the Shawmut peninsula.
From here, it was about a mile to the center of boston on a rough road crossing, the Charles River was not a trivial matter.
Canal boats, long and narrow were designed to be towed, not navigated in open water with current wind and along a curving route.

[42:12] Rather, they must be hauled hand by hand along a cable called a warp.
However, such a cable must not interfere with traffic on the river itself.
Colonel baldwin’s solution was ingenious. He placed buoys along the route, tethered to anchors below.
Heavy iron ring was slipped over each tether and the cable was attached to each ring and turn.
With this arrangement, the cable would rise as it was being pulled, bringing the ring along with it.
After passing a buoy, the ring would pull the cable to the bottom again, out of the way of passing boats.

[42:51] I’ll include a link to detonators, hand drawn diagram of the rings, buoys and cables, and this week’s show notes, and I promise it will make sense if you look at it.

[43:02] In her book gaining ground past podcast guest Nancy Seashells describes how the Middlesex canal was eventually extended across the heart of boston to connect with boston harbor.

[43:13] In the first two decades of the 19th century, the old mill pond that had separated the north end from the west end was filled in with soil taken for the top of Beacon Hill.
The new neighborhood would be known as the Bull Finch Triangle, and the new canal would perfectly bisect the triangle As a condition of filling in the millpond.
The city required the existing Mill Creek, which for almost 150 years had drained the millpond and turned the water wheels that milled early Boston’s grain to be connected with the Charles River.

[43:47] The new canal would begin under today’s North Station and follow the line of today’s Canal Street before intersecting the original Mill Creek, which in turn ended at the city docks.
Under today’s Quincy Market, The contract called for the canal to be dug 20 ft wide at the Quincy market end and 40 ft wide at the north station end.
It was to be lined with stone and to maintain four ft of water.
She describes how an extension to the sea proved to be the natural culmination of the canal project.
The canal through the middle of the pond was one of the early successes of the millpond project.
This canal was considered an extension of the Middlesex Canal, which terminated in Charlestown, and had been built in 1794-1803 to provide a shipping route between the Boston area and the Merrimack River.
From boston harbor boots went north through the millpond into the Charles river, and then to the Almshouse War, from the west end from where they were drawn across the river on a system of buoyed cables to the canal entrance.
Near present Sullivan Square, from that point, they could travel all the way to the Merrimack River and via other canals and in New Hampshire.
This extension of the canal to the Boston Waterfront was completed by about 1815, And Seashells Quotes An 1817 Letter from Schubel Bell to describe its success.

[45:13] The Mill Creek, or canal, has continued through what was the Millpond to the old Causeway that connects the waters of the Charles River with the harbor.
Great quantities of merchandise in country produce are transported on the Middlesex canal, of which the creek may be considered a part to and from the metropolis.
The Middlesex Canal opens a communication with the interior of this state, has been productive of much good.

[45:42] In the end, the extension of the canal to boston Harbor wasn’t enough to make it a good investment.

[45:49] Buying stock in the Middlesex Canal Company was fundamentally different than buying stock. Now these days I might buy stock in a startup with the assumption that I’ll sell the stock when their product launches.
Or I might buy a stock in a blue chip company and hold onto it while getting an annual dividend.
Either way, If the company then needed more money, it would be forced to issue more stock.
Not so with the proprietors of the Middlesex canal as moses which are man wrote the charter gave the director’s power to lay assessments upon the stockholders.
This, from time to time as the work progressed was done until over a half million dollars were expended in this construction.

[46:31] That’s right as work on the canal progressed. Any time the company needed money, it sent a bill to the existing shareholders.
One of the original investors in the company was John Quincy Adams, who wrote to Thomas Welch in January 1798 about the ongoing financial difficulties caused by his investment in the company.
With respect to the canal shares, although the expenses and assessments become heavy by continual disbursements, with a distant prospect of any returns.
Yet, as I hope, the undertaking will eventually succeed and as it’s meant to be productive of public benefit, I did not regret the monies which are thus applied.
I hope, however, that in the future there will be less of that absorption which swallows up all the produce of my little property in America from year to year, and that upon my return, I shall find some sort of income that they contribute to provide me a subsistence.

[47:29] When he was old enough, john Quincy son Charles, Francis Adams, the future diplomat and historian, would take over managing his father’s finances.
It would take decades before the atoms family’s investment in the canal began to turn around In January 1835, Charles noted in his diary, went out to attend a meeting of the committee of the Middlesex Canal.
The committee annually appointed to look over the accounts of the treasurer.
This canal is becoming a very good property and four years later, he was finally able to make this optimistic note in his diary.
I continued my work this morning and began to see light in my accounts by virtue of the annual dividend of the Middlesex canal.

[48:17] The canal began to pay a small and slowly growing annual dividend in 1819.
And while it made investors like Adams optimistic, the canal would never pay back the debts that had placed on its early shareholders.
The only initial investors who profited were those who didn’t hold the stock for long.
After an initial public offering at $25 a share, the stock price shot up to $500 in 1804 when the main course of the canal was completed.
From that peak, the stock price began falling until the company finally became insolvent as well here in a few minutes.

[48:55] Investors and shippers weren’t the only people to find a benefit in the completed canal.
Residents all along its length soon came to embrace the quiet waters of the canal and the level ground of the towpath as a destination for recreation,
couples strolled along the banks in the evening, while fishermen cast it after the perch, bream and chub that basked in the shade, under the canals, bridges and moses.
Witcher man’s paper. He describes the turn of the seasons along the Middlesex canal.

[49:27] The towpath in summer became a favorite walk out from boston and from the several villages, a veritable Lover’s Lane,
and some of the taverns were noted as the resort of pleasure parties, notably the one at Horn Pond and Woburn in the winter.
The pleasure seekers forsook the path for with the closing of the season by the Frost King began the sport of skating, without exception.
Every man with whom the writers conversed as to his recollections of the old waterway refers with pleasure to the long skating trips he enjoyed.
These sometimes became strenuous as when the boys of Charlestown in Medford met near the old toll house to the slogan of,
Charlestown figs, put on your wigs and up to Medford run while Medford Maggots put on your jackets and drive them back like fun, was the reply,
with the exception of thin ice under the bridges and to which some unfortunates plunged in an involuntary bath.
The canal was an ideal place for winter pastime.

[50:30] I couldn’t find any primary sources describing it as I put this episode, but in the past, I’ve heard about groups of skaters who traveled 10 or more miles at a time on this perfectly level.
In linear seasonal skating rank In his 1914 reminiscence for the Medford Historical Society.
Then 84 year old Thomas Stetson also fondly recalled his days skating on the canal.
The Middlesex Canal in winter was very unlike the river.
There was no danger in its current lys four ft water, no one frozen margin.
It always froze smooth and early, so that we are sure of skating on thanksgiving day beyond the aqueduct and through the woodlands, it was ideal.
The heavy oaks kept off the wind.
We could look down upon the Lovely Lake, which at times was very near the canal and perhaps 20 ft lower.
We could climb down the slope and exploring our skates, all its nooks and bays.
Some distance above the parting there was an apron of plank, the waste way for the surplus water of the canal.
This made a handsome cascade as the water tumbled over the rocks right into the upper pond.

[51:43] Its value as a lover’s lane fishing hole and skating rank was not enough to save the canal from growing competition.
The decline of the Middlesex canal is a study in betrayal and disappointment.

[51:57] After the corporation paid the first dividend to shareholders in 1819, things were looking up.
By the 1830s and 1840s, the shareholders were still underwater, having paid more into the company to cover its costs, that have been paid back in meager annual dividends, but there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel.

[52:19] Then in January 1836, shareholder and board member Charles Francis Adams noticed some concerns about competition for the canal in his diary.

[52:29] Time occupied by attending a meeting of the directors of the Middlesex Canal for the purpose of consulting on a dividend.
The annual report of the agent was red, which displays a very favorable state of the concern, but the dread of competition from the railroad just going into operation still hangs over us.

[52:50] Adams concern was justified as boston merchants continue to see cost effective connections to the interior of the continent.
Steam locomotives seemed irresistible.
New york might have an eerie canal that linked new york city through the Hudson River to the Great Lakes and the planes beyond.
But boston would soon build its own iron rail connections to the western frontier.
In 1830, the Massachusetts Legislature chartered yet another corporation.
This one was created to build a railroad connecting boston to Lowell One paragraph in the charter would prove to be a death blow for the Middlesex canal.

[53:32] Be it further enacted that no other railroad than the one hereby granted shall within 30 years from and after the passing of this act, the author to be made leading from boston Charlestown er Cambridge to Lowell,
Or from Boston Charlestown er Cambridge to any place within five miles of the northern termination of the railroad hereby authorized to be made.

[53:55] The boston and Lowell Railroad would simply follow the course of the Middlesex Canal, An efficient route between the two cities that have been conveniently surveyed and laid out over 40 years earlier.
The 18 43 company history of the Middlesex Canal, we’ve been consulting pulls no punches in describing what the exclusive right to build a railway meant to the canal corporation.

[54:19] When the legislature granted to the proprietors of the Lowell Railroad, the right to build said road by the side of the canal parallel with, and calculated to destroy it, and without any indemnity by the state or otherwise, to the canal proprietors.
They did at the same time confer a special unusual and exclusive privilege upon the proprietors of the railroad,
By inserting in their charter a provision that no other railroad should be constructed within five miles of theirs during the ensuing period of 30 years.
Had no such provision but inserted in the railroad charter. The canal proprietors might at this time, with almost a certainty of great profit, place iron rails upon the canal line,
and no one can suppose that a little competition created thereby would be very detrimental to the public interest,
but it was thought best to plunge the knife to the hilt and the existing rights of the canal proprietors,
and to provide a code of male for the railroad, in order that future legislatures might not allow similar privileges to others, which they thought right to grant to the boston and low railroad corporation.

[55:27] Not allowing the proprietors to drain their canal and lay iron rails in the right of way, may have plunged the knife to the Hilton their breast, but there was one more betrayal that would twist that knife, who did.
The proprietors of the boston low Railroad hired a survey and lay out the route of their tracks.
Loammi Baldwin Son James, Foul baldwin would serve as chief engineer of the new railroad.
He had trained as an engineer under his father and under his brother louis, Loammi Baldwin junior,
and later he’d been involved in one of the commonwealth’s first experiments with railways, the Western road from Springfield to Albany, connecting the waters of the Connecticut river with the Hudson.

[56:08] Within just a few years the writing was on the wall. Railroads were cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain that could move freight for a cheaper rate per ton.
Not only that, but spur tracks could push the terminal closer to the customer, cutting down an expensive carting to and from the canal.

[56:28] While the boston and Lowell was being built, the boston and providence and boston and Worcester railways were also under construction.
As we heard an episode 203 About Boston’s Grande Railroad Jubilee.
The city’s economic future would be quickly hitched to a locomotive, But that didn’t stop the proprietors of the canal from mounting a rearguard action to try to stop the railroads. Progress in Boston.
As noted in our 1843 company history, the inventions and ingenuity of man are ever onward,
and a new, cheap and more expeditious mode of transportation by steam power has been devised, which seems destined to destroy that which was once considered and vulnerable.
What has to be done, improvements in mechanics and the arts will go on. While man has mind.
If the canal cannot put out the fire of the locomotive, it may be made to stop the ravages of that element. In the city of boston, Spoiler alert canals did not manage to stop the ravages of the railroad.
By 1845 or 46, the proprietors had essentially abandoned the idea of operating a profitable canal.
They tried desperately and unsuccessfully to find a loophole in the boston and Lowell charter that would allow them to transform their money pit of a right of way to a railway.

[57:47] When that effort failed, they tried to take advantage of their established waterway from the Concord River to boston, a city in desperate need of a new source of drinking water for its rapidly growing population Are 1843.
Company history describes the proposal I know of, but one way in which the canal can be of much value to the public and to those who hold an interest therein by changing a part of it from one public use to another,
discontinue the levels from the Charles River to Woburn upper locks, and from the Bill Rika Mills to the Merrimack River.
In the whole, a distance of over 14 miles, the remaining part from the concord River to Woburn Upper locks may then be used as an aqueduct, similar to those in France and other european countries.
From Woburn, the water may be conveyed in 30 inch iron pipes for the supply of the city of boston, the towns of Charlestown and East Cambridge.

[58:46] As you probably know, boston decided to go with the constituent reservoir.
Instead, The proprietors collected their last toll in 1851, According to an 1898 article, the last canal boat plied the canal on April 14,
piloted by Joel Dicks of built Rika 1859, the Supreme Judicial Court vacated the canals charter and today it’s mostly remembered in a few stone footings for locks and aqueducts.

[59:19] To learn more about the Middlesex canal. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 2 to 5.
I have links to historic maps of the canal right of way prepared by Benjamin right, an assistant to William Weston, the original surveyor and engineer on the canal project,
As well as a series of maps from 2008 overlaying the original canal right of way in structures over the streets and houses of the 21st century.
I’ll link to the charter for the canal and the railroad charter that spelled it’s doom as well as Secretary Gallatin is article praising the canal.
I’ll also link to the 1843 company history I quoted from so much and all the other articles I cited before.
I let you go. I have some listener feedback to share over on twitter Cici Loomis commented on our episode about the mysterious death of star, faithful good listen sad story.
She was used by everyone.

[1:00:20] They also commented after listening to our episode about boston’s missionaries to hawaii kudos jake.
I love history and as a white haired old bostonian, I’m still angry about what our schools did and did not teach us.
They whitewashed everything Exactly G that’s why I make this podcast.
So I have an excuse to learn about all the things that I didn’t get taught in school, Joey drama commented about our episode on the homes, family and the commercial development of the telephone.
In that episode, I described how I grew up in the 1980s, in a rural area where people still had party line telephones and I said that it was one of the last areas to use party lines,
Joey corrected me saying hi jake, I just listened to bells and whistles.
I work for a major telecommunications company. We have several party line stragglers in western mass travel, New England shared photos of a neighborhood litter cleanup along the commuter rail tracks at Busey Bridge in Roslindale and said,
I listen to your Busey Bridge podcast the other day, little cleanup today near the site of the accident.

[1:01:33] Nice. It’s hard to imagine from the pictures how terrifying it must have been when a train came crashing through that very bridge During black history month.
I replayed a number of past episodes, including one titled 15 blocks of rage, which is about a 1967 riot, and Grove Hall, that gets remembered among white officials as the welfare riot and among black leaders as the police riot.
IV G shared a link to the episode on twitter and wrote Besides the brutality, noticed that black mothers began leading a battle for equity and welfare 55 years ago as part of what Kristen strength calls feminism’s forgotten fight.
And she included a link to a reading list on feminism.

[1:02:20] Listener, Nina emailed me with an idea for a show topic.
I’ve been prepping for a social justice learning circle. I facilitate and came across this bit of boston history that might make for an interesting episode,
The arson for profit rings that almost burnt out the symphony neighborhood and caused all kinds of havoc across the city in the 1970s and 80s.
Once the egg started taking it seriously, they eventually prosecuted over 30 people including a fire marshal and a member of the BPD Arson squad.
That may have just been the symphony road arsons. I’m not sure I thought that I already had this idea on the topic backlog but when I did a bit of googling I realized that this,
was an entirely different serial arson case in the 1980s than the one that I had already been researching.
I guess you might have to stay tuned for a miniseries about serial arson in boston. One of these days we love getting listener feedback whether you love the episode or just liked it a lot.
We’re happy to hear your suggestions for show topics, corrections about the last party lines and contemporary photos of historic locations from the show.

[1:03:31] If you’d like to leave us some feedback on this episode or any other, you can email us at podcast at hub history dot com, we’re hub history on twitter facebook and instagram.
Or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop me a line and I’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[1:04:03] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.