With the bicentennial of the canal taking place later this year, the focus of 2025 columns will be on the waterway that transformed the young nation. Our little villages of Port Byron, Weedsport and Montezuma, were built along the banks of the canal and everyday, our ancestors could watch the world go by. As Walter Edmonds wrote in Rome Haul, “[the canal was] the bowels of the nation. It’s the whole shebang of life,” as you could stand on a canal bridge and watch the movement of the nation pass under your feet. There is no way better to get people interested in a subject then to make it have some personal meaning to them. Some of the most popular programs on television are programs about folks finding their connections to the past. Was my grand-dad a war hero? Or a scoundrel? (Don’t despair about the latter as scoundrel’s can be fun). So let’s take a look at who was a canal worker?
The census is always a good place to start such a quest as it serves as a snapshot in time. Sadly, all the censuses prior to 1850 don’t record the occupation, so our first look at the canal is in from the summer of 1850. We find ninety-four boatmen and eight boat builders listed. It is likely that a number of the boatmen were not residents but boatmen passing through and counted. A number of them are family groups such as William and James Atkinson, the sons of Samantha, a widowed farmer. Or Ira and Cherry Barrup, the 18 and 16 year old sons of Thomas Barrup, a carriage maker, or Levi and Hiram Clark, the sons of Samuel Clark the shoemaker. One would hope that the Clark sons always had decent shoes! Some of the passing boaters appear to be the C.M.Walling who shows up with his wife and three older children, or the Jacob DeVour family who is listed with his wife and young family, brothers and even mother. Some other names you might recognize are: Dougharty, Gutchess, Kendrick, King, Laraway, Lounsbury, Main, Marsh, Sadler, Schoonmaker, Sommers, Veland, Warren, Willis and Wilson.
The number of folks working on the canal in the 1880 census dips slightly to sixty one. Lester Burgess is listed as a boatman and the Cornell brothers, Joesph and Howard, were listed as “works on Canal Boat.” I am not certain what the difference between “boatman” and “works on boat” were, but the census taker made a note. The Devore family had six folks working on the canal and Frank Emmons, who would become the grandfather of the Wilt family, is found working on a boat. Henry Dayharsh, the grandfather of photographer Steward Dayharsh, is also a boatman. William Ridell is listed as a boat builder, while three of his sons were boatmen.
If we skip ahead another twenty years to the 1900 census we only find seventeen people working on or around the canal. But we get a few more details about their occupation. After 20 years, Lester Burgess was still at it as a canal boat steersman and Frank Emmons is listed as the pilot of a steamboat. Charles Cooper, who would become the brother-in-law of Mayor Benjamin White was a canal driver.
Even after the old towpath canal had been abandoned in 1918, some folks continued to find work on the canals. Willard Hitchcock is listed as a canal laborer and Franklin Burke is a mate on a boat. Of course, there were also the Ray and Wilmott families who continued their work long into the Barge Canal era.
If your curiosity has been peaked and you want to start you own “Who Do You Think You Are?” episode, the volunteers of the Old Mentz Heritage Center are here to help. We have started a family history group called Genealogical Gatherings where all are welcome to stop by. As we wait for our new home, we are meeting at the Port Byron library at 2pm on the third Wednesday of the month. If you are new, we can help you get going, and if you are an old hand, stop by to to share your wealth of knowledge. Each month we will focus on a new topic, have a bit of “show and tell,” and answer your pressing questions. Of course, we are always here to help if the meeting time doesn’t work for you. Just drop us a email.