Driving north along Route 29 beside the D&R feeder canal from Ewing to Lambertville and beyond is lovely and enjoyable. I have done it many times, in all seasons, as I’m sure you have too.
Riding a bicycle on the towpath along the canal the same distance is also enjoyable, involving more time and effort, but very doable! I have done that, too.
But DIGGING that canal, by hand—just a small portion of the entire D&R system—is FAR beyond my ability to comprehend! But, I’ve had the tiniest experience with that, too.
My husband and I recently dug a 12×2-foot, 15-inch-deep trench in our backyard, which we then filled with stone to serve as a catch basin for occasional backyard flooding. Now admittedly, we are not young, strong laborers in our physical prime; quite the opposite, really! But dig we did, when the ground was hard and dry, hoping to successfully address the flooding.
I mention this only to say that digging a trench by hand with a pickaxe and shovel, and then carting away the soil, is hard work! And so it is unimaginable to me to realize that both canals—the main and the feeder, all 62 miles!—were dug through fields and forests hand! By essentially the same tools we used in our yard. No machines, earth movers, steam shovels or railcars; only horses and mules to haul materials to the site, to scrape the ground, or carry dirt and rocks away. Just stand along the canal someday and gaze as far as you can at what was done with muscles, blood, sweat and tears—and hard labor. Incredible.
The project, decried as “Stockton’s Folly” for Robert Stockton’s major investment in a dubious enterprise, was begun in the summer of 1830 in Kingston, which, situated halfway between New York and Philadelphia on the King’s Highway (now Rts 27 and 206), had ready access to labor, stone and timber. The project continued for four years, and ultimately went significantly over budget.
The two canals—the Main and the Feeder—were dug following flat-lying land to ease the digging and keep the water level. Once dug, the canal floor was lined with clay, to prevent the loss of water. Locks were built, stone walls and abutments created, and bridges constructed over the waterway. These huge construction efforts required the labor and expertise of many skilled craftsmen: masons, blacksmiths and iron workers, carpenters and millwrights.
But the truly hard manual labor—the digging itself—was largely done by Irish immigrants, recently arrived in this country, and needing work. The laborers lived in work camps near the construction sites, often for months at a time. Many had no family in the area and sought to earn enough to start a new life in America. Sadly, many of them ended up losing their lives.
In 1831, a cholera epidemic swept across the Far East into Europe, and soon made its way via ships to the Americas. Cholera is a fatal bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, and spreads easily in contaminated water sources. With no antibiotics nor water sanitation, many hundreds of thousands of people died world-wide from this pandemic.
New Jersey was not immune. The then-pastor of the Ewing Presbyterian Church reported that 1831-32 was a time of “great mortality in the parish,” during the time that the “canals were being dug.” Cholera hit the laborers especially hard, living—and dying—in temporary work camps. Many were buried in unmarked graves.
But the grueling work continued, from Raven Rock to Trenton along the feeder, and from New Brunswick to Bordentown along the main canal. Canvass White, engineer for the Erie Canal, served as Chief Engineer for the D&R Canal, and was assisted by Ashbel Welch of Lambertville.
Unfortunately, Mr. White suffered from chronic respiratory problems. Towards the end of the project, in failing health, his doctors sent him to Florida to recuperate. He remained there until his death in December of 1834 at age 44, unable to return to see the completed project open in June, 1834. Ultimately he did return, to be buried in Princeton Cemetery, just about a mile from his life’s final project.
Helen Kull is an adviser to the Ewing Township Historic Preservation Society.
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