The Delaware Canal by Marie Murphy Duess Read Free Book Online

along the Delaware that would be part of the Main Line canal system. It would be built in the Erie Canal style and would measure 11 feet wide. The canal would link Easton with Bristol at a length of sixty miles and have twenty-four lift locks to correct the 180-foot elevation differential.
    As a result, Josiah and Erskine began construction on a less imposing canal along the Lehigh than they had originally wanted to build, although it was still larger than the plans drawn up for the Delaware Division Canal. The Lehigh Canal would be wide enough to accommodate two boats passing each other. It was to be sixty feet wide and five feet deep, and because it was more conventional, Canvass White agreed to oversee the building of the Lehigh Canal. It utilized a series of slack water pools (meaning that boats would leave the canal to go into the river), with a total of forty-four lift locks, five guard locks, three guard lifts, nine dams and several aqueducts over the forty-six miles of navigation.
    The Delaware Division Canal, which would run from Bristol to Easton, where it would connect with the Lehigh Navigation Canal, was started a few months after the Lehigh Navigation construction began, and although it was launched with great excitement in Bristol, the preliminary construction of the Delaware Division was essentially a disaster from the beginning.
    First, there were confrontations about where the terminus should be located. Bucks County was a rural and agricultural region just north of Philadelphia. Bucks Countians knew that wherever the terminus of the canal would be located, prosperity would follow. The residents who lived in Tullytown believed that Scott’s Creek would be the best spot for the canal’s connection with the river and appealed to the commissioners. Bristol residents argued that, as it had been a major port since the seventeenth century and the depth of the water in Bristol was sufficient to float vessels carrying five hundred tons (as opposed to two hundred in Scott’s Creek), locating the terminus in Bristol made more sense. The commissioners agreed.
    Contractors needed to be hired. In their contract, the Board of Canal Commissioners required that the contractor furnish all the tools as well as the men, and a portion of his payment would be withheld until the work was approved. Contracts went to the lowest bidders, not always the best and most reliable.
    On October 27, 1827, Bristol was ready to celebrate the turning of the first blade of earth in construction of the canal with great pomp and circumstance. William T. Swift, who had been appointed the grand marshal, marched five hundred men to the spot that would become Lock Number 3 for a prayer by the local Episcopal priest, followed by an address by Peter A. Brown, a prominent member of the Philadelphia bar.
    Two men, George Harrison and Peter Ihire, appeared with a pick and shovel and a wheelbarrow. In a symbolic ceremony, Ihire began to dig a trench and throw the dirt in the wheelbarrow, while Harrison wheeled it a short distance away and dumped the dirt in a heap. Swift congratulated the citizens of Bucks County in yet another speech, and the band played “Hail Columbia,” followed by a deafening three cheers by the attendees. 31 The crowd then went to the Delaware House, which was owned by Charles Bessonett, to continue the celebration—an appropriate venue considering that it was and still is the oldest continuously operated establishment in Bucks County, although it is now called the King George II.
    Thomas G. Kennedy was the superintendent of construction and awarded contracts to dig the canal to David Dorrance and Richard Morris of Bristol for the first eighteen miles, from Bristol to Yardleyville (now Yardley). The canal was built primarily by Irish immigrants, who were for the most part unskilled. Local farmers also hired out to dig sections of the canal. The work was very difficult. Their tools were pickaxes, shovels and