Living and Working Along the Champlain Canal, 1

The colonial warpath from Albany to Montréal made way for 19th century canals. The forts at Chambly, Ile aux Noix, Crown Point and Ticonderoga became silent and fell into ruin.  Ghosts of soldiers made way for canalers, traders and tradesmen who helped move timber, grain and iron ore from the mountains and fields to cities and towns.

My Glode and Mylott ancestors lived and worked on that Richelieu-Champlain-Hudson waterway.  Champlain canalers shipped along the Hudson from the Atlantic Boat Basin in Brooklyn, to Albany, Cohoes and Waterford.  Then they continued through the Champlain Canal to Whitehall, up Lake Champlain to the Chambly Canal and the St. Ours Canal.  My dad, born on a canal boat in summer shipping season in Chambly Québec, remembered some winters "iced in" on piers in New York City and other years "iced in" in Montréal.

The Glode family called Champlain, Clinton County, NY their home port.  Great grandfather, Alexander Glode and great grandmother, Marie Angelique Allard were married there on August 14th, 1883.  By 1900 they moved their family to Waterford, NY.  Likewise, the Mylotts called Whitehall, NY their home port.  When Milo Benjamin Mylott married Edith Glode in 1910, they too made Waterford their home port,  starting their family there while continuing canaling.

Inside the Cabin

Railroads took over most of the transportation industry and historians of the canal state the canal system's days were numbered by 1910 or even before but that did not keep the state to find funds to enlarge it and families to keep living and working on the canals. 

 

Wash Day on the Canal Boats