Cohoes: Trouble, and a drowning, between Locks 15 and 16

 August 1870    The New York Times

Whitehall: Drownings in the rivers, locks and canals 1919

 From the Whitehall Times, 4 September 1919

Accidental death around the canals and waterways were very common.  In the 19th and first half of the 20th century, safety was an afterthought and there were no laws or regulations requiring safeguards for children and adults.

Juncta...again

Yes...I know I having posted in a very long time. And there is still so much to research and family history to discover.  Unfortunately, I am in a time and place where my materials are packed in boxes and my files are inaccessible!  So I am using my time to research genealogy on line.  From time to time I come across something new to me.  Recently I discovered an image to share with you....

Many of the FrancoAmerican ancestors who are the subject of this blog emigrated from the Richelieu Valley to Cohoes in the mid 19th century (see Mapping the Route) because this little town was beaming with commerce and employment at the dawn of the industrial revolution.  Cohoes and Waterford are strategically located at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers where water power energized transportation and manufacturing.  There was a little area on the south side of Cohoes called "Juncta" where the Old Champlain and Old Erie Canals came together and then went on to Albany. Present day Juncta doesn't reflect the lively times it once enjoyed as the social and commercial gathering place of canalers and their families, tavern keepers, horse stablers and business people.  After the expansion of the canal system in 1918 and the dominance of the railroads, Juncta fell into a decline but if you search present day Juncta, vestigaes of it remain.

Below is a low resolution image of Juncta from the New York Public Library's digital gallery.  This was probably illustrated in the early days of the canal - taking a guesstimate it is probably 1840s just before it's heyday.  

The rural nature of Juncta stands out in this image and I can't help recall that this spot is close to the area of Green Island we called "the prairie" in the 1950s.  On the northern side of Green Island, the prairie was full of woods and marshlands - and the island's dump.  Today the area is not as desolate as I remember and many new small industries have been built in the woods and prairie.  Still....behind the new industrial buildings, glimpses of the the Hudson River remain.

I've got a mule and her name is.....

School children in New York State have one year in elementary school where they learn about New York State history.  For me, it was while I was in 4th or 5th grade and we learned a little about the Iroquois, the Dutch, Peter Stuyvesant, Fort Orange (later Albany), skipped to the battles at Saratoga and then to the building of the Erie canal and finally to the construction of the St Lawrence Seaway which was only completed a few years before then.

The best part was learning to sing "The Erie Canal". I can only remember the first verse and the chorus and I always loved singing it.  Little did I understand when I was shouting  out the song that my grandparents, great grandparents and great great grandparents made their livelihood on the Champlain Canal, the sister of the Erie!
The composer of the song, Thomas Allen (1876-1919) was an American vaudeville composer and he may never have actually worked on the canal but his lyrics were noting the passage of time and the changes when  the old towpaths with mule teams were giving way to faster and "efficient" engine power.

Listen Here via Library of Congress

Actual title
"Low Bridge"
written by Thomas S. Allen in 1905

For those of you who missed this seminal event in their childhood, the song goes like this....

I've got a mule, her name is Sal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo

Chorus:
Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge cause we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal

Get up here Sal, We've past that lock,
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal
And we'll make home before six a-clock
Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal

One more trip and back we'll go
Through the rain and sleet and snow
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo

Low bridge, everybody down
Low bridge for we're coming to a town
And you'll always know your neighbor
And you'll always know your pal
If you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal.....

Apparently there's some additional verses...

Erie Canal Song
Low Bridge, Everybody Down
(Written by: Thomas Allen in 1905)

I've got a mule, and her name is Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie canal,
She's a good ol' worker and a good ol' pal,
Fifteen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
We've hauled some barges in our day,
Filled with lum-ber coal and hay,
And ev'ry inch of the way we know
From Al-ba-ny to Buff-a-lo OH

Chorus

Low bridge ev'-ry bod-y down,
Low bridge for we're com-in to a town,
And you al-ways know your neighbor,
You'll always know your pal,
If you've ev-er navigated on the Er-ie can-al

Chorus

We'd better look round for a job old gal,
Fif-teen miles - on the Er-ie can-al,
You bet your life I wouldn't part with Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
Giddap 'there gal we've passed that lock,
We'll make Rome fore six o'clock,
So, it's one more trip and then we'll go,
Right back home to Buff-a-lo OH

Chorus

Oh, where would I be if I lost my pal?
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al.
Oh, I'd like to see a mule as good as Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
A friend of mine once got her sore,
Now he's got a busted jaw,
'Cause she let fly with her iron toe,
And kicked him in to Buff-a-lo OH

Chorus

Don't have to call when I want my Sal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
She trots from her stall like a good old gal,
Fif-teen miles on the Er-ie can-al,
I eat my meals with Sal each day,
I eat beef and she eats hay,
And she ain't so slow if you want to know,
She put the "Buff" in Buff-a-lo OH.

Silenced Remains of Lock #9 on the Enlarged Erie Canal

The original Erie Canal officially opened in 1825.  The enlarged Erie Canal opened in 1842 and Lock #9 was a part of the enlarged system.  The remains of the lock still stand off Alexander Street between Central Avenue and Lincoln Avenue at the southern end of Cohoes.

Once this space was full of the sounds of rushing water, mechanical movements, metal on metal, wood on stone, voices over the air. Families, children, merchants, livestock and workhorses.

Now days, the space is quiet. Still.

Then and Now Along the Towpath

The photo below is of the last house  Elizabeth "Libbie" Bissonnette Wills lived at the southern end of Central Avenue in Cohoes, NY. On February 1st, 1936 she died in this house that still stands, albeit with changes, along the west side of the old Erie & Champlain Canal Towpath.  The two canals merged at a place in Cohoes called "Juncta" and continued southward through Maplewood, West Troy or Watervelit, Menands into Albany.....

This is the present day house with new siding, new windows and fewer trees in front.....

The backyard goes down to the old towpath which is now a bicycle trail and walking path that stirs the imagination to recall that this was once a very busy thoroughfare where the ancestors of many in America past through on their way to the western frontier the Great Lakes, Chicago, or points north through Lake Champlain.

Troubles All My Life: the day grandfather's canal boat "went to the bottom"

One of my great grandfathers, John Mylott,  descendant of Nicholas Millot dit Champagne, was a canal man in Whitehall. He and his first wife, Addie, traveled the Champlain Canal from Quebec to Brooklyn with their children on board.  Several years after the death of Addie, John continued to transport merchandise on his boat but it all ended one night when his boat sank in the fog....

The Ticonderoga Sentinel October 14, 1920 

On page one, fifth column

"Boat Sunk in Hudson"

John Mylott, who runs a canal boat on the waters of Lake Champlain, Hudson River and Barge Canal, last week had one of his boats split in two when a tug hit it head on in a fog on the Hudson River.  Mr Mylott had on board a consignment of molasses for northern points.  The boat went to the bottom in a short time. 

Typical canal boat on the Champlain Canal

John Mylott was 68 years old when the accident occurred and he had been canaling all his life.  He died five years later.  His obituary stated he worked for the YMCA in Whitehall when he passed away.  It seems the sinking of his boat ended his canaling days once and for all.

Walking and Remembering Tour: The Erie Canal in Cohoes and the Ghosts of Child Laborers

On a lovely Friday evening in August, the Spindle City Historical Society sponsored a walking tour of the ruins of the Erie Canal in Cohoes.  Our knowledgeable guide took us down pathways hidden to me when I was a child. The paths were there in the 1950s and 1960s but I never saw them and never realized their significance.  Of course in the 1960s,  the main basins and many other areas of the canal were just cesspools filled with algae and discarded appliances.  Today Cohoes has cleaned up and filled in the channel downtown, excavated around the Harmony Mills and erected signs to help us remember. Walk and remember, walk and remember....that is all that exists today...a walk and a remembrance of those before us whether they were French Canadians, Irish, Polish, Eastern Europeans.

Our guide explained how, when the original canal was widened and rerouted, the original beds became the "power canals" to run the looms inside the textile mills. Inside the mills, mainly children, teens, and young women worked the looms. Cohoes was full of young children enumerated on census records and working in the mills.  If you were from Cohoes, there is a good chance at least one of your ancestors was a child laborer in the textile mills.  Even after the heyday of the Harmony Mills, child laborers continued to work in the garment factories.  My mother left grammar school when she was 12 years old during "The Great Depression" to sew collars on shirts.  She never completed the 8th grade and was always over compensating for that fact in her life.

If you are ever interested in learning more about the children working in the textile factories, you can read Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop.  This book is intended for young readers, but adults will relish it if they are interested in the history of child labor in textile manufacturing.  Also, for readers with Cohoes-Hoosick Falls-Pownal, VT connections, there is Joe Manning's search for the heroine in the book's cover photo, detailed in six chapters on Mr Manning's website, starting at Search for Addie


There are many Ghosts of Cohoes and they are mainly children.

Our guide to the ruins of the Erie Canal with the towpath and filled in canal behind her.

Another area of the original canal in the vicinity of Lock #16, now filled and mowed.

The canal along Harmony Street

Soon the tour becomes a capsule history lesson about the Erie canal, the textile mills, and how this small landscape fueled the Industrial Revolution, the economic growth of a small nation, and the westward expansion of the United States....

The original Harmony Mill built in 1837 by Peter Harmon

Another view of the original Harmony Mill

Remains of Lock #16

Interior of Lock #17

Stonework

These individuals standing inside the basin help to understand the size of the Lock #17.

A section of Lock #18 which is directly across from the new Cohoes Falls Overlook Park

At the end of the evening walk we could check out the new Cohoes Falls Park and enjoy the views

A view of Cataract Street

The Spindle City Historic Society has pamphlets for self guided walking tours of the Erie Canal in Cohoes and the Harmony Mills Historic District available in their museum downstairs in the Cohoes Music Hall on Remsen Street.  It is worth checking out the exhibits if you are fortunate enough to visit when they are open.

Celebrating the Canals 2010

Waterways and Rivers of Cohoes

Cohoes had a unique geographical position because two rivers, the Mohawk and the Hudson, converge along its banks.  This fact enabled Cohoes to be the only town in New York State that enabled  both the Eire and the Champlain Canals to run  within its boundary.  The two canals converged on the southern end of Cohoes and ran through Maplewood, Watervelit (West Troy), Menands on down to the city of Albany.  By the time I was young in the 1950s and 1960s, you wouldn't be able to grasp that fact if you walked along the old route.  There was no old route that I could see!  I always wondered why the Marsolais' backyard was so big and went on and on into a child's no man land.  Later I came to understand it was not their backyard we were playing on, it was the old canal route, filled in, in Maplewood.  Now in 2010, the route is long gone covered by Interstate 787 but some vestiges remain and stonework can still be seen along Route 32
.

Map of Cohoes and Waterford circa 1899

Here are some images of the canals running through Cohoes...

Lock #4 on the old Champlain Canal in Cohoes, NY from the Exhibit in the Cohoes Music Hall by the Spindle City Society

Remembering Earth Day 1970 in Cohoes and Nellie Ethier (died circa 1919 in Cohoes)

This is April Fool's Day but when I think of April, I think of Earth Day. This year will mark the 40th Earth Day!! I can remember the first Earth Day in 1970 when my best friend in high school and I walked around Cohoes taking pictures of all the garage in the plugged up canals. There were tires, tricycles, soap suds, green muck, refrigerators, washing machines and brown muck. At that time I had no idea why those canals were even there in Cohoes. Only in the past few years have I come to understand those pitiful canals filled with garbage and trash were once full of human commerce and activity.

Recently I found out that a wife of a distant cousin was found dead in one of the canals in Cohoes circa 1919. The cousin remarried a few short weeks after the incident to a very young lady he associated with before his wife's death. Apparently, everyone believed he murdered his first wife and dumped her body in the canal. The cousin, his first wife and four children are living in Cohoes in the 1910 federal census. His occupation was identified as "ice cream manufacturer". Her name was Helen or Nellie and she is listed as a housekeeper. They are both 38 years old. She was born in Quebec in 1871.

The cousin,  wearing the cap,  during the period of his second marriage

In the 1920 census, he is listed as the 49 year old son-in-law in the LaBarge household. No occupation. His wife was listed as 19 years old. What happened to Nellie??

Did she have a loss of consciousness and fall into the canal?
Was it suicide?
Was it homicide? or rather femicide?

As the canals in Cohoes became abandoned, so did the city.