Erie Canal research

Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to tour the Erie Canal route in the Albany area with Tom Carroll, science historian and executive director of the Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway, an education and preservation organization. This gave me an up-close look at sites where DeWitt Clinton would've inspected the route or sailed through it once the canal was built, and what they look like now.

This nondescript parking lot in Albany was recently discovered to be the site of Lock 1 of the original Erie Canal.

That stone in the foreground is a remnant.

Somewhat further north, some much more visible infrastructure.

A portion that ran along the Schuyler estate; the nearby house was destroyed by vandals in the 1960s.
There was not much NIMBY sentiment back in the 19th century; people wanted the canal to be close to their houses.

A building where the mules that towed the boats were housed.

A lock of the enlarged canal, built a couple of decades after the original.

Remnant of a weighlock, in which boats were weighed.

The Cohoes Falls, an important source of power generation.

An example of reuse of the canal route for recreation.

Clute's Dry Dock, once a bustling place of boat building and repair.

This tour was pursuant to my writings on history relevant to DeWitt Clinton including family history, as my wife and our son DeWitt are descendants. (See links in "DeWitt Clinton Family" box to the side of this blog.) It also was an eye-opener as to the value and potential of the canal infrastructure as a New York State asset and attraction. Along the way, we ran into several people with a strong sense of that, including Brian U. Stratton and John Callaghan, respectively director and deputy director of the New York State Canal Corporation. Friendly people from the Mohawk Towpath Scenic Byway were on hand as well at the A.C. Stevens nature and historic preserve shown below.

A relocated bridge designed by famous 19th-century engineer Squire Whipple.

A view of the canal from the bridge.

UPDATE 1/25/13: I've posted a PDF of my articles relevant to DeWitt Clinton and family.

UPDATE: What I'm working on.

Gen. James Clinton

My latest look at the confluence of national and family history is up at FrumForum for Veterans Day: "James Clinton, Revolutionary War Hero." Excerpt:

Previously at FrumForum, I wrote about two early American political leaders: DeWitt Clinton, New York governor and mayor and key figure in the nation-building achievement of getting the Erie Canal built; and George Clinton, governor turned vice president, whose efforts to limit federal power culminated in an independent (and erroneous, in my view) decision to terminate America’s first central bank.

Now, I take quill to parchment again, this time regarding James Clinton (1736-1812), a Revolutionary War general who was DeWitt’s father and George’s brother.

Though less remembered today than the other two, James struck important blows for American independence. For me, these figures are of interest for family history as well as national history. James and DeWitt are direct ancestors of my wife, and our son is named DeWitt after his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Veterans Day, which honors veterans living and dead, would be a suitable time to remember James Clinton. Although he had some involvement in politics, he was primarily a military man. One historian described him a few decades after his death as “a plain blunt soldier, born upon the frontiers, and who spent no inconsiderable portion of a long life amid the toils and perils of border wars.”

Whole thing here.

DeWitt the elder

Over at FrumForum, I look at my son's ancestor and namesake: "DeWitt Clinton's Legacy." Excerpt:

DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) was one of the most important American politicians of the early 19th century. He was at various times governor of New York, mayor of New York City, U.S. senator and presidential candidate. He was the driving force behind getting the Erie Canal built, the achievement for which he is best remembered by history. But his career was multifaceted — his interests ranged from laying out Manhattan’s street grid to delving into the natural science and history of North America.

That career included much that’s worth contemplating, and even emulating, in the context of early 21st century politics. While DeWitt Clinton is not exactly an unfamiliar name today — it’s emblazoned for instance on a Bronx high school and a Manhattan park, among other locales — his importance and relevance are underappreciated, even at a time when the founding fathers and other early politicians (such as Andrew Jackson) are more in vogue than they have been for some time.

Early American politicians often get enlisted in today’s ideological causes — Thomas Jefferson as hero to liberals and libertarians, Alexander Hamilton or John Adams as paragons for conservatives (notably, with Hamilton, conservatives not of a strongly decentralist bent). Often, the fit between the historical figure and the current-day cause is less than perfect, but there is some affinity. Clinton fits only awkwardly into our current-day polarized politics — and therein is a key part of his relevance.

Whole thing here.

UPDATE 7/8: Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey discusses the Erie Canal, federalism and Obama. Also, for readers particularly interested in the canal's financial ramifications, my Research magazine piece is here.

DeWitt Clinton's 250th birthday [updated]

Join me in celebrating at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse on Saturday, March 2 at 11 am. Also later that day at Buffalo Maritime Center. (Update: Buffalo at 4:30.)

Upcoming event and quite a milestone: DeWitt Clinton's 250th Birthday. At @ErieCanalMuseum on Sat., March 2, at 11 AM. https://t.co/HQs9jnnIuq

— Erie Canal Book (@ErieBook) February 13, 2019

UPDATE:

Highly impressed by Buffalo Maritime Center, where I spoke for DeWitt Clinton's 250th birthday. Look forward to riding in replica Seneca Chief one day. pic.twitter.com/f2RYesEgxZ

— Kenneth Silber (@kennethsilber) March 3, 2019

UPCOMING EVENT: Schenectady County Historical Society, April 13.

One more update:

"DeWitt Clinton's Sense of Time," Splice Today.

Clinton mention

Hillary Clinton, campaigning in Iowa, took note of DeWitt Clinton (not a relation of hers):

“I did a little research,” Mrs. Clinton said at a town-hall-style event at Eagle Heights Elementary School in Clinton on Saturday. “Clinton County is named for DeWitt Clinton, the sixth governor of New York,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “He was the person who said, ‘We’re going to build a canal from the Hudson River down to Lake Erie all the way across New York.’ ”

Me: It was odd to see the subject of my in-progress book show up on the campaign trail. This political season has been a rather engrossing distraction. One thing I admire greatly about DeWitt Clinton is that, even though he was a professional politician, his interests outside politics were many, deep and varied.

Remembering DeWitt Clinton

My latest Research magazine article is now online: "The Canal Builder," about DeWitt Clinton, governor, mayor, senator, visionary of the Erie Canal, and more. Excerpt:

DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) was an early American politician who transformed the country in far-reaching ways — physically, economically and financially. He was the driving force in building the Erie Canal, a massive engineering achievement that helped make Wall Street into a major financial center and the United States into an economically dynamic nation where investors would want to put their money.

Clinton served at various times as governor of New York state, mayor of New York City, U.S. senator and member of the Erie Canal commission. He ran for president in 1812, losing a fairly close contest to James Madison. He was an intellectual with interests ranging from rattlesnake biology to the history of Native Americans. He also was imperious and abrasive. A couple of years before the infamous Hamilton-Burr duel, Clinton went up against Burr supporter John Swartwout and irritably shot him in the leg.

Whole thing here.

Manhattan street grid

It's the 200th anniversary of Manhattan's street grid, and the New York Times covers it at some length while somehow omitting any mention of DeWitt Clinton, who as mayor in 1811 played a crucial role in overseeing the street grid commission. Nonetheless, the NYT items are worth reading, here, here and here. Note the beautiful "Manhattan solstice" picture in the first NYT piece; I've seen such a scene myself, and have good reason to remember it well. For my own DeWitt Clinton coverage, see here and here and the picture here.

DeWitt at Green-Wood

DeWitt Clinton research continues apace. Here is his monument at Green-Wood Cemetery, which I and a few of his descendants visited this weekend. There will be some Erie Canal traveling in the near future, as well. All of this is pursuant to a book project, about which more as things develop.

In DeWitt's Footsteps [updated]

My book In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal has been published. Read more about it here, here and here. Buy it on Amazon here.

Update 10/8: A list of book-related events is here. And here's video of an appearance this weekend:

In DeWitt's Footsteps

For info on my book, In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal, see eriecanalbook.com. Or buy it on Amazon. Also, see its Twitter and FB pages.

Erie Canal at 200: links

As July 4 is the 200th anniversary of the groundbreaking of the Erie Canal, a number of articles and posts have appeared lately about the canal's history and DeWitt Clinton. Some links are below. My book on the subject will be out later this year, mixing history with family history as DeWitt Clinton is a direct ancestor of my wife and son; and featuring extensive photos of what you see now as you travel the canal's historic and modern paths. More to come about the book in the next couple months.

News flash: Clinton Street was NOT named for Hillary Clinton (Chicago Sun Times)

200 Years on the Erie Canal (Commentary magazine)

200 Years Ago, Erie Canal Got Its Start as Just a ‘Ditch’ (NY Times)

New York's Erie Canal: How a 200-year-old ditch made the Empire State (NewYorkUpstate.com)

What Donald Trump said about the Erie Canal (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

Manhattanhedge to Mormonism

Manhattanhedge, the twice-yearly alignment of sunsets with the city's street grid, has happened again. This event, of course, was made possible by the fact that New York's streets are a grid, thanks to DeWitt Clinton, Simeon De Witt, Gouverneur Morris and John Rutherfurd. I recommend the Museum of the City of New York's exhibit on the subject, which will be closing this Sunday (after which the relevant link will probably be here).

While we're on the subject of DeWitt Clinton's influence, I have long been fascinated by the possibility that he, inadvertently, had something to do with the origin of Mormonism. I first became aware of that with this passage from Richard Brookhiser's 2004 City Journal article:

He also had a deep interest, part archaeological, part fanciful, in the origins of American Indians. He visited ancient mounds in Ohio and, in a common turn of thought for his day, sought to link the ancient history of the New and Old Worlds: perhaps, he wrote, the Indians were descended from the ancient Scythians. Such speculations would bear their gaudiest fruit when Joseph Smith learned, from the Angel Moroni, that the Indians were renegade Israelites.

It's something I'll try to learn more about in further research of my own. In the meantime, this election year, expect to hear a lot, and a lot that's negative, about Mormonism, for some reason.

Clinton history travels

Here are my son DeWitt and my wife Brooke at Fort Montgomery, in upstate new York, today, watching a reenactment of the battle where their direct ancestor James Clinton and his brother George Clinton fought against their distant relative Henry Clinton. Grant Miller, manager of the Fort Montgomery State Historic Site, is narrating the action.

Fort Montgomery 10-5-14

And back in August we visited the Syracuse area, where I continued my Erie Canal book research. Dan Ward, curator at the Erie Canal Museum, showed us around the museum as well as Camillus Erie Canal Park, which has impressive remnants of Clinton's Ditch as well as the Enlarged Canal. We also made a preliminary visit to the Chittenango Landing Canal Boat Museum.

DeWitt Clinton portrayal at Erie Canal Museum

Sign at Camillus Park

1842 Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, restored in Camillus Park

Dry dock at Chittenango

Erie update

I will be doing some further Erie Canal research soon. For interested readers, see this blog post and my articles on DeWitt Clinton and family here.

UPDATE 2/5: Some books involving the Erie Canal, assembled during a meeting yesterday at headquarters of the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor.

Many thanks to Hannah Blake, the organization's director of planning and heritage development, for meeting with me and collaborator George Gruel to discuss some niches of Erie Canal publishing.

Random notes

Items of interest:

-- Glenn Reynolds on asteroid defense, a subject I've been interested in since before they started making movies about it in the 1990s.

-- David Frum speaking on blogging at Bard's Graduate Center in NYC tonight; am unable to go but it is sure to be interesting.

-- Purchased a new book: The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor, by Marguerite Holloway, who worked at Scientific American before my time there. This is related, albeit tangentially, to my ongoing DeWitt Clinton/Erie Canal research.

2018

Greetings. Blogging is only occasional at this site currently. Please see my Twitter feed, my book website and related Twitter feed, and the Amazon page for my book In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal.

Semi-hiatus

Posting may continue to be light in the near term, as I focus on some other projects. Note: I'm scheduled to be on the Gabe Wisdom radio show on Feb. 8 at 7pm ET to discuss "The Fed and Its Enemies."

Here's a picture of me with DeWitt Clinton, ancestor and namesake of my son.

Space travel window

From an article about, and interview with, Elon Musk:

He was influenced, he says, by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, a science fiction saga in which a galactic empire falls and ushers in a dark age. "It's sort of a futuristic version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Let's say you were at the peak of the Roman empire, what would you do, what action could you take, to minimise decline?"

It takes me a moment to realise it's not a rhetorical question. Um, poison the barbarians' water supply, I joke. Musk smiles and shakes his head. The answer is in technology. "The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right now and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not. There could be some series of events that cause that technology level to decline. Given that this is the first time in 4.5bn years where it's been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we'd be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time."

Me: As I've mentioned, I'm writing a book about DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal. And it seems to me there's an analogy between 19th century canal building and 21st century space travel: There's a window to do something, and that window will close at an unknown time. National borders and cultural diffusions that seem inevitable in retrospect were anything but; if the window had closed, something very different would have resulted.

Research in Buffalo

A busy weekend of Erie Canal/Dewitt Clinton research. Here's a Buffalo News article about some of it.

UPDATE: As it appeared in the newspaper:

What I'm working on

Schoharie Aqueduct, 5/25/13.

I'm writing a book involving the history and legacy of the Erie Canal and DeWitt Clinton, tying together national and family history and current-day observations. It will be illustrated with photos by George Gruel of Oddstick Studio that will be far better than the phone snapshot you see above, which I took this weekend at the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site in Fort Hunter, NY. I expect the book to be quite a unique thing, notwithstanding the varied existing literature on related subjects. It will also take some time to develop and finish, and this blog will offer further information down the road. (For a PDF of earlier related writings by me, see here.)