At the D&H Canal Museum with Historian Bill Merchant

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas

Bill Merchant  0:03  
I used to not get political, but I'm sorry. Immigrants are nothing but a net positive. This would not have existed without them. I can say definitively from research that I've done.

Brett Barry  0:11  
Constructed from 1825 to 1829, the D&H Canal boasted 108 locks over a 108-mile route, moving anthracite coal from Northeastern Pennsylvania to the Hudson River. On today's Kaatscast, we checked in with Bill Merchant—Deputy Director for Collections, Historian & Curator at the D&H Canal Museum, recently transplanted to the historic DePuy Canal House in High Falls, New York. Towns like High Falls with changes in elevation, necessitated locks, water elevators ... so to speak, raising and lowering boats along the canal.

Bill Merchant  0:54  
Towns like High Falls where they had a ... because of the Falls ... they had a series of ... well, we've got our historic Five Locks Walk, but there was really six locks, just in this half-mile stretch because of the drop that also created the Falls that gave the town its name. When you had a lot of locks, that's an opportunity. It was a stopping point, so it's a good spot to capture. There was up to 5,000 people living on the D&H Canal and they all had to eat and so there were groceries all along the route.

So, the D&H Canal was ... was fostered by four brothers by the name of Wurts and they were Quakers; the other Philadelphia dry-goods merchants. But being good Quakers, they gave throughout the run, even when all the Wurtses are no longer part of the D&H Company. They would give property to various sects. So, the church of High Falls here was moved there in 1862 on property given by the Canal Company. The 1885 Episcopal Church, which was our old building, was on a cement mine because natural cement was discovered here by the D&H Canal Company in 1825. Moving here, the 1797 DePuy Tavern, Simeon and his son, Jacob, were both intimately involved with the D&H Canal Company. In 1850, Simeon is sick with a serious rupture. He sold this building $20,000 real estate deal and so this becomes D&H Company Offices. There was a store in the 1827 edition from the start that was then rented out to shopkeeps when they went from 70-foot long boats to 90-foot long boats. They had actually cut through. They had to dig 40 and 50 feet, but the great dig in High Falls as they referred to it, and then they put that ... found that canal directly in front of this building, so this was ... when we got this building, which was through the efforts of Open Space Institute and New York State Department of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, this was the most important D&H Canal building in private hands. So, we're really tickled to be able to come and tell this important American story in this significant. Plus, it's just a great building as you'll see. I am Bill Merchant. I'm the Deputy Director for Collections, Historian & Curator here at the D&H Canal Museum and Mid-Hudson Visitor Center. The visitor center has been great for us. It's really up to our visitation. Tourism is Ulster County's largest industry and currently the county doesn't have a viable visitor center and I'll tell you ... people flies off the racks and about half our visitation and currently we're at about ... I haven't done the numbers ... 3,200, I think or something ... about half of it is people driving on that busy road who'd stop in. There was a genius idea. I contend if they just saw the word, "museum." 80% of them wouldn't have come in, but they come in, where a suggested donation meaning, "There's no strong arm to pay," and I'd say, "95% of those visitors, then come and get to learn this important history that we're here to celebrate."

Brett Barry  3:44  
So, about that history, it started with an energy crisis.

Bill Merchant  3:49  
The War of 1812: We have an energy crisis. Everything east of the Appalachians had been heavily settled and heavily denuded of trees. There just weren't enough timber resources for both energy and building. We had coal down to Virginia, but the only way to get it to market was on the Atlantic Ocean and was just as cheap to buy from the Brits. So we were buying coal from England and moving on the Atlantic Ocean because there was no transportation infrastructure to get that the tumultuous call from Virginia to the markets, which are primarily New York City, Philadelphia. At this point when the story starts, Philadelphia is the largest city in America. By the time the canal opens, New York City overtakes, but these were the population centers. The War of 1812: There was no shipping going on in the Atlantic Ocean. The Royal Navy ... huge, powerful blockaded and so we have an energy crisis. So, the Wurts Brothers famously got a contract with the U.S. government to give them uniforms for the war effort. The government had more land resources ... the money ... so they give them coal-bearing lands in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valleys. Now, it winds up that Northeastern Pennsylvania has 75-90% of all the world's anthracite coal. Hard coal are in Northeastern Pennsylvania, so it was a huge resource and so the brothers ... they got the land ... they start figuring out how to market the coal. Suffice it to say at a certain point, they said, "We need a canal." The Erie Canal had kind of paved the way, so canals had been around and the Chinese had them millennia ago. Leonardo da Vinci invents the miter gate that makes a lock function in 1500, so canals were not unknown, but here in America because the native peoples were technologically completely different. They had a different mindset. They had just trails and waterways. That was it. So you come into America, you want to move something ... the roads were horrible ... their money messes. It was easier to ship on in the winter with sleds, rather than to actually use roads. So, canals become the answer to a problem in America in a way that they weren't in other places. It said that America had canal fever and the Erie Canal led the way. Most of the engineers had built American canals learned on things like the Erie. There were over 100 canals built in America, including eight that were built like the D&H primarily to market anthracite coal. Once you got a canal coming through complete wilderness, this is great! Whole towns would spring up within six months with announcing the route and the route was 108 miles and had 110 locks originally. It ran along the Lackawaxen River across the Delaware River at the confluence. Follow the Delaware River to Port Jervis where then joined the Neversink River. Ooh ... you're by the Basha Kill for a minute, and then the Sandburg Creek and Ellenville ... the ... the Rondout joined it. Follow the Rondout Creek to Rondout on the Hudson, which itself was only two farms at the time that the town of Rondout grew because the canal terminated there. Originally they just want to get their coal to Philadelphia. The problem was when they finally did get it there, there were closer coalfields. They couldn't be competitive. They got the right to improve the navigation of the Lackawaxen River from the Pennsylvania legislative and 23 and so the idea was that they would just run it down and pull the boats back up on the way back. So it's on Tidewater briefly, just outside of Honesdale, four minutes on the Lackawaxen Creek. Otherwise it was all a canal ... all and it really hug this serpentine route that we see here and they go under the Delaware River. They had a rope. They put the mule. At this point it was a single mule. The boats were ...

Brett Barry  7:17  
Wait, did he say mules? Yes, those canal barges were pulled by mules. Those mules driven by children in some cases at a rate of about one to three miles per hour. Okay, back to Bill.

Bill Merchant  7:30  
It was ten days round trip was and they incentivized. If you took eleven days, you lost a nickel and a ton. If you took twelve days, you lost another nickel. If the numbers may be wrong, but they actually incentivize because they were private contractors. Early on the Canal Company owned everything and you changed steeds, the theft must have been rampant and the people would abuse the boats. They start selling you, the boat, you take the money out. So, an interesting D&H fact. The boats are numbered when you're buying them from the company. When you see a name boat, that's a boat that was completely paid off and now belonged to whomever paid it off, sometimes the operator, sometimes an investor, and then they'd get a name, but it was all mule power. And, in fact, you couldn't go. The D&H Company had steam and naphtha launches that they operated, but those things would be too fast to the road this size. So, canals throughout the nineteenth century, all just used real power and generally we're at three miles per hour and thereabouts and children. There were children with a mule driver, boys and girls, sometimes orphans. They would even pay the orphanage for the poor house. The boats were 70-foot long, 9-foot wide, carried 30 tons of coal. The canal itself was 32-foot wide on the top, 16-20 on the bottom, had 4-foot of water and throughout its history it's fascinating to see the depth and how much it can carry. These boats were just clearing and you built the river valleys for two reasons. One was somewhere in there on a river valley you can go the longest, they call them levels between locks. All the canals of the era were built with a pick and a shovel. It was Irishmen. It was a common aphorism in the nineteenth century. All you need to build a canal is a pick and a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and an Irishman. This could not have been built nor operated without immigrants ... largely Irish. One source says, "Irish laborers in German stone masons." The town of Rondout in 1855 was more than half of immigrants from Ireland and Germany. There's like so many things in America to this day. If you're eating vegetables, we'd get people from overseas who are here for the same reasons we love this country. I used to not get political, but I'm sorry that certain things or just, you know, immigrants are nothing but a net positive. This would not have existed without them. I can say definitively from research backup.

Brett Barry  9:42  
The D&H Canal didn't just move coal. After the break, hear about the other products moving at one to three miles per hour: the eventual decline and transformation of the canal, and more about the museum itself: preserving stories, landscapes, and artifacts in High Falls, and then we'll announce the winner of last episode's Bill Abranowicz book giveaway. Stay tuned. For books on Catskills history and lots more, check out Briars & Brambles Books. The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call 518-750-8599. Kaatscast is sponsored by the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call 518-763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com; and by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.org. Back at the D&H Canal Museum, Historian Bill Merchant helped us parse out a timeline of canal operations.

Bill Merchant  11:20  
So, 1827, it's already fully water and operating from Port Jervis to here. They're training people. They're even moving coal, actually build a turnpike road to connect to an existing turnpike road to get their coal to Port Jervis and they ship it up. They don't do anything in Pennsylvania to the final year and I love this part of the story. They raised a million and a half dollars. They get a $500,000 bond issue from the state of New York and that's the money that builds the last end of the canal in Pennsylvania. Early on in the state of Pennsylvania when they gave them their charter, they had ... I forget how many years it was ... but if they didn't meet certain metrics, Pennsylvania could seize it. They were very concerned about this. Needless to say, it didn't happen. October of 1828, it opens on its entire length. It operates until 1898 when the coal company says, "Okay, finally, it wasn't making the money," and I haven't looked at the numbers too carefully, but I don't think they ever lost money on the canal. These guys were good businessmen. And, at that point, there was much a railroad. Pete Cole was 1872 ... the same time that they owned or controlled railroads from New York to Montreal, so that's why the price went down to the 1870s because railroads were now moving it more efficiently ... and when do you need the coal? In the winter, so it was natural to have that this would happen, you know, from the start. The very first load ever transport on the D&H Canal was firewood. So, it belies that idea that, you know, we didn't have enough coal. We still had wood but just not enough for all the things you do with wood, but there was also bricks ... not a whole lot. Most of those were in the Hudson River. Plaster bluestone ... they would ship rawhides from the Caribbean and South America all the way up. Of course, they go to Prattsville, you know, but they also went out the D&H Canal and it was right here in High Falls. There were two tanneries between here and Accord. Sullivan County ... one source claims that the Union Army marched in Sullivan County leather. There was so many tanneries down there. They would bring the rawhides in. They process them and the finished goods would come out. Glassware ... Ellenville Glass ... a Connecticut glassmaking firm decides to locate for transportation purposes. They want to go to Rondout. This is the 1840s. Rondout is already too expensive for, so they make their way to Ellenville and they start making Ellenville Glass and so you'll see those are some Civil War era whiskey bottles ... a lot of Ellenville Glass product is not marked. These are which is why one is displayed, so you can read Ellenville Glass. This is what they're known for, as these car boys with these wicker. These are three originals I'm very fortunate to find these. These are pretty rare. By 1880, they're employing 880 people when the town's population is only 2,400. So, that's a huge industry and, of course, natural cement. Natural cement was discovered by Canvass White in 1818 along the run of the Erie Canal and Chenango. The D&H was aware of that. They were going to buy their ... the cement they needed not so much for locks, but for aqueduct abutments and the like, a little bit for the locks, but not as much as people would think. The Canal Company: They paid a geologist to come along just on the off chance and, lo and behold, in High Falls, their very first annual report. They tell you it was discovered by a geologist. This becomes a huge industry by the second half of the nineteenth century. More than half of all of North America cement is Rosendale cement, largely shipped on the D&H Canal. To 1898, the coal company, so now they sell the entire thing for $10,000 to Samuel Kirkendall and he continues running it. He sells some on the southern end, but it was ... it ran from Wurtsboro to Rondout still now it's not moving coal obviously because it's not connecting to the coal mines, but it's still a viable canal and Kirkendall was buying up natural cement companies, but then in 1901, he sells from Ellenville basically to Accord here to the New York O&W Railroad, Ontario and Western Railroad, and they extend their 1872 rail line on the D&H bed, but then it still continues operating from about a half-mile east of here. Coles Basin out to Rondout and that was just for the National Cement Industry, so now they're bringing coal in from the Hudson River to fire the kilns, to burn the coal to build, you know, and this endures until 1917 and it's my contention and I'm ... I'm yet to parse it and to say it definitively, but America enters the First World War in 1917 and so boom there goes your workforce. At this point, Portland cement is ascendant for a variety of reasons. The most interesting of which is that it was you could actually demo it, which you couldn't do the Rosendale cement. The local cement was too good, but it also took longer to set. It's a superior product. Portland people get the specs written, so it starts to favor of Portland. Portland-being cement that's made from the materials you'll need; taken from various spots, whereas natural cement. You dig the stone out of the ground, you burn it correctly, you grind it up, and it makes amazing cement. It's like ... God made you cement. You know, a fascinating industry and when I could talk for an hour on ...

Brett Barry  16:07  
As you've likely surmised by this point in the show, Bill Merchant is a walking talking encyclopedia for the D&H Canal. But if you're unable to meet up with him in person and want to know more, no worries. The museum itself is a treasure trove of accessible info on the topic. I asked Bill about how it came to be.

Bill Merchant  16:26  
Well, you know, we have a great board of directors. I was its president when we got the building at a certain point. Peter Bienstock became our president. He's much better at fundraising than I am. We raised and expended about $2,000,000 building this. We hired a professional design team actually a pair. Christina Ferwerda Creative Services ... Christina and her husband. She also worked with POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop), so we hired Paul Orselli Workshop and Paul is a STEAM STEM, so a science guy and we'll see, so they did different rooms together. But ... so I know more about the D&H Canal than probably anybody you're gonna meet, right? But I also and I love ... I'm a curator. I've curated many shows, but to design a whole museum in America today, I would always go. First off ... showbiz ... you got to be entertaining, you cannot be long. So you'd notice, we've got some long stuff, but most of its Twitter length, you want somebody whose job it is ... is how to engage audiences and so they actually did public testing. They sat at our flea market and at the parking lot of the River-to-Ridge Trail and just found out what people knew about it, which not surprisingly wasn't much, even people who lives in their backyard, and then they designed these things and what I love, too, is if you look outside, look in the windows, we have an image of the D&H Offices in Rondout until it looks like you're looking into D&H Offices. In the historic era, this room was the families, the DePuy families room until they finally ... they're so successful in the 1820s; you can get to house. There's no great time to say it, but there were five enslaved individuals held in bondage in this house by Simeon and eventually Jacob, although pretty much Simeon's always the owner. Here in New York State, we allegedly freed the slaves by 1827, but in fact, actually, if you were born July 3rd of 1827, you're in bondage, so you're 21, 1848. We all like to think we were better than the southern states. I'm here to tell you we were not and we have a sign in the final room about that. Simeon, he was a miller and he was a farmer and he was one of the wealthiest people in town when he built this. I think, in the 1810 census, he has like $5,000 worth of property. That's real money at that point in time, so he ... so he was a farmer, he owned a grist mill, so he would grow his wheat, and then he grinded into flour and he also operated a tavern, so this was a place where travelers would come, so the next room we'd go into was a public room is where you would eat, and then at the end of things that tables would fold up, they pull out beds, and you would sit and you'd share a bed with a stranger. This is not for any weird, we've all got dirty minds. No, this is just what you did. The idea that you get your own room with your own bath, that's totally eccentric. That's for rich people. That's, you know, you know, this building, even when it was apartments in the twentieth century, they didn't have running water. They had electricity, but no ... no running water and there's a well that you were standing by when I came in today ... that was the water source for the town that well throughout most of the historic period. Original Dutch door ... ain't that amazing? 1797 ... the canal was right there after 1850, so that stonework was the side of the canal and where that tree is with 6-foot of water. There are 412 extent features on the D&H Canal that will be enumerated in the update of the D&H Canal on the National Register of Historic Places, which I'm working on with some paid contractors on payroll that is ... thank God. It was made a National Historic Landmark in 1968 ... Famously Secretary of the Interior Udall flies over and goes, "Yep, that's a national [unintelligible]." They mentioned the five locks. They mentioned this building, so this is a National Historic Landmark. But we're updating that it's very cursory and so I led the field surveys and written most of the narrative history ... 412 extent features. Orange and Sullivan County own the entire bed. Sullivan County does a great job, but 80% is public trails today. The Open Space Institute is going to be renovating a huge ... probably five, six million dollar project ... the New York O&W Trail, but there's a lot of D&H that's gonna get circled in, if I have high hopes. But here in New York State because of Open Space Institute, who is our partner in this building, we would not have gotten the grant. They bought us the building without them, without their guidance, without their deep pockets. They're doing great stuff for all of us New Yorkers, especially trails. There'll be parking, there'll be signage, there'll be maintained. Well, it'll be open to the public in a way that it isn't right now. I'm very excited. I've got to live long enough. There's so many great projects going on, but it's going to just benefit all of us. Tourism is our biggest industry. Our local businesses have got to understand. We are an economic driver. We are bringing, especially with our visitors center. We're getting people to stay here and cultural tourists are gold. They spend two and a half times the money that your average tourists does. People don't appreciate us enough, but we're working on it. We're working on it, you know, and also this space is available for corporate events for ... hey, wedding, small parties, please just talk to us. You know, we just have the Rondout Valley Business Association and they all said, "It was the best mixer they've ever had and they have one a month." It's a really comfortable, wonderful space, you know.

Brett Barry  21:24  
A footnote to that comfortable, wonderful space ... my wife and I had our celebratory engagement to be married dinner there, 22 years ago, when it was the DePuy Canal House. We had a table for two, overlooking the kitchen where Chef John Novi had been preparing innovative haute cuisine since 1969. He'd started the D&H Canal Society in 1966. Five decades later, restaurant now closed, he'd helped secure the grant that enabled transfer of the building to the society he founded. If you'd like to see this historic space for yourself, check out canalmuseum.org for hours of operation and additional information. And now, the moment some of you have been waiting for, particularly those who entered our giveaway for a signed copy of "Country Life: Homes of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley" by Bill Abranowicz featured in our last episode. The winner is ... Mollie ...

Mollie Zoldan  22:25  
Blythe Carey!

Brett Barry  22:27  
Congratulations, Blythe! We had quite a few entries on this one, so if you didn't win, might we suggest a call to Briars & Brambles Books, who I'm guessing can secure a copy for you, too. Kaatscast is a biweekly production of Silver Hollow Audio. Special thanks to the Nicholas J. Juried Family Foundation for a generous grant to this show and to our listener-supporters. If you'd like to join their ranks, just click "Donate" at kaatscast.com. Sound recording for this episode by J.K. Kazlauskas. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening and tune in next time for Thanksgiving side dish ideas from two of today's best Catskills chefs.