Fifteen Miles On the Erie Canal – Episode 1, History With Bill Poray
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Ed Smith: [00:00:00] Ed Smith for whatsfairport.com. It is our Fifteen Miles On the Erie Canal podcast series here and joining me on the phone is the Town Historian for the Town of Perinton, Bill Poray. Hello, sir.
Bill Poray: Hello. Great to be with you.
Ed Smith: Yes, thank you for joining us. We wanted to have you on Bill, because you have a great wealth of knowledge in the Town of Perinton and Village of Fairport, and it’s a big year for the Erie Canal.
Bill Poray: Well, it is. It’s. There’s so many people talking about it, and there’s things underway to celebrate it. 200 years of the Canal operational from Lake Erie to the New York Harbor. So that opened up Commerce East and West, and it was huge in the fall of 1825. So we’re celebrating 200 years of that.
Ed Smith: And it’s just incredible. As somebody who lives in Fairport Bill, seeing the impact all these years later, you can still see the economic impact, you know, with people with their boats parking in the village and going into restaurants and stuff like that, or people just journeying from one end [00:01:00] of the canal to the other. It still has that impact, like you’re saying.
Bill Poray: Well, it does, and especially in recent years, there’s really a resurgence of interest in the canal, so we’re capitalizing on that, and these anniversaries do that as well. I say these anniversaries because while we are celebrating the 200th here in Fairport and Perinton and many other communities across the state, we’ve already celebrated a bicentennial of the canal. Our canal here opened in April of 1822, so we’re well beyond our 203rd year in Fairport and parenting for the Erie Canal.
Ed Smith: That’s interesting. Bill, so the, the portion near where we are opened a few years earlier, as they continue to dig and go along. Can you give us some more history on that big dig, were there are a lot of local folks that were involved with that?
Bill Poray: You know, our records are minimal from that time, but canal history across the state tells [00:02:00] us that in the earliest years of the canal, it’s a bit of a misconception to say that the early laborers of the canal were immigrants, often Irish immigrants. There was a time for that, but it was a little bit later.
The earliest workers on the canal were often localized to the people living near the section where it was being built. So they were farmers, they were people from the immediate area often that did the digging. And if we remember that the canal initially was only four feet deep and 40 feet wide, much smaller than it is today.
Not to minimize the effort, but it wasn’t the size that it is today. And they were using tools, they had picks, shovels, beasts of burden from horses to oxen and so forth to help them move boulders and pull out tree stumps. So it was local folks in many cases that were very much involved in the hard work.
Ed Smith: And Bill, when that opened, [00:03:00] it was really just four feet deep. When did they make it a lot deeper and wider?
Bill Poray: Well, there’s been a variety of transitions over the years, but the initial canal with that dimension lasted until the early 1840s. There was an effort that took probably 20 years to expand the size of the canal, the width, and the depth.
In that era, it got to seven feet deep and quite a bit wider. And you know, every time you expanded the canal, part of the rationale, a big part was that allowed for bigger boats and more freight to be shipped. And when they did the expansion, the locks got bigger. So now you can move more freight, more efficiently, more cost effectively.
That happened in that generation 1840s to 1860s. And then the canal that we see today really dates in our area, 1912 to 1915 in some areas, including Rochester, up to 1918. That’s what we have [00:04:00] called the Barge Canal era. When the canal got down to a depth of 12 feet or more, and a width of 120 feet or more in many areas. So much bigger and bigger locks, bigger infrastructure to go with it.
Ed Smith: It’s been a multi-phase process overall, those years and decades with. A whole group of people, like you’re saying, digging that canal for sure. Of course, starting with locals first and everything, but the whole idea was to make things easier too, to ship and move around. Right. I can imagine a four foot deep canal. They couldn’t really take a very big boat on that.
Bill Poray: No, no, they couldn’t. But it was a lot better than what they had, which was primitive trails through desolate terrain. Yeah. Which made it really hard to travel for and hard to ship products and goods. And you know, there’s a story about that I could tell you quick.
There is a gentleman, his name isn’t as well-known as it should be. His name was Jesse Hawley, H-A-W-L-E-Y. And [00:05:00] of course people have heard of DeWitt Clinton. He was the governor of New York State, and you know his adversaries called the Canal, Clinton’s ditch. People often think, well, DeWitt Clinton was the idea generator behind the canal.
But there was a gentleman, this Jesse Hawley, who was gathering wheat in Geneva and getting it to mills in Seneca Falls over these horribly rutted roads, if he could even find them impassable. And he went broke, and he went to debtor’s prison as a result in Canandaigua. So this is someone from our area while he was in debtor’s prison, he wrote a series of articles advocating under the name by the way, Hercules not his own name here. This gentleman was packed away in prison writing these articles about his vision for a canal, and not just the vision, but the technology behind it. The route that he advocated where the locks should be to [00:06:00] handle, you know, the flow of water and his essays wound up being what was used as the model for the Erie Canal that was opened in 1825.
Ed Smith: Wow. Look at that. I had no idea, Bill. And so he put these assays together and had his idea and they eventually made it happen. Did they, how did he have an idea of where, where it should go other than maybe places with more population or places that were easier to dig? How, how was that decided?
Bill Poray: He was very intelligent man, and he knew the area, the lay of the land and he studied and he studied maps that were available at the time, and he used the resources that were available to him, and he was pretty much spot on in most of what he said. And so it’s incredible that this gentleman from a prison cell plotted out a specific course for the canal.
And amazing that the original surveyors of the Erie Canal took his notes and his documents and [00:07:00] used them when they surveyed and validated what he came up with. It’s just pretty neat story. When the canal opened in 1825, he spoke in Rochester at the opening as well as in Buffalo and wound up being credited in DeWitt Clinton’s memoirs, published it right after he died as really the vision behind much of the Erie Canal. Fun story.
Ed Smith: Oh my gosh. This is fascinating ’cause I always thought it was, you know, somebody on the governor’s team that had come up with that from the whole economic standpoint of it. But he’s the guy that was experiencing the hardship and needed to a, a big change, a technology change.
We are talking with Bill Poray, the Town of Perinton Historian and, uh, Bill. So we’re talking about the early days when they decided to build the canal here. How did they determine from his essays, or did they put other input in? How did they decide, okay, we want this to go through Fairport and Pittsford and Spencerport and so forth?
Bill Poray: Well, of course, those [00:08:00] communities didn’t exist yet. They exist because of the canal. The Town of Perinton existed, but there was no village of Fairport. There was no port, so there could be no Fairport. Right. So when this tentative path was selected and the surveyors came across New York State, they were picking the, you know, areas that were the path of least resistance.
They were looking for areas where water could flow from Lake Erie. Ultimately to the Hudson River, Lake Erie is hundreds and hundreds of feet above the Hudson River, so they were looking for areas to maximize that natural flow with a minimum number of locks, and there were a lot of locks in those days.
We have less today when it was altered in subsequent changes to the canal. But to answer your question, they picked the areas where based on topography, water would flow from west to east.
Ed Smith: We just got lucky that, uh, it ended up going through Perinton or what was [00:09:00] Perinton back then. But it makes sense, like you said, that back then to, to have it flow from Lake Erie down to the Hudson. And, and remind me, Bill, I, know I studied this back in fourth grade, but how long would it take somebody once it was completed in 1825 to go from one end to the other?
Bill Poray: Oh gosh. It could take a 10th of the amount of time as it would to struggle along. I don’t have the exact days in my memory at this point, but I mean, it, it was a relatively short trip on the canal, perhaps five. Or six days?
Ed Smith: A lot shorter. Yeah.
Bill Poray: Yeah, a lot shorter. And the cost to transport goods just dramatically less money. When the canal opened in 1822 in our area at that point, everything east of us was already completed and open to the Hudson River and then therefore down to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Open Ocean.
So on April 11th, 1822, when the canal opened. Two, if you [00:10:00] know where Bushnell’s Basin is. Which is in Perinton, and then just beyond that, on your way to Pittsford is the Great Embankment. The Great Embankment, which we can talk about. The Great Embankment wasn’t completed yet. So to give a feel for how exciting this was for local farmers, millers uh, residents.
The canal was navigable from Bushnell’s Basin East to the Atlantic Ocean. Wow. What that meant is the day that the canal opened, and we have documentation of this, warehouses had immediately sprung up that spring in Bushnell’s Basin, made of wood. Eventually some a few made of cobblestone buildings and warehouses.
The day it opened held 10,000 barrels of flour. As an example, waiting to be shipped and instead of farmers and millers selling their products within maybe five or 10 miles, they could now [00:11:00] market their products hundreds and hundreds of miles to the East Coast.
Ed Smith: And that economic impact that just had to be so substantial back then, Bill to, to go outside of, you know, forget outside of Monroe County, you were selling to New York City and other big areas.
Bill Poray: Absolutely, just enormous. And what it also did for, especially travel going west, it opened up the Great Western Frontier as we were known at that time. You know, Rochester was at one time called the Lion of the West, and because there wasn’t so much known west of us at one time in the early 18th century, so the canal offered the opportunity for people to really start to migrate West with much less difficulty. And when you couple that with, if we think that the Revolutionary War, that occurrence, and then followed by that land offices in Canandaigua, [00:12:00] part of the Phelps and Gorham purchase, and the ability for people to buy significant areas of land for reasonable amounts of money. Coupled that with the canal starting in 1822 here, that really caused growth in this area and beyond, of course, because if they could get here or they could go up the Oswego River and get to Lake Ontario. From the canal and now you could sail further west.
Ed Smith: So the economic impact, that’s part of it right there, right Bill is when with all those people moving goods and services or actual people around that is really what flourished to make what we know is Fairport now. Right?
Bill Poray: And it is. Part of where the name the Empire State came from. You know, before the canal, New York City was not so big, the Erie Canal and the ability to ship those goods to New York Harbor really created a monster of business, of economic trade in New [00:13:00] York. The canal is a significant factor in the explosive growth of New York City.
Ed Smith: 100%. We are talking with, uh, Bill Poray, Town Historian in the town of Perinton and talking about the Erie Canal as it celebrates its big 200th anniversary this year, but the, the fascinating history of how it was developed and everything.
Bill Poray: You know, before we had the town of Perinton and, and Pittsford and Henrietta and Irondequoit, all these towns, Penfield on the east side of the Genesee River, we were all one big town known as Northfield. And Northfield, and maybe you’ve seen, uh, Pittsford uses the name Northfield quite a bit in businesses. We were all this one big town that happened after Phelps and Gorham made the opportunity for land available. 1789, 17, early 1790s, people started to migrate here and became part of this town of Northfield.
Briefly became broken up [00:14:00] into something called Boyle, and then our towns were established Penfield in 1810, Perinton in 1812 other towns in similar years. And so we were all broken up into smaller towns. But you might be surprised that we were all originally part of the County of Ontario. So, Monroe County was established in 1821.
Therefore, the first decade of Perinton, we were part of Ontario County. When these counties were first established, they were geographically much larger and there were much fewer of them. And over time, they were split off in the, in the smaller geographic areas. One thing you know, we also shouldn’t forget when we’re talking about our early history, well, there’s a lot of history. Before all this. And we should never forget the Native American presence that was here for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. That long and, and difficult story of, you know, our settlers coming here, [00:15:00] but settling the land. Well, I’m sure as far as the Native Americans were considered, it already was settled.
Ed Smith: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Bill Poray: And, and that’s a whole ‘nother story, but I wanted to make sure we make that footnote, not forget the importance of the presence and history and culture of, of the Native Americans that were here and continued to be amongst us.
Ed Smith: Bill, was it, was there any consideration with some of the nations as, as far as they were building the canal, or was there no consideration of that when they were plotting that out?
Bill Poray: I must say I am no expert on this. I do believe you would find that the Erie Canal was considered somewhat of a, a scar cutting the nation in in half in terms of the Native American population. I mean, imagine this east west route. This east, west water route for anyone there had better be the construction of bridges very rapidly, or you can’t get from one side to the other very easily. And so the bridges that we have [00:16:00] today, in most cases. There were bridges there 200 years ago.
Ed Smith: Like the lift bridge in Fairport.
Bill Poray: Exactly. A, a, a good example. Our lift bridge, which, you know, we’re renowned for our one-of-a-kind, Ripley’s, believe it or not, people like to say it appeared in Ripley’s believe it or not. And I believe that’s probably true, but I can’t find the evidence that Lift Bridge was put in position in 1914, but before that lift bridge, there was almost a hundred years of bridges before it in the same location, starting out with a, a small wooden bridge that was only 40 feet long because that’s how wide the canal was.
We talked about that. Every time the canal got wider, you needed a new bridge to replace the old one. That was too short, but also these early bridges didn’t last so long. This lift bridge that we have has been around longer than all the rest of the bridges combined.
Ed Smith: Is that just a, a sign of the modern technology and material they’ve used in [00:17:00] it for?
Bill Poray: Well, it’s been certainly been rebuilt and refabricated and, uh, it’s not without a lot of attention and a lot of money, but, uh, we’re glad it’s here because it turned into such a beautiful focal point over the years. There were decades gone by that people wished that bridge, uh, rapid death. There was a plan in the early seventies, 1970s to have a flyover bridge that would be high over the canal, high over our railroad tracks, and pretty much look down over Fairport.
Ed Smith: Really?
Bill Poray: Had they implemented that plan, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation because many of us wouldn’t be here. It probably would’ve killed what we know of as the village today. It is a beloved structure today, our next bridge in the village, just to the east of it, is the Parker Street Bridge that you may be familiar with. And that’s an example of a fixed position bridge that doesn’t go up and down, but that’s also a Barge Canal era bridge. That bridge was built in 1912, 2 years older [00:18:00] than the lift bridge.
Ed Smith: And, and Bill talking about the bridges, you got me thinking so, you know, early 19 hundreds when the automobile starts to take off. Was that really the point that things started to change for the not so good for the canal? Or did it change in a different way?
Bill Poray: Well, you know, the first big data point for a change in the Erie Canal came much earlier in 1853 railroad tracks were laid through Perinton as part of, uh, New York Central expansion to bridge with a modern, more direct route between Rochester and Syracuse. So they, they bought up a bunch of small railroads that took a more southerly route, and they connected Rochester and Syracuse. So the railroad, when it came here immediately that offered an alternative. To the canal for shipping of goods and products and so forth. The canal certainly continued to thrive, but over the decades, the railroad gained a larger and larger [00:19:00] share of the freight business. But being in a community where we had both the railroad and the canal and still do, what that did is that turned our community Fairport and Perinton into something more than just primarily the agricultural community that it was. That started the creation of factories and businesses aligned along the canal, like fruit packing, operations, canneries, those types of businesses, which really caused a significant growth, particularly in the village of Fairport.
Ed Smith: And you can still see the pieces of that, right, with the cannery that’s been, you know, repurposed into a, a restaurant, uh, entertainment destination area really?
Bill Poray: Yes. That factory. A mid 1880s shoe factory. It operated as a shoe factory for some years, and then a few other entities came and went, and by 1903 or so, it became a [00:20:00] can factory. And by a can factory, which is not really a cannery at all. A can factory makes the cans and then sends them with one lid unattached, one end off to a cannery where they put stuff in those cans like peaches or cherries and then attaches the final lid to the can. That’s what a cannery is. So we kind of named it, I guess, a cannery because it works and it’s a good marketing slogan, but it’s really a can factory and a shoe factory before that.
Ed Smith: And Bill, I have to ask, so on, on the other side of Main Street, the tall gold smokestack that you see on that side, my son wants to know, we were walking on the canal last week and he wanted to know what used to be in there.
Bill Poray: Uh, the smokestack that’s right next to the canal.
Ed Smith: And I think there’s an architecture firm or something in there now.
Bill Poray: Yes, yes, yes, there is. Well, that’s a good question. So you probably took your son for an ice cream at the, at the box factory building.
Ed Smith: We, we did [00:21:00] do a little ice cream trip and everything. Yeah.
Bill Poray: So where that box factory building is long ago, there was the factory of the DeLand Company. And that opened the same year as the railroad got here in 1853. They made a variety of kitchen products like saleratus, uh, essentially baking powder. Very successful, shipped them on the canal and the railroad everywhere.
Back to your question, the building, the brick building across the parking lot was the powerhouse generating. Electricity to run the operations of the factory, the business that was in, what is the box factory building today. That smokestack was related to that powerhouse. That smokestack used to be twice as tall as it is. And if you look at that smokestack, you look how big the diameter is at the top. And you can kind of imagine, well that’s odd. It doesn’t taper down to a smaller size.
I can show you [00:22:00] photos from as recently as 1970s, they took the top really just about the top half of it off probably needed. A good deal of repair and it made more sense, just, uh, remove it. But that’s a great building and it’s another wonderful artifact of our community. So yeah, there’s, there’s lots of these little treasures to look at and explore the history of.
Ed Smith: Such a fascinating history on, on, you know, Perinton and, and the canal and everything. We’ll have to have you back on the, uh, podcast here to talk some more about it, all right, sir?
Bill Poray: I would love to, love to.
Ed Smith: Alright, thank you for your time, Bill. Again, we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the canal. It’s Ed Smith on whatsupfairport.com.
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