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Finding fun while working the Erie Canal

For canallers, life and work while working on the Erie Canal could be a monotonous, occasionally deeply dull affair, especially when stuck in a port, living cheaply, and usually far away from home. In Low Bridge! Folklore and the Erie Canal by Lionel D. Wyld, old accounts of canallers’ many, often less than savory, methods of passing the time are described. Wyld’s book includes many passages directly from journals, letters, and newspapers at the time, and the typographical errors are reproduced here as originally printed. The average canaller seems to have been a combination of perennial adolescence and hearty, frontier-type…

Francis Adrian Van der Kemp and the Canal

Francis Adrian Van der Kemp was a writer, minister, and political leader of some prominence in Holland when he fled, fearing political and religious prosecution, to Oneida County in Upstate New York. There, through his enquiring mind and prodigious letter writing, he came into contact with many of the movers and shakers of late 18th Century and early 19th Century New York, corresponding with would be presidents, generals, and legislators alike. In a selection from Scholar in the Wilderness: Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, author Harry F. Jackson details Van der Kemp’s efforts to whip local support for the Erie…

Further reading on the Erie Canal

2025 marked 200 years of the Erie Canal, a titanic work that dramatically reshaped the landscape of New York State and left its mark on the culture of the region. Over the last year, we’ve been highlighting the history of the canal, drawing from Syracuse University Press’ long history of publishing on the region. As the year draws to a close, we wanted to highlight some of the resources the last year of blog posts were drawn from for those wishing to further explore the stories and authors of the Canal. The Erie Canal Reader—poems, essays, travelogues, and fiction by…