Chenango Canal and James Geddes

     On October 26, 1825, at the “Wedding of the Waters”, America’s first civil engineers became legend.  The NYS Historical Marker on the site of the house of James Geddes in the Town of Camillus, on busy Genesee Street near the Fairmount Shopping Center, cannot possibly tell the whole story of New York’s Canal system.  One of the most remarkable facts regarding the building of the New York State Canal system in the early years of the 1800’s was that there was no civil engineer in America at the time.

     The man offered the job of civil engineer of the proposed Erie Canal was William Weston of England.  He declined!  That left 4 men, three of whom were judges with limited surveying skill who had learned the craft of surveying in order to settle boundary disputes in court to do the job.  To this motley threesome was added Nathan Roberts, a teacher and mathematician. Some of these men, however, managed not only to learn their trade with hands on training alone.

     Geddes, who was an early entrepreneur in salt in the Syracuse area and a Court of Common Pleas judge by 1818,  moved from Pennsylvania to what became known at Geddesesburgh or Geddesville in 1794, Geddes who was appointed the Surveyor General of New York State, was given the job of finding the routes for the proposed Erie Canal, the lateral Chenango Canal and others.  Geddes was actually instrumental in getting the NYS Legislature to form a canal commission in 1810.

     Geddes limited knowledge of engineering and surveying but obviously good political connections landed him the job as one of the engineers (1816) to supervise in the construction of the proposed Erie Canal.  In 1825, after a bill was passed authorizing the surveying of lateral canal possibilities.  Geddes was sent to the proposed Chenango Valley canal route.  His survey proposed a route of 90 miles with 1,500 feet of lockage at a cost of $715,474.  The proposal of a Chenango Valley canal was voted down in successive years including after a 1827 survey by Nathan Roberts and a report put together by Forman.  The conclusion was there was not enough water. It was not until 1833 that the Act for the Construction of the Chenango Canal became law.

     Today, as then, the Erie Canal and the Chenango Canal’s remnants, stand as a marvel of early engineering in America and the feat of building them a testament to the early spirit of the workers many of them immigrants, who worked through inclement weather and unopened forests to build what was the most important commerce routes of the day.  There is no doubt that the Erie Canal was the single most important factor that made New York the Empire State and that the “Great Chenango Canal” certainly allowed for the villages and businesses along its way to spring up even though it proved to be a financial failure.

William Dempster Hoard & Madison County History you never hear of...the Wisconsin Dairy Business started here...

I was going through the Syracuse Newspaper and found an article  on Hellava Good Cheese moving to Wisconsin.  Many people would pass that information up but... being that little history genie that I am, I was very amused since it was a man from right here in Central New York who made Wisconsin “The Dairy State”…his name is William Dempster Hoard.  Yes the dairyman…from Munnsville.

So when traveling on Route 46 from Oneida to Hamilton you might pass a beautiful, now deserted stone building on the side of the road. Missing windows and doors… it sits as reminder of Munnsville’s past, a past that included many famous people and famous products. One such man was born in the building and passed his childhood there observing the area and interested in its development, his name was William Dempster Hoard.

Hoard spent many hours observing the growing of hops that was a mainstay crop during his formative years; a crop that depleted the already thin soil of this hilly Madison County, NY area. The farmers who lost their fortunes and farms to this fickle crop, wiped out by blight and the commodity market, changed to milk production and Holstein–Friesian cattle that were imported from Holland.

The cows were a needed agricultural addition that was - with its bi-product of manure - an enhancement of the soil and a new way of life for this Madison county, NY area. Hoard as a young man moved to Wisconsin in the westward exodus of the 1800’s and landed in an area that also had agricultural problems much like his former home. One day siting on a hillside noting the farmers going out of business or struggling, he came up with the idea of making the same change to cows, an idea that made Wisconsin the “Dairy State” for many years.

Hoard also started Hoard’s Dairyman’s Journal that gave information to farmers on dairy practices. He is considered the father of the refrigerated railcar that was needed to ship milk to markets at a great distance and today his drawings of the perfect barn have been copied by Cornell University. His motto was that happy cows produced more milk and that entering his dairy you were to treat his cows like “mothers” with kindness and respect.

In his lifetime he became the Governor of Wisconsin and helped bring abolition to the state, staunchly supporting legislation to accompany his beliefs.

Today Madison County, NY is still an agricultural county and much of what was learned by our founding dairy farmer’s came out of Hoard’s Journal! 

It is a great pity that riding on today’s Route 46 one cannot be made aware of this piece of Madison County history, instead we are beaten to death with Gerrit Smith, Oz and pass real history right by.  And of yes those are “Hop” plants coming back to Munnsville…everything old is new again or as I always say…”History always repeats itself”!

(http://www.syracuse.com/food/index.ssf/2015/04/heluva_good_closes_cheese_plant_in_wayner_county.html)

A Special Celebration at the Safe Haven Museum and Education Center set for this week!

From June 19-21, 2014, the Safe Haven Museum & Education Center and the Jewish Motorcycle Alliance will celebrate the 70th reunion of the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego.

The event will feature a special celebration that is free to the public on Friday, as well as free bus tours of important sites and free tours of Fort Ontario on Friday and Saturday. Many other activities are planned including speakers like Irving Schlad a former refugee of the camp and a memorial dedication to Dr. William Schum, the centers first President. 

We here in CNY seldom have an opportunity to learn information on the Holocaust first hand unless it is part of our family’s history, nor do we take the time to consider its implications in a way that perhaps could change how our children behave in adulthood.  We do however have a great resource if we wish to have a ‘hands-on” learning lesson… that resource is the Safe Haven Museum in Oswego.

The museum does not dwell on the horrors of the Holocaust…  though it is there, what it does is focus on is the USA and our response to the displacement of people as each of the WWII concentration camps were liberated by our troops.  The short 37-minute documentary actually allows children who lived through the Holocaust tell their story in a humanistic and sometimes humorous way…  they having been dropped from the horrors of war into a Displaced Person Camp at Fort Ontario.  It also gives us hope as they explain the kindness of the Oswego people and its children. 

This little known piece of history is also an interesting look into the policies of the United States on immigration, at a time when we set tight limits on the number of immigrants allowed to enter. The fact remained that as the Allied Forces swept through Europe and Nazi Concentration Camps were liberated, the many people who lived through the horrific experience had no place to go. Though countries all over the world took in DP’s (displaced persons) the United States did not.

With much political pressure, Roosevelt in 1944 allowed 982 Holocaust survivors and political prisoners of war who had been liberated or displaced to come the United States as his “Guests”. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes sent Ruth Gruber an assistant to escort these refugees to the United States and to record their stories, which she wrote about in her book “Haven”.

For more information on the event go to the website http://www.safehavenmuseum.com