Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Nov. 1, 1906
GOOD SEASON ON THE CANAL
_______
STEAMBOATS ARE FEW THIS YEAR
____
The Boatman's Trade Was an Important Item to Villages Along the
Line of the Canal - Keeping the Stream Free from Pollution
_______
Lyons, Oct. 31. - The season soon to close has been a good one for boatmen on the Erie canal, but the palmy days of canaling are over. To the land dweller it looks like a hard life but that is not always so. There is a constant interest in seeing what has happened around the locks since the last trip, and the comparison of profits of the year with those of previous years. This season there about 2,600 boats on the Erie, only ten of them steamboats. The steamboats are making better money around New York.
Watching the slow progress of a canal boat loaded with lumber it seems as if the family on board would grow old and die of weariness before the trip was made, but in fact the round trip from Buffalo to New York is usually accomplished in thirty days, and a boat is expected to make it eight times a year. When the captain's family lives on a boat it is their hope to be in a pleasant town when winter stops travel where the children can attend school and where there are other boatmen's families.
Sometimes a woman is seen driving a canal boat but not often. The women may take the helm and assist the boat through the lock but they seldom go out on the towpath. A baby is sometimes seen on board, and many a pretty-faced, sweet looking young girl sits at her sewing as the men rush around to let their boat down easy to the next level.
When all travel was by canal or stage it was the event of the day to see the packet come in, and the packet driver was as much admired by the small boys as was the stage driver. When his horn was heard it was a signal for the youth of the town to run to the dock. In the fifties the driver was Billie Meade and the packet horn would be sounded as the boat passed the pottery, his horses whipped up to bring the passengers in with a dash and a crowd would gather to see if there might be a fight. It was the custom for the fighting men of Lyons to challenge boatmen and so frequent were encounters that the little green at the Lyons lock was known as Battle Square.
Along the line of the Erie trade with boatmen was the business of the villagers, and that accounts for the winding streets of Lyons. When the stores were built the banks of the canal were not so wide an deep, and the doors on the canal side were as much used as those on the street. There were no license laws and most storekeepers found their best profits in selling liquor to boatmen. The old Graham House was a fashionable hotel, and the packet barns were behind it. The building is now a cooper shop.
Everybody living in Lyons is familiar with the low ground on the Pilgrimport road known as "the old canal," but present generation does not know that the route of the Erie for the first twenty years after it was dug was too crooked to be practical, and the straightening was for economy. If the present plan for the Barge Canal is accepted, there may be a ditch like that where the bulrushes grow now, and where about seven years ago the stench from decaying vegetation was so great that the state made an effort to abate the nuisance and to clean the offensive ditch. About one hundred barrels of disinfectant were used in the space of a mile.
All that can be done to keep the Erie a sweet stream is accomplished at great expense, for the popular idea is that it is the natural sewer of the state. In times past, before the fines for the offense were promptly levied, people used to direct their drains into it, and any little trifle like a dead horse or load of rubbish was dumped into the water. But now the mandatory laws are rigid and the water is perhaps as clean as in the average stream where the fall is no greater, The water is constantly renewed and the state scow attends to repairs.
Within fifteen years an island has formed in the basin in this village, and that it is allowed to stay there shows the change that has come to business methods. The basin used to be necessary for boats to turn around, as some were in the trade solely for the use of the pottery and turned back eastward at this point. Some interesting legal points have come to light occasionally as to ownership of land along the line of the Erie. For instance, a local manufacturer recently wished to acquire more land in the neighborhood of his plant and found that the land in question was never really owned by the state, but that when the canal was put through, Jacob Leach sold to the state the earth removed and retained actual ownership of the land, and that it can be sold only for the original purchase price.