THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL by Mrs. Hazel Whitenight, Lime Ridge School

 THE PENNSYLVANIA CANAL 
By MRS. HAZEL WHITENIGHT 
Lime Ridge School, Columbia County, Pennsylvania 

THE Pennsylvania Canal, built with pick and shovel more than a hundred years ago, was actually in use from 1828 until 1900. Extending from Nanticoke, the loading place for the North Branch of the canal, which ran through Wilkes-Barre, and on to Buffalo by way of Seneca Lake to Havre de Grace, Maryland, and traversing the community known as Lime Ridge, it was composed of four divisions: the first from Nanticoke to Northumberland, the second from Shamokin Dam to Clarks Ferry, the third from Clarks Ferry across the river to Harrisburg and thence to Columbia, and the fourth to Havre de Grace and by way of the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore and Delaware City. The first of these four sections is the one of primary concern in this paper.

 The canal was from seven to eight feet in depth and about thirty feet in width. Along its bank was a towpath on which the mules walked while pulling the boats. Two mules were used for single boats and from four to five (hitched tandem style) for double, depending upon the load. The mules were driven by boys usually from twelve to sixteen years of age. 

At Nanticoke and other places along the canal. locks maintained an adequate water level for operation, and aqueducts, built of logs, stones, and slabs, such as that across Fishing Creek near Rupert carried the water over creeks and rivers. Water was drained from the canal in the late fall in order to protect the banks of the canal from deterioration due to freezing and thawing. Each boatman took care of his own boat through-out the winter ; he frequently sold his worn-out mules or traded them for better ones in anticipation of the opening of the canal the following spring. 

A fleet of boats, each of which carried the complete runic of the company on the (runt and sides, was owned by the Pennsylvania Canal Company. H. J. Boone, of Lime Ridge, who is sill living, operated a number of these boats during his early manhood. Privately owned boats were as a general rule operated by the owners or by trusted employees, but those belonging to large wan pranks were operated by crews, each consisting of a captain, a boat-man, a bowman. and one or two laborers. 

Canal Boats at The Espy Boat Yard

Boats were limited in site by the width of the canal and the length of the tricks. Built of oak and pine lumber on a large wale, especially at Espy, they were both double and single. The double beats consisted simply of two single boats chained together. While used chiefly for freighting coal, pig iron, grain, and fertilizer, they carried passengers also. Some of the coal shipped over the canal was burned in an iron furnace at Bloomsburg that produced pig iron, which was in turn transported by the tame boats to Nanticoke and other urban communities.

Cargoes were weighed at Beach Haven at the dry dock. Boats were guided into a lock and slowly lowered to a pair of sages as the water was drained out. After the weighing was done, water was turned into the lock until it reached the proper level, where-upon the gates were opened and the bat continued on its journey. When boats were not in use, they were drawn into basins along the sides of the canal. These basins corresponded roughly to railroad sidings, and the one at Espy made no charge for storage. The average canal boat made about seventy-two trips each year from Nanticoke to Northumberland. 

The wages of the people employed on the canal were comparatively  small. Captains were paid a fifty-cent fare from Nanticoke to New York, a sixteen-cent fare from Nanticoke to Merrick, and a nineteen-cent fare from Nanticoke to Lime Ridge. Some of the men received ten dollars a month as wages; bowmen were paid five dollars. A number of the larger boats had cooks; the crews sometimes slept in bunks aboard but more often stopped at taverns along the way. Food was cheap. Potatoes could be bought for five cents a bushel, eggs for eight cents a dozen, molasses for five cents a quart, and beefsteak for ten cents a pound. Clothing too was inexpensive ; overalls, for instance, cost twenty-live cents a pair. 

Some of the men who served as captains on boats from Lime Ridge to distant points were Harry Pressler. Jonas Hughs, H J. Boone, Henry Boone, Charles Boone. Henry Heintzelman. and Thomas Cain. 

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Read more about the North Branch of the Canal along the Susquehanna River, here:
https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2022/10/when-susquehanna-valley-had-canal-north.html

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December 1917