Nationally recognized bridge preservationists, James Cooper, has offered to do the historic data and technical data necessary. Alex Scott has an intense interest in history and has recently made all the contacts necessary to for application as part of the on going efforts to preserve our Maryland Ridge Community. Edie Sarra has successfully completed the nomination process for her Owen County home in the past. Edie will be the group leader. Interest in this area was initiated by COUNT US! director who in his comments to the I-69 DEIS called this "the most magical spot on all of the proposed alternatives of I-69". Because of his long-standing support of the fight against I-69, we feel confident that Darryl Jones will assist. Darryl is “the very best in skilled photography.” In the final week of January 2002, we gained for new persons interested in historical preservation aspects of the I-69 proposed route: Barbara Stewart, Staffan Peterson, Peter Kaczmarczytz, Linda Lazowski and Vickie Loveland.
Good communications have developed between the core members of this group and we are proceeding quickly.
James, Edie and Alex are personally familiar with with most of the professional preservationists of Indiana. We feel confident that we have or can access people necessary to move this project to completion. We will need some economic support, and are confident that donations can be accessed in sufficient amounts. James has been in contact with Indiana Historic Landmarks, regarding this project. We earlier sent an initial report of our intent that contained some incorrect information regarding the location of the Wabash Erie Canal location.
The Preservation/ Nomination of the Gibson/ Pike County Erie Canal Bridges project as imagined:
We intend that our historic registry nomination will argue that this is not just two bridges, but in fact a historic district. It includes: The two historically significant bridges, crossing the natural and the 1917-18 man-made "new channel" dredged Patoka River, within three-tenths of a mile of each other, in the area of the Erie Canal that was perhaps above ground level, and near the point where the W&E canal crossed the Patoka River, in a National and State Reserve Area which includes significant wild life and mature forested wetlands. An excellent example of a diked field with historic farm and family grave site resides nearby in Pike County.
A report from James Cooper February 11, 2003:Wanted to check in with you and the members of your bridge nomination
group
on my progress.
SR#57: Last week I spent a couple of hours at INDOT records
division
(Indy) looking over surveys for SR#57 in the relevant part of Pike
Co. The
Ind St Hwy Commission took this stretch of road into the state system
in
1936. Bridges #81 and #246 were both present and on the county
road system
in 1936. The state decided to bypass them about .25 mi. to their
eastward.
The survey does report on the dredging of the Patoka River in 1917-18.
This
digging of the man-made "new channel" required the construction of
#81.
COUNTY RECORDS: I expected this to be a slam-dunk effort, since
have read a
lot of records from both Pike and Gibson county...and these bridges
are on
the county line, so both sets of records should be helpful. But
the pieces
were not all there to fall nicely in place.
Notes from Pike Co cover 1879-1931. Notes
for Gibson cover 1894-1919.
The results of 2.5 days of processing those extensive notes have been
disappointing. The Pike Co records are somewhat sketchy...and
the Gibson Co
notes start too late and end too early for our purposes.
More research will need to be done. My first
foray will be in newspaper
materials at the Ind State Library. If that doesn't work, then
will need to
go back to the Gibson Co courthouse in Princeton to see what I can
find.
WHAT IS KNOWN (in brief):
#246 - Blt 1881-1882. Gibson Co did
the contracting, so the key info
should be there. Pike doesn't seem to have recorded much to which
they
agreed in meetings of the joint Boards of Commissioners meetings.
#81 - Prob. Blt 1924. No ref in Pike
Co records to Joint Board
Meetings.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE:
- Cooper needs to do more research.
Will probably get in some licks
this next week.
- Edie (and/or others at your end) need/s
to check out Pike and Gibson
Co Histories about the natural wetlands around and dredging of the
Patoka R.
That geographic feature and man's intervention in it is the most obvious
unifying theme for the two bridges.
- Cooper will contact DHPA about the prospects
for a joint nomination
around such a theme.
A Report from Edie Sarra February 27, 2003
The Patoka River bridges (and the Wabash and Erie Canal?) at Dongola, Indiana
(The following report is based mainly on information gleaned from the county histories listed in the attached bibliography and the Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Reports 1850-56 and 1858. Some of this information needs to be checked against county records, old newspaper accounts, and/or other histories of the area. Most of it deals with the prehistory of our current bridges, and much of it we may not ultimately need for the nomination, but I decided to cast my net wide, since some of the details that now seem minor might lead in useful directions as we continue to develop our argument for the historical significance of the bridges (and the remains of the Canal?). The over-arching theme I am trying to develop here is manís interventions in the Patoka wetlands.)
Pike County bridges #81 and #246 are both located on CR 325 W in Pike County, Indiana, just north of the now defunct village of Dongola, Gibson County, Indiana. Bridge #81 is a camelback through-truss bridge, spanning the Patoka Riverís"new channel." It was built around 1924, after the Patoka river was extensively dredged, creating a broad, straight channel that supplements the meandering course of the original channel, now referred to as the South Fork of the Patoka River. Pike County bridge #246, located approximately .2 miles south of #81, spans the South Fork of the Patoka. It is a Pratt through-truss bridge, built by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio, and completed in 1877.
Each of the two bridges is structurally significant in itself. They also both occupy sites of considerable significance to local, statewide (and, in the case of #246, national) history. Bridge #246 replaced an earlier covered wooden bridge, thus creating a new crossing at a site important to the long, sometimes violent history of commerce, transportation, and ethnic migrations in nineteenth century Pike and Gibson Counties. Bridge #81 was necessitated by the dredging of a new channel for the Patoka River after 1917-18. The bridge stands as a marker of early twentieth century engineering and flood control interventions in the Patoka wetland area. What follows is a narrative description of the bridgesí significance to the history of the communities surrounding them.
Dongola and the"old Dongola bridge"
The earliest mentions Iíve found of a bridge in the Dongola area derive from anecdotes about Underground Railroad activity in 1850-52 on or near"the old Dongola bridge." It is unclear exactly where this bridge was, but it is likely it spanned the Patoka River (now called Patoka River South Fork) at or near the point where #246 now stands because the road crossing #246 (CR 325W) is the original road linking Oakland City (then Oakland) and Petersburg (referred to in the county histories as"the state road.") These early mentions all seem to point to a location on the Oakland-Petersburg road. A photograph of"the old Dongola bridge" appears in Cockrumís History of the Underground Railroad, p. 32. It is a covered wooden bridge.
There was also a bridge carrying the state road across the Wabash and
Erie Canal in Dongola. It was built by Stewart and Rockefellow, the
local firm that held the contract for the Patoka aquaduct and the Dongola
section of the Wabash and Erie Canal. This bridge was in place by
1853. The bridge was provided with additional track, since the towpath
changed sides of the canal here. We have yet to discover the exact
site of the canal bridge and the canal as it ran through Dongola.
Dongola itself was platted on March 10, 1851, by William Carpenter
and Issac Street (a.k.a. Steele). It was situated on the south bank
of the Patoka River along the state road, just west of the point where
the Wabash and Erie canal crossed the Patoka by means of an aquaduct.
Founded on the great commercial expectations engendered by the construction
of the canal, Dongola prepared itself from the start for a brilliant future."Broad,
avenue-like streets," 74-76 feet wide, were laid out (names of the principal
streets were Columbia, Locust, Cherry, Canal, Walnut, Main, and Mulberry);
a public square graced the center of town, where a school house was located.
A number of business houses were established along the canal, and pork-packing,
a feature of local flatboating commerce on the Patoka since at least the
1830s, boomed as never before (and never since). But after the failure
of the canal in the late 1850s, the town gradually faded away. By
1884, the only business still operating there was a saw-mill owned by Ferdinand
Knier. Today, 150 years later, a handful of modest houses and mobile
homes cluster around a few one lane roads. A stoneís throw
to the east of these is S.R. 57, which bypassed the site of the village
in 1936 and now serves as the main road linking Petersburg to Oakland City.
Underground Railroad activity and the old Dongola bridge
During its brief life as a canal port in the 1850s, Dongola harbored an active enclave of Anti-Slavery League members and sympathizers. James Cockrum, the Oakland City abolitionist, farmer-entrepreneur, and two-time Representative to the Indiana Legislature, owned a packing and shipping house for pork and tobacco on the canal at Dongola. The barn on Cockrumís farm was a"station" on the Underground Railroad, and Cockrum himself an important local member of the"Executive Committee" of the Anti-Slavery League, a secret network that seems to have sprung to life in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the abolitionist sentiments fanned by new fugitive slave laws.
Long after the Civil War, Jamesí son William Cockrum wrote a history of the Underground Railroad in the Gibson County area and mentions by name other locals who aided his father and the Anti-Slavery League in specific efforts to liberate fleeing slaves. Among them, Issac Street, one of the two original proprietors of Dongola,"was a very quiet old Quaker and thoroughly in sympathy with the anti-slavery party. He and his good wife, Aunt Rachel, had many times fed and secreted the poor negroes as they were making their way to the North and liberty." Other local notables associated with Anti-Slavery League activity in the vicinity include John Hathaway, founder of the town of Winslow in Pike County, and owner of a mill on the Patoka downriver from that town. In 1850, Hathaway also owned a farm on the Wabash and Erie canal just north of the Patoka River and Dongola. Basil Simpson, who figures in a number of the stories of Underground Railroad activities,"lived on the bluff but a little way west of the [Dongola] bridge and . . . was thoroughly in sympathy with the anti-slavery people." He was repeatedly called upon to keep a watch on the Dongola bridge for intelligence about the movements of slave hunters. Other locals mentioned by name in connection with specific Underground Railroad activities in Cockrumís history include, as sympathizers, Andrew Adkins, Pinkerton Adkins, William Dill, Thomas Hart, Hiram Knight, Thomas Midcalf, John Stubblefield, Jerry Sullivan. Local bounty hunters and members of slave-hunting posses include: Patt McDermitt and Bev Willis, who"owned a boat that was in the water at Dongola" close to the bridge. The boat was a drinking den, catering to the Irish immigrant canal laborers. More below on the whiskey trade that followed canal construction at Dongola.
Why the concentration of Anti-Slavery League sympathizers at Dongola? The old Dongola bridge was situated roughly halfway between two documented stations on the Little Pigeon Creek route of the Underground Railroad network in southwestern Indiana. Ira Caswellís farm in Warrick County was the first point of contact for slaves fleeing across the Ohio River to a point above the mouth of Little Pigeon Creek. From Caswellís farm they were guided to a barn on James Cockrumís farm in what is now Oakland City, Gibson County. The third"station" was a coal bank owned by Dr. John Posey outside of Petersburg in Pike County. The Cockrum farm (with barn cunningly outfitted for secreting slaves) was located in the center of what is now downtown Oakland City. As the detailed anecdotes in Cockrumís History of the Underground Railroad demonstrate, the Dongola bridge was a crucial, but vulnerable crossing on the road between Cockrumís farm and Poseyís coal bank.
Beginning as early as 1850, the Dongola bridge, and a nearby low-lying thicket known as"the Hazel rough" became the scene of numerous recorded altercations among escaping slaves, slave hunters, and local members of the Anti-Slavery League who were involved at times not only in aiding ex-slaves on the path to freedom, but also in administering their own brand of justice to slave hunters. The Hazel rough is described as having been just south of the Wabash and Erie canal, opposite Dongola; the bottoms of Buck Creek were a short distance to its west. It provided a convenient place for escaping slaves to hide. Close to the bridge and the state road, yet thickly covered with hazel brush, it was regarded as a waste land where hogs were allowed to graze at will until roundup time in the late fall when they were penned and fattened for a few weeks prior to butchering and packing them for flatboat commerce.
The Wabash and Erie Canal at Dongola
The period of the most intense Underground Railroad activity at Dongola coincides with the brief, troubled career of the Wabash and Erie canal in southwestern Indiana. Construction of the Wabash and Erie Canal between Petersburg in Pike County and Francisco in Gibson County took place between 1850-1852. Canal construction in the Dongola area took place in 1851-2, the same year in which Dongola was platted. By the summer of 1852, canal workers were laboring in an area about seven miles southeast of Princeton (that is, the Francisco area).
J. M. Ball, the Resident Engineer for the Wabash and Erie Canal described the valley of the Patoka River in 1850 as"wide and expensive." Because of the extended lowlands surrounding the Patoka and the quantity of small creeks with wide valleys feeding into the river near Dongola (Hurricane, Buck, Kegís), the canal had to be raised by means of massive embankments for much of the entire stretch between the point where it entered the Patoka valley on the north to the beginning of the deep cut at Pigeon Summit (about two miles southwest of Francisco). Some of the labor for the Patoka River valley embankments had already been accomplished by the State in 1838-39. On September 6, 1850, the firm of Samuel Forrer, Solomon Sturges, and S. R. Hosmer of Ohio contracted to resume labor on this part of the canal along the following lines:"The first portion [of the new embankments at Patoka River] will have an average height of 12 feet, and the second 21 feet. The first portion will contain 94,981 cubic yards, and the second 101,330 cubic yards [of earth]." The aquaduct which was to carry the canal across the Patoka itself is described as"an open trunk, 18 feet wide, consisting of one span in the middle of 50 feet, and two on each side of 36 feet each. . . [terminating] at each end, in the bank, on a timber abutment, extending down below bottom 6 feet. . . For the middle-span, two piers will be built of timber, in crib form, and filled with stone. Their bases will be about 36 feet [square], and a total height of 42 feet. The other spans will be sustained by strong framed bents, resting on the banks of the creek. ." After crossing Patoka, the canal continued"crooked and expensive" for several miles (of which only one mile is described as"cheap") before entering the deep cut of Pigeon Summit. The rest of the X miles between the Patoka aquaduct and the 2 and a half mile deep cut at Pigeon Summit required further massive embankments plus culverts to cross the valleys of Hurricane Creek, Buck Creek, and worst of the three, Kegís Creek, where the stream valley was 42 chains wide and 17 feet below the bottom of the canal The Kegís creek section, along with the section just west of Dongola at Hurricane Creek were two of the"heaviest" on the line. The Kegís Creek section alone required three years of labor.
Some idea of the exorbitant expense of the Patoka River valley to Pigeon Summit sections of the canal can be gained from the following figures. The distance from Petersburg to the south end of Pigeon Summit (not including the Patoka Summit deep cut, contracted out in 1848) was a little over 21 miles. Its estimated cost: $398,301. By contrast, the approximately 33 and a half mile distance between the south end of Pigeon Summit to Evansville (including the cost of the Pigeon Creek reservoir) was estimated at only $145, 948. Total estimated cost of the entire stretch from Petersburg to Evansville: $561,341. It would be, as the Trustees pointed out to the Indiana General Assembly in 1850,"the most costly division of the Canal."
Nor, as it turned out, could its cost be measured in dollars alone. The cost in time and human lives was to be much greater than anyone expected. Cholera outbreaks among the canal laborers on the Evansville Division slowed canal construction in 1850, 1851, and 1852, the second most severe of these epidemics striking Gibson County between Dongola and Pigeon Summit in 1852, the very year the Trustees had contracted for completion of the canal through to Evansville. The Trustees reported that"cholera prevailed on the line from the 25th of June to the 20th of July . . . and the deaths were over one hundred." Laborers who escaped the disease fled the vicinity. Construction was at a standstill for more than two months before another labor force could (by means of"extraordinary inducements") be gathered together and set to work. Five sections of the canal in Gibson County were affected.The county histories fill out the picture:"At that time, the Wabash and Erie Canal was in progress of construction about seven miles southeast of Princeton. In this work two or three hundred Irish immigrant workmen were employed. . . Within a few days after the cholera made its appearance a number of deaths resulted and when it had run its course, in less than three weeks, an estimated total of 80 had succumbed. Following the first outbreak a majority of themen fled from the vicinity. Victims of the disease were left lying for days before being given burial and it was almost impossible to secure men to do this work. A few of the Irish workmen stayed with their stricken friends and these few men braved danger by burying the bodies in long trenches near the reservoir." Others were found in isolated"shanties" along the canal, several days after death, so decomposed that burial was not attempted. Instead,"the torch was applied to the building and the remains incinerated."
Both labor and living conditions on the canal ripened the workers for disease. Labor in the Patoka wetlands was particularly heavy. The huge embankments were dug by hand, in crews of four men with four carts; a boss oversaw every 40 men. Earth was shoveled into carts and hauled an average of 200 yards to the embankment. Irish immigrant laborers were generally assigned shoveling duty; Americans employed in these sections worked on cutting and dragging timbers for culverts and bridges. Whiskey flowed freely along the lines. "Jigger bosses" supplied laborers with free shots of whiskey four times a day as they worked. Violent outbreaks among the laborers were common, and tended to occur along ethnic divisions, Irish vs. American. Housing was crowded and unsanitary: laborers mostly lived in flimsy"boarding shanties," ranged together"like string towns" along the canal. The largest of these shanties were eighty feet long, with bunks for 50 or more. One source estimates there were at least a hundred boarding shanties in the Patoka watershed between Hosmer and Francisco. Shanty towns were serviced by"doggerys," log shanties where local entrepreneurs"supplied the thirsty with Patoka water and whiskey mixed."
The Patoka aquaduct, and the section of the canal on both sides of the river and extending southwest through Dongola, were subcontracted by the local firm of Stewart and Rockefellow. This was an especially busy section of the canal, employing a larger than average number of men, and resulting in a larger than average concentration of"drinking dens" along the river. Bev Willis (ìfrom a good family, but . . . a wild fellow"), who figures infamously as a sometime bounty hunter in anecdotal histories of the Underground Railroad at Dongola also operated a small"shanty boat""situated near where the present iron bridge spans the river at Dongola." Willis preyed on the Irish laborers as he had on escaping African-Americans, his depradations bringing him into conflict with Stewart as they had with the abolitionist Cockrum around the same time. Stewartís complaint was that Willis was corrupting his labor force with excessively cheap whiskey. Gathering several of his best men to converge on the shanty boat, he gave Willis one week to leave Dongola. Willis absconded to California, but his operation was quickly replaced by another"doggery," one of many lining the canal in the Dongola area.
After three years, three cholera epidemics, and hundreds of lives lost constructing it, the canal through the Patoka watershed entered into its fitful five year career of"full operation." The canal was open for navigation through to Evansville in late September, 1853. During the southern divisionís first two years of operation, shipments of merchandise on the canal as a whole decreased by over 50% due to railroad competition. Vandalism at the Birch Creek reservoir in Clay County in 1854 and 1855 disrupted navigation southward for the summer and fall in two successive years. By 1856, expenses for repairs and maintenance of the canal were exceeding revenues. In the same year, the Trustees undertook the labor of clearing the offending reservoir of timber, which put the southern division out of commission for another year. In November of 1858, a year in which navigation south of Petersburg had been suspended more than 113 days due to breaches in the line above Petersburg, the bondholders resolved to"stop the working of the Canal south of Terre Haute." In the same report, the list of structures requiring repair or replacement includes the Patoka aquaduct with its guard gates, newly completed only six years before. For a few years , local entrepreneurs tried with only minimal success, to keep sections of the canal operating. As a link in a statewide system connecting Evansville to Terre Haute and markets north and east, the southern division of the canal was dead by 1859.
[To be inserted here: Description of what remains now of the canal, the Patoka aquaduct, the Dongola road bridge and towpaths; names of descendants of canal laborers who became landowners in the area?]
Later 19th and early 20th century interventions in the Patoka wetlands
After the failure of the canal, commercial ambitions for the bottom
lands of the Patoka River between Oakland and Petersburg dwindled and the
countryside reverted to a concentration on agriculture. Some of the
Irish canal laborers bought land in the area and settled in to become permanent
citizens and farmers , changing the demography of the Patoka wetlands.
Did the experience of the canal as a forcible means of changing the drainage
patterns contribute to the areaís apparent interest in reclaiming
wetlands in the area in the later 19th century? (And did the newly established
Irish farmers play a role in this? It would be nice to be able to
link this development to ethnically identified patterns of land use)
Tarttís 1885 History of Gibson County speaks of the advantages of"tile
draining" in Gibson County farmlands, but includes no discussion of what
the term means, who introduced the technique, or where, specifically, it
was being applied. The extensive dykes or embankments that John Smith
and I observed surrounding cultivated fields on the north side of the Patoka
River"new channel" in Pike County may also be a part of these land reclamation
efforts that seem to have begun in Gibson County at least as early as the
1880s. My guess is that the dredging of the Patoka in the nineteen-teens
could also be linked to this pattern.
The Metal Truss Bridges at Dongola
New bridges were constructed for the Petersburg-Oakland City road. According to the History of Pike and Dubois Counties, Pike and Gibson counties jointly constructed a bridge across the Patoka at Dongola in 1860 and again in 1877. Pike Countyís share in the cost of the first of these bridges was $530.95. The second bridge,"a new iron bridge" completed in 1877, seems to be the current Pike County bridge #246. The bridge was contracted by Gibson County, but only Pike Countyís share in the construction cost is noted ($1423.42).
The same passage mentions the construction of yet another bridge, possibly the predecessor of the current Pike County bridge #81:"At a joint meeting of the commissioners of Gibson and Pike Counties, September 20, 1881, $7000 was appropriated to build a bridge over the stream at the county line. Of that sum Pike County was to pay one-fourth. The bridge was completed in 1884."
In 1936, the State of Indiana completed the construction of S. R. 57
between Petersburg and Oakland City. The road bypasses the old road
through Dongola, and its two metal truss bridges. The raised bed
of the old Wabash and Erie canal serves as the roadbed for
S.R. 57 in the section immediately northeast of the Patoka aquaduct site.
Bibliography:
Clark, Andrew L. The Wabash and Erie Canal: The Lower Divisions. 1999.
Cockrum, Colonel William. Pioneer History of Indiana, Including Stories, Incidents and Customs of the Early Settlers. Oakland City, IN: Press of Oakland City Journal, 1907.
-- . History of the Underground Railroad As It Was Conducted by the Anti-Slavery League. J.W. Cockrum Printing Company: Oakland City, IN, 1915.
Cooper, James L. Iron Monuments to Distant Posterity: Indianaís Metal Bridges, 1870-1930. Indianapolis: Pierson Printing, 1987.
Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory. Gibson County and Warrick County Interim Report. Indianapolis: Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, 1984.
Mills, Dr. Randy, et al. Report to Indiana Department of Natural Resources Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology Concerning Underground Railroad Activity in Southwestern Indiana. 2001.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1872; 1970.
Stormont, Gil R. History of Gibson County, Indiana. Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 1914.
Tartt, James T. History of Gibson County, Indiana. Edwardsville, IL: 1884.
Annual Report of the Trustees of the Wabash and Erie Canal. 1850-56; 1858. Indianapolis: J.P. Chapman, State Printer.
History of Pike and Dubois Counties, Indiana. Chicago: Goodspeed
Bros., & Company, 1885.
Cooper, Iron Monuments, p.174-75.
Cooperís notes (county records).
Cooper, p. 175, and History of Pike and Dubois Counties, p. 280.
This road is referred to as"the state road" in Tartt, History of Gibson County, p. 213.
It is referred to as"road bridge #149 at Dongola," in the Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report 1853, p. 865-66
Andrew Clarkís semi-fictionalized account of the canal suggests the bridge crossed the canal at Mulberry Street, but where, now, is Mulberry Street?
Stormont, History of Gibson County, p. 303
Tartt, History of Gibson County, p. 213.
Ibid, p. 213. I need confirmation of the existence of the schoolhouse in the square. Clark mentions it, but what is his source?
His partners in this business were Gil Stormont and Stormontís brother (name?). Stormont, History of Gibson County, p. 95.
For a biographical sketch of William Cockrum that includes information on his father James Cockrum as well, see Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 392-94.
Pioneer History, p. 586.
History of Pike and Dubois Counties, p. 354.
Cockrum, Pioneer History, p. 583.
See Cockrum, Pioneer History, p. 587 and passim.
Mills et al., A Report Concerning Underground Railroad Activity in Southwestern Indiana, gives detailed information on Ira Caswellís farm and maps indicating the location of the Posey coalbank.
The Cockrum house has been rebuilt and is open to the public as"Cockrum Hall," a house museum, in Oakland City, IN.
See for example,"An Attempt to Catch Runaway Negroes Which Ended in a Desperate Battle with Wild Hogs," and"Jerry Sullivanís Raid at the Old Dongola Bridge." Cockrum, History of the Underground Railroad, pp.
Cockrum notes that"after the canal was finished in this section, Mr. W. H. Stewart, the father of Dr. W.H. Stewart, of Oakland City, bought the immense thicket . . . and made a large farm. That farm is now [1907] owned by Frances W. Bullivantís heirs and Thomas Spore." Pioneer History, p. 587.
Dates based on the Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Reports and accounts of the cholera outbreaks among canal laborers in History of Pike and Dubois Counties, p. 340, and Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 272-73; 277.
The description that follows is taken from the Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1850, pp. 176-77.
Completed by 1853, the aquaduct would need rebuilding as early as 1858. Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1858, p. 319.
For details on the Kegís Creek section, see Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 97-98.
Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1850, p. 178.
Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1852, p. .
"Sections" were about a mile long and sometimes shorter, where the work was especially heavy. Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1852, p. 345.
Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 272-73; 277. See also History of Pike and Dubois Counties, p. 340.
. Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 96-98.
Cockrum, Pioneer History, p. 585.
This is the same William H. Stewart who bought the Hazel rough after the completion of the canal and turned it into a farm. See note 19.
Stormont, History of Gibson County, pp. 96-97.
The first canal boat to navigate the entire length of the canal from the state line to Evansville was the"Pennsylvania", which arrived in Evansville on September 23, 1853. Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1853, p. 848.
Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1855, p. 119.
Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1856, p. 5.
Wabash and Erie Canal Annual Report, 1858, p. 294 & p. 311.
Stormontís history suggests this, but to confirm it specifically with reference to the area of our concern will require research in land transfer records, platt books, census reports, etc.
John and I visited the area on January 25, 2003. On February 21, 2003, during a subsequent trip made by John Smith and Tom Edington, a local farmer told them that he thought the dykes were built in the 1950s.
On a possibly related note, sitting next to an extant portion
of the Wabash and Erie canal off of Wheeling Road near Francisco is a small
brick structure that has been identified as a"pump station," dating
from around 1865. Gibson/Warrick County Interim Report, p. 35.
History of Pike and Dubois Counties, pp. 279-80. Itís
quite possible that I (or the History) have the two sites mixed up here,
that is, the bridge mentioned as completed in 1884 may be Pike County bridge
#246, not a predecessor of #81. This would tally better with Jim
Cooperís findings in the county records, except that according to
his email to me, the county records state the wrought iron bridge was completed
in 1881, not simply commissioned that year.
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