For 100 years, canal boatmen and their families lived on the water in Bucks County
Ah, to be in a boatman’s family running cargo in the 1800s between Easton and Bristol on the Delaware Canal in Bucks County. Its ribbon of rural beauty passed in the shadow of 300-foot-high cliffs in Upper Bucks and beautiful farms and villages in Central and Lower Bucks. Numerous locks raise and lower the boats towed by mules handled by kids as young as 6. Time aboard is an Arcadian dream.
Here’s my visualization:
The workday in mid-summer 1882 begins at 4 a.m. For Dragonfly, a boat moored at the Lehigh Canal-Delaware Canal junction in Easton. The slender 87-foot-long vessel is loaded with 100 tons of anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk (today’s Jim Thorpe) at the far end of the Lehigh Canal. The cargo is bound for Bristol 60 miles away. In two days, the boat will pass through 10 aqueducts and 23 locks on a waterway that drops 165 feet to sea level at Bristol. Dragonfly is among 3,000 scows plying the canal in both directions.
Skipper Clifford and his family sleep in a cramped cabin below deck. Two bunks for 4 and a mattress on the floor. Mom Hannah rouses the kids before dawn to groom and harness the family’s pair of mules stabled ashore. Underway at dawn, Cliff manages the tiller, steering the vessel from the stern. Oldest son Daniel, 15, is the bowman. The two youngest – 11-year-old Billy and 7-year-old Maddy – drive the mules. Both are barefoot. Billy wears overalls and a broadbrim hat. His sister prefers bloomers. When she tires, she naps on the back of her favorite mule plodding gently along.
At Sigley’s store on the towpath in Bridgeton 6 hours and 17 miles into the journey, Cliff buys cigarettes and penny candies for the kids. A half-mile further south, the skipper blows a conch horn, a seashell holed at one end for a mouthpiece. All boatmen have them. The C-sharp tone alerts the Lodi lock tender to prepare to lower Dragonfly down the canal. He whistles back to proceed.
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At 3 miles an hour, the boat floats on freshwater 5 feet deep and remarkably clear from river water pumped in at Easton. Dragonfly frequently encounters swimmers. Most jump out until the boat passes, then dip back in. Some practice “stemming” – floating on their backs, putting their feet against the prow of the Dragonfly to be propelled downstream in a glide.
In Point Pleasant, the family snags peaches, tomatoes and corn at canal’s edge. Farmers don’t mind. They line bottles on fence posts urging canalers to hit them with lumps of coal. It’s good sport. The growers benefit by gathering the anthracite stones to burn over the winter. In Solebury, a thunderstorm spreads fright down the towpath. Cliff reminds the kids to stay clear of the mules. Their horseshoes attract lightning.
Dragonfly overnights in New Hope. By 7 a.m., it’s underway. It takes 4 hours to float 12 miles to Yardley. At Mrs. Reed’s grocery store on Edgewater Avenue, the captain hollers an order. Loaf of bread, soda and ice creams. She quickly obliges, tossing the load to the captain and handing off the rest to Daniel with payment returned.
Over the next 4 hours Dragonfly passes through Morrisville and Tullytown to the 23rd lock in Bristol. There the boat passes into Otter Creek tidal basin and moors to the Mill Street wharf more than 1,000 feet long. Dragonfly is to be offloaded in Philadelphia. Tied to others, it departs towed by a steamboat. The family remains in Bristol until the empty boat returns to begin its voyage back to Mauch Chunk. Cliff figures to earn $40 for two round trips each month. (That works out in today’s coinage to about $110,000 annually after expenses. More if delivering merchandise on the return trip.)
“It’s a pretty good life,” says the captain. “I really like it,” pipes in young Maddy.
Sources include “Pennsylvania’s Delaware Division Canal” by Albright G. Zimmerman published in 2000, and Friends of the Delaware Canal website at www.fodc.org
Carl LaVO can be reached at arllavo0@gmail.com
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This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: When boatmen and their families lived on the canal in Bucks County
