It Started with a Steamboat: An American Saga

By Steven Harvey

In little over a hundred years America went from a country that lacked a national road system to become a world leader in all forms of fast transportation. It was from 1807 to 1909 that the foundations of cheap fast travel forever changed us as a people and a nation. It all started with a steamboat trip up the Hudson which brought about a mechanical transportation revolution that came ashore and finally took to the air.

Our story is about transportation starting with the steamboat, the development of New Yorks Finger Lakes, and how this helped bring about the modern business world we take for granted. It took only a century for the magical formula of fast transportation speeding up local development and business growth to transform our nation and the world we live in. The reader should always keep in mind the endless cycle of speed, development and business that keeps the ball rolling as time and distance continue to shrink in this ever changing world.

Speed changed our lives to the point that we needed to escape it as the Excursionist Age of lakeside resorts, fine wines and dance halls came to life for the working weary and high rollers of the land. New Yorks Finger Lakes were the crown jewels of this age, having fine wineries and some of the best railroads and steamboats in the land.

Out of all of this energy emerged the Wizard of Hammondsport, Glenn H. Curtiss! He would go on to become the fastest man on earth and in the air! Because of these events we no longer think in terms of distance, but instead in the time it takes to get there. We now think in sound bits, eat on the run, as our children live fast pace lives. Here is the story of how this came to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 6, 2005
• ISBN: 9781452055275

Steven Harvey

Steven Harvey was born an army brat at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas in 1950. Son of Midwesterners he was educated in Florida and joined the Navy in 1969. It was during this time that he became a steam mechanic aboard the USS Forrestal. The author has a life long fascination with the history of why things work and how they have changed the world we live in. He is a history bug who has produced steamboat models for the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport and the New York State Museum at Albany. Today Steven lives a few miles north of Benson, NC. Most of the steamboat drawings contained in this book were created by this author, mechanic and historian.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TRAINS? PLANES? AND AUTOMOBILES?

CHAPTER ONE THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER TWO THE GREAT RACE

CHAPTER THREE BOOM OR BUST!

CHAPTER FOUR BOATS AND THEIR BUILDERS

CHAPTER FIVE THE POST-WAR YEARS

CHAPTER SIX THE EXCURSIONIST

CHAPTER SEVEN MONOPOLY

CHAPTER EIGHT THE NINE-YEAR WAR

CHAPTER NINE THE THREE SISTERS (CAYUGA, SENECA, CANANDAIGUA)

CHAPTER TEN THE GOLDEN WAVE

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE LAST DANCE

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

TRAINS? PLANES? AND

AUTOMOBILES?

In little over a hundred years America went from a country of three million that lacked a national road system to become a world leader in all forms of fast transportation. It was from 1807 to 1909 that the foundations of cheap fast travel forever changed us as a people and a nation. Gone are the days when our ancestors lived their entire lives never going more that fifty miles from home!

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It all started with a steamboat trip up the Hudson which brought about a mechanical transportation revolution that came ashore and finally took to the air. America’s obsession with time and speed is an ongoing passion with no end in sight. People of all ages spend countless hours each year working on cars, motorcycles, airplanes and even rockets all in the name of speed!

The world in 1800 moved at an average speed of 3 miles per hour as foot power and shoe leather was available to all. The steamboat changed all of that moving at an amazing 5 mph! With some fine tuning it slowly accelerated to 8 mph! Before long there were boats that raced each other on many different waterways at over 20 mph! By the end of the century some express trains traveled at 60 mph while experimenters worked on the first automobiles and airships. America’s economy has ever since been firmly based on having fast, cheap transportation. This all came to be because someone placed a steam engine on a boat.

As a kid I always went for the rich slice of cake. You know the one that had the most icing and decoration on it. So went it came down to finding the richest slice of America to spin my story from I chose New York State and it fabulous Finger Lakes as the perfect place to feast on.

Our story is about transportation starting with the steamboat, the development of New York’s Finger Lakes, and how this helped bring about the modern business world we take for granted. It took only a century for the magical formula of fast transportation speeding up local development and business growth to transform our nation and the world we live in. The reader should always keep in mind the endless cycle of speed, development and business that keeps the ball rolling as time and distance continue to shrink in this ever changing world.

Here then is a part of this mad race against time and distance that few people have ever heard of. It has to do with the early pioneer movement west starting in the 1790’s and how the Finger Lakes of New York State became a national crossroads. Empires built on canals, steamboats, and railroads in this region played a pivotal role in the opening of the Great American West and later helped win of the Civil War.

Speed also changed our lives to the point that we needed to escape it as the Excursionist Age of lakeside resorts, fine wines and dance halls came to life for the working weary and high rollers of the land. Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca and Cayuga Lakes were among the crown jewels of this age, having the first great wineries and some of the best railroads and steamboats in the land.

With wealthy men came steamboat wars, great estates, and fast steam yachts as the money men of New York, Rochester, and Buffalo did everything in their power to buy control of these splendid lakes. Wars of trade and commerce were waged between the different communities that wanted their share of the wealth. The story of how Elmira was always a step ahead of Ithaca and took control of Seneca Lake’s steamboats from Geneva, or how Penn Yan and Hammondsport butted heads for the same trade are just a few of the stories covered here.

We then have visionaries like Allen Wood, the Springsteads, Henry S. Stebbins and Timothy D. Wilcox. They all in turn helped to make and mold the people and events of their times. Out of all of this energy emerged the Wizard of Hammondsport, Glenn H. Curtiss! He was born at the start of the second steamboat war on Keuka Lake and would go on to become the fastest man on earth and in the air! In 1907 Glenn H. Curtiss set a new land world speed record of 136 mph followed in 1909 by winning the Gordon Cup for the fastest airplane! Because of these giants we no longer think in terms of distance, but instead in the time it takes to get there. The world is now a smaller place.

The Journey

It has taken over twenty years of collecting, conferring and research to put the pieces of this story together. I would like to thank Lindsley A. Dunn, the former curator of the Curtiss Museum for all of his help that started the ball rolling. The Staff of Oliver House Museum in Penn Yan who back in 1985 spoke of the need for a book that would cover the other lakes as well as Keuka. The late Eleanor Clise and her friends at the Geneva Historical Society including Archivist Karen Osborn who helped put together the rich history of Seneca Lake for me. Then we have Ontario County archivist Mary Jo Lanpher, who helped provide the census material that filled in many of the gaps in the Springstead family tree.

I want to give my heartfelt thanks to Don and Mary Quant of Port Byron, NY and their ongoing efforts to piece together the last remaining mysteries of the Finger Lakes by digging through countless old newspapers of the nineteenth century!

Finally I would like to say to the late Jim Hope, former Steuben County Historian who started me down this path of discovery back in 1983, It’s done! With the help of countless friends I have been able to bring back to life these dreamers, makers and shakers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which made the world we now live in possible.

The Race

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One hundred and three years after Fulton made his first brave trip up the Hudson on the Clermont; Glenn Curtiss took off from Albany and landed in New York City having covered the same distance in only two hours and thirty three minutes. Many of the passengers on the hundreds of steamers on the Hudson River and New York Harbor saw his tiny aircraft as it flew over them that day. Few of them had any idea that this airplane was part of an ongoing transportation revolution that had started a century ago with the first steamboats on the Hudson. As we approach the 200th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s steamboat trip to Albany, the ongoing race he start against time and distance in 1807 shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

I would like to say to the reader that this story is more than just a history of events in some by-gone age, but is in fact an ongoing story that you and your children will write your own new chapters in for generations yet unborn to read. Its time to buckle-up now as the world of feet gets ready for the first steamboats and all of the machines that will follow. The never ending race has begun!

Steven H. Harvey

I dedicate this book to my wife Sharyn and my daughter Ashley and to my editor, Spunky the cat.

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CHAPTER ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

The Europeans had the technology to build steamboats for almost a century and did nothing with it. The reason was they didn’t need them. Europe and England had plenty of good roads and harbors to handle their shipping needs. This old established transportation system had worked well for hundreds of years so why would anyone in their right mind want to change it. So this first mechanical transportation system would remain an ongoing science project that many would tinker with from time to time.

On the other side of the Atlantic things were different. America was a young nation that lacked roads or the money to build them. This newly formed nation was blessed with a natural system of rivers and lakes that were ready for use if only they had a quick way of moving people and goods on these water arteries.

America was going to have a hard time developing as a nation if it couldn’t find a new technology that would help it push inland into its western territory. Even though the steam engine and the first experimental steamboats were the product of English and French engineers it would take the opening of the American West to fully create these smoking ladies of the waterways with all their beauty and power.

America after her War of Independence was bursting at the seams with her teaming millions all located on the Eastern Seaboard. Spanish ownership of Florida and the great Louisiana Territory pinned the new nation in at the south and west. Nature’s Appalachian Mountains, except for the Cumberland Gap, blocked most wagon trains as well. The new nation’s major waterways like the Atlantic Coast, Delaware and Susquehanna rivers ran north and south. The only practical route around these obstacles to the Western Territory of the Ohio valley lay across New York State. Millions of acres of cheap federal land were awaiting the pioneer families that were brave enough to make their way to the nation’s western promised land.

Thousands of pioneers would embark on their journey by sailing up the Hudson River to Albany. Today most New Yorkers think of St. Louis, Missouri as the gateway to the west. Back in the 1790’s it was at Albany, NY that wagon trains were outfitted and formed up for the long journey traveling on the old footpaths of the Iroquois Nation that led to the waters of Lake Erie. From there one followed the lake’s shore south to the Ohio territory. The journey would then involve building a raft and using nature’s highways of rivers and lakes to travel into the heart of the great unknown American West.

The American West in 1790, started at the western edge of Albany. All of the land from there over to Lake Erie had been Indian territory. The first pioneers started buying up this land early on and built their homes there. One of the greatest problems faced by the first settlers was the total lack of any good cheap transportation to move their farm goods back to the markets of the East. Many of them lost their farms because they couldn’t make their payments or pay the taxes simply because they couldn’t transport and sell their crops. For the first few years they really lived in a tree bound wilderness, cut off from the rest of the world.

The modern romantic notion that people moved west to get away from civilization is pure fiction. People back then had the same needs as people today. Moving west gave families the opportunity of having their own home and farm at an affordable price. Moving west was all about developing a wilderness and reaping the rewards. The one major obstacle to building new towns and starting new businesses was transportation. America needed a mechanical edge to leapfrog over this problem until it had the money to build a proper road system.

The first footpaths cut through this virgin land of forest and lakes proved to be difficult and expensive to build. The Williamson Road was one of these glorified paths that inched its way from Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Col. Rochester’s small settlement on Lake Ontario throughout the 1790’s with a lot of the early work having to be redone. The other well-trampled path ran west through Geneva to the settlement at Canandaigua, which served as the wilderness capital of Western New York. The main problem encountered on this route was the great swamp north of Cayuga Lake, created by the Seneca River. To remedy this situation a mile-long bridge was built across the shallow north end of Cayuga Lake. This structure was the longest bridge in the world at the time.

The water routes used by the early settlers for shipping involved the daring use of small rivers like the Canisteo, and Cohocton. In the early spring or late fall they briefly had enough water in them for rafting crops and lumber down to the great Susquehanna River. From there they made the long journey south to Baltimore. Many an early settler was lost to this watery graveyard of raging waters or was robbed on the long walk back home. What solved this dilemma was a great deal of European science plus American spunk.

Robert Fulton

The Hudson River was America’s first super highway with hundreds of sailboats and slow moving barges navigating her waters. Travel up the Hudson was a slow uphill battle running against the current. A three-day boat trip to Albany was still faster and by far smoother than the seven to eight days by stagecoach or two weeks by foot. All of this would be forever changed by the return of Mr. Fulton from Europe.

From an early age Robert Fulton had a talent for art and anything mechanical. With the end of the Revolutionary War, Fulton sailed to England in 1786, to study art and mechanics. England at this time was a hotbed of new technologies in locomotion, iron production and canal building. This included the most advanced steam engines and boilers in the world. Jonathan Hulls’ famous 1737 steamboat patent was part of this treasure trove of British inventions. Fulton’s would-be career as an artist went from paintings to that of making sketches of machines and writing papers on canals. He learned how steam engines worked by corresponding with engine builder Boulton & Watt starting in 1794.¹

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In 1802, Fulton moved to France and became involved with the U.S. Minister to France, Robert R. Livingston. These two men would take all those borrowed ideas they had been collecting over the years and build their own steamboat that proudly cruised up and down the Seine River. Their steamboat of 1803 was by no means the first such craft ever built, but it did act as a working model of what could be accomplished.

Robert Fulton wasn’t just interested in steamboats. His great passion was proving that under water travel was possible in a boat he called a submarine. The French government was so impressed with Fulton’s experiments that they had him to build them a working submarine. It wasn’t until late 1806 that Robert finally came home with plans for building a workable steamboat in America.

The power plant for his new boat was ordered from Boulton & Watt. It was around this reliable English steam engine that Fulton designed his first American steamboat. Fulton’s successful trips up and down the Hudson River in 1807 cut the trip from New York City to Albany to about one day. Fulton would go on to build more boats in 1808, and establish his own engine and boiler works using his English power plant as the model for his own engines. What Robert Fulton really did from 1807 to 1808, was to revolutionize water travel in America by applying steam power to her busiest artery, the Hudson River. Fulton had created America’s first mechanical transportation industry with a fleet of steamboats and the facilities to build more.

Fulton’s vision of a national system of canals and steamboats took a giant step forward with the launch of his first Mississippi steamboat in 1811. Robert Fulton’s long campaign of trying to win over national leaders from George Washington to DeWitt Clinton to build a national system of canals came to an end with his untimely death in 1815.² With the first smoking ladies now plying the waters of the Hudson and Mississippi rivers, there still remained the great need for a faster, safer way to go from Albany to Lake Erie and the great West beyond.

Sixteen miles and the Erie Canal

Clinton’s ditch, as the Erie Canal was first called, really goes back to the first New Yorkers, the Dutch. These early settlers came from the most advanced canal and dike building nation in the world. The lower Hudson and Long Island were transformed from native wilderness into productive farms, villages, and cities, protected by dikes, canals, and windmills in only a few years. It was a piece of beautiful Holland that had been transplanted on the shores of America by these hardworking men and women in their effort to establish a New Amsterdam.

Having grown up with an eye to the sea and a knack for trade, these Hollanders right from the start were building small boats to explore the local waterways and make friends with the many Native American Nations in their area. By building a trust between themselves and the native peoples of the land, their traders were allowed safe passage all the way to the Great Lakes. It was only natural for these explorer-traders to marvel at these natural waterways, and imagine putting it altogether like it was back in Holland. Many of these men knew the science of surveying and would at times take elevations and other measurements between different bodies of water. By the time the English took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York, most rivers, lakes, and streams had been located with a good knowledge of what flowed where.

The English Lords saw promise in the idea of one day having a canal system for the shipping of goods and of travel into the interior of British North America. There was however one large overriding factor that couldn’t be overcome. The only way England could hold onto its North American colonies was by having the Six Nations of the Iroquois on their side against the French in Canada. The Iroquois just happened to live on the very land that would make the best route for a canal. Any thought of building this waterway would have to wait for the British conquest of Canada and the rebellion of thirteen colonies.

The birth of the United States and the fall of the great Iroquois Nation were still not enough to get a western canal started. What was also needed was money, lots of money. The new nation started off with no money and a large debt to England and France. Money to build much needed roads and canals didn’t exist. It would be almost thirty years before New York State with its own finances would build the great canal with no help from the Federal Government.

Clinton’s Ditch

Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York State would be the daring leader who by building his ditch from Albany to Lake Erie transformed New York City, New York State and America by opening the door to the great American West. In the year 1817, the four largest American seaports were Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. New York City came in at a distant fifth as a national shipping center. 1817 was also the year that Erie Canal was approved of at a cost of seven million dollars for this man-made 425 mile long waterway.

Gov. Clinton said the canal would prove to be the fastest way to develop the seven million acres of western New York and would act as a major conduit between the Midwest and New York City. If he was right New York would become the richest state in the country. New York City would become the greatest port and the western part of the state would rapidly develop. If he was wrong, it would be seven million dollars down the drain in Clinton’s Ditch.

New York had boldly hitched its wagon to new forms of transportation as the foundation that its citizens could build profitable businesses on. If they were right New Yorkers would become the middle men of the nation controlling the flow of business across the land. The neighboring states and the federal government looked on as European canal builders took an interest in this new Yankee project.

In 1817, there were no steam shovels, just the sweat of thousands of men digging their four foot deep by forty foot wide ditch through the forest and fields of western New York. From the shantytowns thrown up by the diggers and their camp followers along the way arose what would in time become the great belt of cities that now mark the canal’s pathway to Lake Erie. Many of those who dug the canal and helped build her locks would wind up building their homes in this new West, working their section of the canal. Buffalo, NY still had buffalo at this time and quite a few Indians still called it home.

With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, everything changed. People going West by the thousands, now became a flood of hundreds of thousands of new settlers sweeping into the lands of the Ohio basin and beyond. By then the buffalo had to move on, leaving only their name behind for what would become New York’s second largest city.

Frontier New York gave way to the new wealth being generated by the super highway of the Erie Canal and the over 25,000 New Yorkers now living and working along its banks.³ In just a few years New York City was shipping more cargo than all other American port cities combined. New York was now the great Empire State. In the shadow of all this lay the people of the Finger Lakes who would build their own canals to hook onto this great waterway.

Canal builders faced the ongoing problem of having a guaranteed source of water to operate the locks and waterways of their system. The Finger Lakes, located midway and just south of the Erie Canal, would prove a valued backup source of water as well as the means of connecting smaller canals to the Erie. The Southern Tier of New York State would now, at long last, have a reliable means of shipping and receiving goods.

The Finger Lakes

It is said in the great stories of the Iroquois Nations that once lived there, that these lakes were made by the Creator placing His hand on the new earth and that the imprint of His fingers filled up with water, forming the Finger Lakes of New York State. It must be said that the Creator had more than five fingers on His hand, for there are more than five Finger Lakes. They are Canadice, Canandaigua, Cayuga, Conesus, Hemlock, Honeoye, Keuka, Otisco, Owasco, Seneca, and Skaneateles, which add up to eleven in all.

As the Erie Canal progressed and small sections of it opened to shipping, the people of the Finger Lakes started investing their money into roads, docks, and boats. 1821 was the first year that the people of both Cayuga and Seneca Lakes were able to ship goods on the new canal.⁴ The voyage of the Seneca Lake canal boat the Mary and Hannah in 1823, all the way to New York City by John H. Osborne and Samuel Seeley of Hector was one of these early trips. She carried a cargo of 800 bushels of wheat, three tons of butter and four barrels of beans.⁵

There remained many obstacles for these early shippers that could only be remedied by building the Cayuga Seneca Canal, completed in 1828.⁶ To the south the people of Keuka Lake (at that time it was called Crooked Lake and would finally revert back to its Indian name of Keuka in the 1860’s) as well as those of the Chemung River valley were busy building their own canals. By 1833, both the Crooked Lake Canal and the Chemung Canal were open for business, giving the people of New York’s southern tier the ability to ship their goods to New York City instead of facing the hazards of rafting the rivers down to Baltimore once a year.

Now a farmer could travel with his goods to New York in just a few days, see the sights, have some fun, and buy things for his family and farm. He could take pride in being a citizen of the Empire State on his trip home as he shared space in a crowded canal boat with pioneer families bound for western homesteads. All of this had been built and paid for by the citizens of New York State. New York was now the gateway to the world and gateway to the American West.

Smoke on the Waters

It is said that the first Indian to see a steamboat travel down one of the Finger Lakes had this to say about the experience: Only the White man would build a fire in the middle of his canoe and call it progress. And progress it was as the people of the Finger Lakes made contact with the steamboat builders of New York City, inviting them to come to their lakes and be the first to build a steamer there. What started as a few fire canoes would turn into much smoke and fire on the water.

CHAPTER TWO

THE GREAT RACE

For almost three decades the settlers of the Finger Lake region had worked hard to create their own small islands of commerce in New York’s western wilderness. Then suddenly their prayers were answered as the Erie Canal started inching its way into their backyard. Farmers and small business owners formed their own steamboat companies as quickly as possible so as to get a leg up on their neighbors over on the next lake. Whoever got their ducks in a row first could become quite wealthy gaining control of the shipping trade in their area.

Overnight a race broke out in the region as communities organized, money was raised, and docks were built. It would be an ongoing race between the lakes and their rival ports. The prize they all sought was for their local four corner settlements to finally become villages or even mighty cities. For the first time these small communities were going to be joined to the world at large. To survive three of the lakes needed to build their own