(This is the 22nd in a series of articles
dealing with the early residents of the Town of Tonawanda. Material for the articles
was gathered from the historical society and town historian John W. Percy's book,
"Tonawanda, the Way it Was.')
Tonawanda Creek was the only natural waterway used for any distance on
the old Erie Canal.
However, when the canal was enlarged in 1918, three shortcuts had to be
made along its course to eliminate bends that were too sharp for canal boats to negotiate.
Each of the cuts formed an island in the canal, one of which is still part of Ellicott
Creek Park today. Two others can still be seen farther toward Pendleton. A towpath for the
mules and horses used to pull the canal boats was built along the south side of the
Tonawanda Creek portion of the canal.
Both Buffalo and Black Rock had been vying with each other desperately
for designation as the western terminus of the Erie Canal. Both villages had constructed
harbors for ships sailing the upper Great Lakes and used every political maneuver to
secure the favored position as terminus.
Eventually, the, commissioners decided to favor Buffalo, yet Black
Rock's harbor also was provided with access to the canal. Both Buffalo and Black Rock
citizens worked at constructing their portions of the waterway. The connecting link from
the Tonawanda Creek portion to Black Rock was designed to roughly parallel the Niagara
River and to maintain the one inch per mile gradient toward Lockport. A guard lock was
built at Black Rock to protect the canal when winds pushed the water level up at the
western end of Lake Erie.
Boats normally passed directly through this lock unless a storm had
raised the lake level. Another similar guard lock was built two miles beyond Pendleton to
protect the step locks at Lockport and the upper long level to Rochester from flood water
of Tonawanda Creek during the spring runoff. It also enabled the canal to he drained from
that point eastward each winter for maintenance work on the locks and canal banks.
When the canal from Tonawanda to Black Rock was constructed in 1824,
workers were brought in from the east. Irish immigrants had been hired in large number,
anxious for the high wages offered in a nation short of labor. Eighty cents a day and
regular whiskey rations kept the men at their task until the canal was completed.
Individual contractors agreed to dig the separate portions of the canal
and they did the actual hiring of men to do the work. For a contracted price for his
section of the canal, the contractor was expected to pay his labor, provide quarters to
sleep up to 40 men, feed them, provide daily rations of whiskey and supply the necessary
horses, scrapers, shovels, wheelbarrows, stump-pullers, and other equipment necessary to
build that portion of the canal.
The 80 cents a day wage was nearly double the wage paid to unskilled
labor in America at that time. Due to difficult times in Europe, most immigrants and
native Americans worked long hours, as much as 14 hours a day in the long days of June and
July, and even the scant comfort of a. hard board bunk probably felt good at night.
The two-tiered bunks had no mattresses; if a worker wanted bedding, he
brought his own. There was no glass or screening in the windows and along the swampy
Niagara flats the mosquitoes and other insects were attracted to the bunkhouses in swarms.
Hearty meals kept the men stoked for work during the day.
