Some of the most interesting stories of the Erie Canal tell of the hand-to-hand combat that took place along the canal. A lot of the fights were blamed on the Irish, but according to the old adage, it takes two to make a fight, so perhaps blame should have been spread more equally around the globe. Not to say that the Irish were blameless, and this is demonstrated in a number of stories that persist about their antics.
One such account is taken from a journal of Dr. O. P. Hubbard, who lived near Rome, N.Y., where the digging for the canal started. He wrote to a letter to a friend a few years after the fact, and his remarks are shared here.
“Wild Irish bog-trotters from West Ireland, cutting out the trees the width of the canal track, were set to work knee-deep in the wet muck; they could wear no clothing but a flannel shirt and a slouch cap, and there were no tools that could be used. It was a weird sight to see on a long line, both sides of the canal, hundreds of these wild Irish men at work. Saturday nights in the board shanties, fighting drunk, and contractors had to go in and club them right and left to quiet them. ... I have seen teacher Matthews, long hair flying, screaming “Murder!” and running up from the old bridge to get out of the way of a half-dozen of those fellows, each with a paving stone or a shillelagh in hand.”
If you had been alive to ask a canaller about all the fighting, he might have said there wasn’t much fighting at the time, except at Buffalo or Albany, the ends of the line, where the men had nothing else to do. But once again, some of the letters and journals tell a different story.
The next vignette is the remembrances of George Denniston of Waterloo, who worked on the canal with his father.
“In my day we had slow heavy boats, 96 feet long, carrying heavy loads of coal or lumber or salt. Most of the fighting was before that, when the packets were running. They were light passenger boats, built for speed. It used to be that if one canal boat got within 200 yards of a lock, another boat couldn’t pass it; but the packets wouldn’t do that waiting for two or maybe three hours — time was important to them. So all the packets carried fighters. Sometimes they were men who didn’t do anything but just sit around ’til they came to a lock, then they’d fight to see who’d go through first.
“Chippy Connolly was known as Champion of the Erie Canal; he wouldn’t hire a man that wasn’t a fighter. He challenged any man between Albany and Buffalo, but nobody would fight him if it could be helped. One time I saw his boat near Montezuma. Connolly’s driver wouldn’t let another boat pass him. The driver of the other boat started calling names, and pretty soon the two of them got to fighting. The other fellow ran away, and Connolly’s driver threw stones after him.
“The champion before Connolly was John McMahon. One time his driver got into a fight — his name was Bill Stewart — and the other driver licked him. John said: ‘Bill, I didn’t think you’d let him roll you around in the dust like that.’ Bill said: ‘Well, Captain, you know, before breakfast I can’t seem to fight right.’ So John took him over to a canal store and bought him some beer and bread and cheese — all he wanted. When he’d finished eating, Bill called the other driver off his boat and licked him easy.”
The plain facts might best be stated that canallers fought more for the sport of it than to settle differences. Just like boxing and wrestling, over time, progressed to the level of a sport, so too had canal fighting. When the canallers weren’t actually brawling, they enjoyed the sport of knocking each others’ hats off. The men wore special sporting hats, wide-brimmed straw hats that they would stretch to be about a foot tall. The men would prance about in their bare feet and the fellow who knocked off the opponent’s hat the most times in a certain length of time was the winner. The loser would have to buy the winner a drink, so by the end of the contest, all would be best friends.
Doug Farley is the director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center and his column runs every Saturday. The Discovery Center is closed for the season and will reopen May 1.
Canal Discovery w/ Doug Farley
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Doug Farley is director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center. His column runs every Saturday.
CANAL DISCOVERY: Fighting along the Erie Canal
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