It is at Lackawaxen that the Delaware and Hudson Canal, connecting the coal regions of Pennsylvania with the Hudson at Kingston, crosses the Delaware River, spanning it by an aqueduct, as represented in the accompanying engraving.—The Erie Railway Tourist, 1874, p. 7.
The rapidity and voracity with which the iron horse quenches his thirst from one of these enormous goblets which, brimming full, await him at various intervals on his wild careering across the country, are all but incredible to those who have not seen him partaking.
Parched and thirsty, he pauses for a moment or two to refresh himself with the cooling torrent which pours itself into his enormous jaws at a fearful rate, when lo! before apparently all the passengers have alighted or embarked, his thirst is slaked and he is off again.—The Erie Railway Tourist, 1874, p. 9.
The next post series features images and ads from the Erie Railway brochures, 1874 to 1889.
“The train speeds over the landscape, along mountain sides, through valleys, over bridges, and across broad meadow lands with the speed of a winged charger, pausing only at long intervals, and then pushing on again farther than before, seemingly grudging its few lost moments of unavoidable delay.
“The traveler meanwhile ensconced in his cosy drawing-room or easy-chair, protected from dust and cinders, looks out upon the rapidly-changing landscape with undisguised delight as in a varied picture of town, city, hamlet, forest, and farm-land it passes before him.
“Here, from amid all the luxurious surroundings of a first class hotel, he looks out alike upon nature’s wildest haunts and the cultivated homes of man, and wonders the while at the changes and improvements that man’s genius and energy have wrought. Hour after hour brings him many miles nearer his goal, and lo ere daylight has departed the wonderful journey has been accomplished.
“It has been to him one continued, unwearying scene of entertainment and enjoyment…”—The 1874 Erie Railway Tourist, pp. 20–1.
“There is no Railway Company in the country which provides better accommodations for its patrons, or which keeps its passenger equipment in better condition, than the Erie Railway.
“The Drawing-room and Sleeping Coaches which are attached to Express trains, both west and east, are, as is shown in the illustrations given, perfect paragons of beauty and models of comfort and luxury.
“Indeed, the entire passenger equipment of the Erie Railway is unsurpassed, and contributes in no small degree to the wonderful growth and increase of its passenger traffic.”—The 1874 Erie Railway Tourist, p. 21.
Round Pond
Southeast of Hagan Pond (today’s Highland Lake) was Round Pond (now Lake DeVenoge), a lake fed entirely by underground springs, and 60 to 80 feet deep at the center.
The de Venoge family from Epernay, France was listed in the 1855 census. They had plans for a vineyard in the area, but the climate did not cooperate.
Dr. Leon de Venoge encouraged people that the area would be helpful for those with tuberculosis, and ended up owning quite a bit of property.
Dr. de Venoge provide some type of medication for Emma Austin who had consumption/tuberculosis and eventually moved to Kansas to be with her brothers in hopes that the drier climate would help.
Sometime after 1916, a golf course was created on what had been Dr. de Venoge’s land. The golf course played a part in World War II.—The Mill on Halfway Brook, Chapter 7, p. 83.
Dr. Leon, his wife Catherine, and daughter Mary lived on over 1,000 acres. They had three servants and a boarder, in 1880. The de Venoge Mountain Lake Boarding House was advertised as early as 1885.
The DeVenoge’s Boarding House
• Boarding Houses 1885–1889
L. de Venoge, M.D., Eldred, N.Y. 7 miles from Shohola; transportation $1.60 double rooms; adults $8 to $12; servants $8; discount for season. Good fishing; boats free. Continue reading
His government job of four years involved designing military roads and supervising their construction. He had also sketched suspension bridges that were never built.
In 1837 Mr. Roebling worked on projects to improve river navigation, in Pennsylvania. Realizing that hemp ropes were expensive and needed to be replaced often, John developed a seven-strand wire rope, which he began producing in 1841.
In 1848 when John Roebling began construction of four suspension aqueducts on the Delaware River for the D&H Canal, he moved to Trenton, New Jersey, and built John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, a large industrial complex for wire production.
In 1851 John Roebling designed a bridge that stretched over the Niagara River with two levels.
The railroad level connected the New York Central with Canada’s Great Western Railway. The other level was for vehicles.
The bridge, which spanned 825 feet and was supported by four, ten-inch wire cables, took four years to build.
In 1856 Roebling started a bridge over the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Due to lack of finances it was another seven years before work continued on the suspension bridge which spanned 1,057 feet from Cincinnati, Ohio to Covington, Kentucky. The bridge opened on December 1, 1866.
For more about his many projects, see John A. Roebling in Wikipedia.
Related information
Roebling Museum
East River Suspension Bridge
Caisson Sickness
Maine’s Androscoggin Swinging Bridge
In 1845 Lumberland was home to hunters, tanners, lumberjacks, timber rafters, canal related workers, as well as shoemakers, blacksmiths, wagonmakers, carpenters, and any other job necessary in a town.
The D&H Canal had brought more people to the area. By 1845, summer boarders and sportsmen started to arrive.
But there was a major problem at Lackawaxen, where numerous collisions often occurred between the D&H Canal traffic and the timber rafts floating down the Delaware River.
In 1847 the D&H Canal Company approved suspension designs submitted by John A. Roebling who had already built a wire suspension aqueduct at Pittsburgh in 1845.
Roebling’s designs allowed adequate space for the passage of ice floes and river traffic. (John A. Roebling, twenty years later, designed the Brooklyn Bridge.)
One of the four Roebling Aqueducts on the Delaware River, crossed the 535 feet from Minisink Ford, New York, to Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.
An immediate success, the $41,750 Delaware Aqueduct and the $18,650 Lackawaxen Aqueduct reduced canal travel time by one full day, saving thousands of dollars annually.
Roebling Bridge Collection with more links
1998 Roebling Bridge
Five miles northwest of Halfway Brook Village was Beaver Brook (sometimes called Beaver Brook Mills), where James K. Gardner supervised a lumbering operation for St. John and Dodge.
James K., his wife Eliza Eldred, and their three children lived in the area in 1836.
Between Beaver Brook Mills and Halfway Brook Village, was Blind Pond, which had a brook of the same name. A mile or so southeast of Blind Pond was a sawmill powered by Blind Pond Brook.
Visible from the sawmill was a bunkhouse built by a lumber company (perhaps the nearby St. John-Dodge operation), as living quarters for the lumberjacks that worked for them.
Sherman B., or Buckley, as Sherman Buckley Leavenworth was called, was one of those lumberjacks. Buckley and his wife Charlotte Ingram were in Halfway Brook Village at least by 1835.
Charlotte, according to the family story, was the cook for the lumberjacks who lived in the bunkhouse.
The early bunkhouses for lumbermen were small with dirt floors. Their later living quarters were usually in a larger building.
The ground floor contained a room for the cook (who could be a woman, as in the case of my great-great-grandmother Charlotte Ingram Leavenworth), and a dining room. Meals were served on long board tables, and the crew were only allowed in the room at meal time. A “men’s room” was at the end of the room where the crew could relax, read, grind their axes, or tell stories in the evening. Continue reading
The Delaware and Hudson Canal opened in October 1828.
In November 1828 the first canal boats loaded with coal arrived at the Hudson River.
From then until 1899, barges carried anthracite coal from the Moosic Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania mines to the coal markets of New York City, by way of the Delaware and Hudson Rivers.
The D&H Canal took 2,500 men and 200 teams of horses three years to dig and blast through 108 miles of wilderness to connect the Delaware and the Hudson Rivers.
The canal began at Rondout Creek near Kingston (on the Hudson River) and went through several areas on its way to Port Jervis on the Delaware River; then ran northwest on the New York side of the Delaware River, crossing into Pennsylvania at Lackawaxen and on to Honesdale.
Lumberland
The D&H Canal played a vital part in the growth of the communities along or near the Delaware River, giving work options other than lumbering and farming.
In the Town of Lumberland, the canal went some 17 miles from the Mongaup River to a point close to the junction of the Delaware and Lackawaxen Rivers. Originally there were eleven locks, but it was increased to fourteen.
“By means of aqueducts it crossed four principal streams the Mongaup, the Pond Eddy Brook, the Halfway Brook, and the Beaver Brook…To each and every lock, a dwelling house was erected for the use of the locktender, and located beside the towpath and central part of the lock, if the ground permitted.”
—Johnston, p. 19.
The person (often a boy aged 12 to 16) who led the mules pulling barges along the towpath, was paid three dollars a month. This included walking 15-20 miles a day, pumping out the barges, and tending the animals.
At first, it took a week to go the entire length of the canal. The canal was closed on Sunday, and in the winter when the water froze up or was likely to.
A blacksmith shop, a gristmill, and a broom handle factory were established at The River settlement (later called Barryville) shortly after 1828.—Excerpt from The Mill on Halfway Brook, Chapter 3.
Pelton Soda Factory
Asher and Carrie Pelton turned an old D&H Canal office building into a Soda Factory. Click on above link for more information.
Lumberland, 1825–1831
“Lumbering was the only business of the section, cutting and drawing logs, sawing and hauling boards, rafting and running lumber down the stream.”—Johnston, p. 293.
Lumberland hummed with the sound of sawmill blades as they ripped through huge logs to make planks.
Not all of the timber from the area went to local sawmills.
A considerable amount of logs sent to the Delaware River by way of the nearest stream were made into rafts and floated to market.
Lumbermen and farmers lived in simple, small homes with no insulation. Barns usually stood across the road from the houses.
Lumbermen also farmed, and their oxen were used for both occupations.
Vegetables, rye, corn, buckwheat, and some fruit trees were grown, as well as grain and hay for the stock.
Meat and milk came from the cattle, which were free to roam. Chickens provided both meat and eggs.—The Mill on Halfway Brook, Chapter 3.
In 1830 circuit riding preachers from the Methodist Episcopal Church began teaching in areas and villages on both sides of the Delaware River. They traveled mostly on foot or horseback.
Every two weeks Mr. Grace and Mr. Street preached in homes or public places in the town of Lumberland.
Services were conducted every night and visitations made during the day time.
Barryville Methodist Church
In 1835 the Methodists had a permanent minister in Barryville.
Preacher Badgely had been a circuit rider on both sides of the Delaware River for two years, going as far as Port Jervis.
Minister Badgely preached in Lumberland until 1846.
Most of the preachers who followed him preached for one year.
The current Barryville Methodist Church was dedicated in 1902.
My mom grew up in the Barryville parsonage (no longer there) next to the Barryville Church.
Her father was the pastor for the Barryville, Eldred, and Pond Eddy Methodist Churches, from 1936 to 1945.
Halfway Brook/Eldred Methodist Church
In the 1850s, and perhaps before, the Halfway Brook, later called the Eldred Methodist Episcopal Church, met in a building across the brook and across the road from the current Church property.
On July 4, 1859, Rev. J.O. Wisner dedicated the current building. The congregation owned both the property and building.
Shortly after the church was built, a wagon shed was added for the use of the members who drove some distance to church.
The steeple was added around 1900.
