1To George Washington from the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 11–12 March 1793 (Washington Papers)
...the first surveyor general of American territory south of Tennessee in 1803 and mapped the first public mail route between the Federal City and New Orleans. He spent the last years of his life working as chief engineer on the Erie Canal. Briggs wrote a letter to the commissioners on 12 Jan. 1793 defending Ellicott (
2To James Madison from Arthur Breese, 11 April 1794 (Madison Papers)
...Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, which planned improvements on the Mohawk River. The company’s early efforts, directed by Philip Schuyler, were unsuccessful (Nathan Miller, “Private Enterprise in Inland Navigation: The Mohawk Route prior to the Erie Canal,”
3To George Washington from Elkanah Watson, 10 February 1797 (Washington Papers)
...three miles of canals were in place on the Mohawk River, at Little Falls and at German Flats, N.Y., by 1798. In 1812, the state of New York took over the company as part of the Erie Canal project (see
4To Thomas Jefferson from Isaac Briggs, 24 January 1801 (Jefferson Papers)
...for his expenses, arguing that it had not authorized the survey. Finally in 1818 Briggs received some compensation from Congress. Briggs worked as chief engineer on the section of the Erie Canal from Rome to Utica, New York, which was finished in 1819, and he completed the James River and Kanawha Canal in 1823. He also supported domestic manufactures, sending a statement on agriculture,...
5To Thomas Jefferson from DeWitt Clinton, 14 September 1801 (Jefferson Papers)
...of a waterway to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie, Clinton won reelection as governor in 1820, 1824, and 1826. He did not run in 1822. In 1825 he led the celebration upon the completion of the Erie Canal (
6To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Eddy, 9 February 1802 (Jefferson Papers)
...the reputation and effectiveness of the prison declined sharply in subsequent years. In his only other letter to TJ, dated 16 May 1817, he sought TJ’s advice regarding the appointment of an engineer to oversee construction of the Erie Canal (
7To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Moore, with Jefferson’s Note, 21 June 1802 (Jefferson Papers)
, 7 [1912], 416; Julius Rubin, “Canal or Railroad? Imitation and Innovation in the Response to the Erie Canal in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston,” APS,
8To Thomas Jefferson from Jesse Hawley, 2 November 1803 (Jefferson Papers)
...the pseudonym “Hercules” that promoted the idea of a canal between Lake Erie and the Mohawk River. Years later, after his authorship of the essays became public, Hawley gained recognition as one of the founding fathers of the Erie Canal. He later served in the New York legislature and as collector for the district of Genesee (Gerard Koeppel, ...Union: Building the Erie Canal and the...
9From James Madison to Thomas Eddy, 10 March 1806 (Abstract) (Madison Papers)
...to philanthropy, particularly in the area of prison reform, and spent more than twenty-five years working for the reform of New York prisons and penal code. He helped DeWitt Clinton with the Erie Canal project, was an active supporter of the New York Hospital, and a founder of the Bloomingdale Hospital for the Insane. A founder of a free school for poor children, the House of Refuge, the...
10To James Madison from Nathan Williams, 5 September 1806 (Madison Papers)
...four others, but owing to Burr’s acquittal, Tyler was never tried. He moved to Montezuma, New York, in 1811, served as a commissary in the War of 1812, and was involved with the construction of the Erie Canal (Dwight H. Bruce, ed.,