1To Thomas Jefferson from R. Riker, 28 April 1826 (Jefferson Papers)
The Corporation of the City of New York have caused Medals to be struck, to commemorate the completion of the Erie Canal which unites the great Western Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
2To James Madison from Charles Austin, 30 August 1824 (Madison Papers)
.... The seed from which this Wheat was rais’d was imported from Spain some 2 or 3 Seasons since & cultivated by a Farmer of Cayuga county New York, whom I met this Summer on the Erie Canal conveying 250 Bushels to a friend of mine in Troy and who obligeingly let me have one Barrell, although previously engaged for some Farmers of Maryland & other parts of our country. It is said to...
3Theodorus Bailey to Thomas Jefferson, 2 May 1811 (Jefferson Papers)
Erie Canal [index entry] maps; of projected Erie Canal [index entry]
4Theodorus Bailey to Thomas Jefferson, 2 April 1811 (Jefferson Papers)
Erie Canal [index entry] maps; of projected Erie Canal [index entry]
5Theodorus Bailey to Thomas Jefferson, 18 March 1811 (Jefferson Papers)
Erie Canal [index entry] maps; of projected Erie Canal [index entry]
’s daughter and her party of “cousins” (probably McVickers) followed what was becoming a standard tourist route through Upstate New York, the Erie Canal route to Niagara Falls. The post coaches and canal and river boats traversed the route from New York City to the tourist destination of Canandaigua, in eight days. See
7To 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,”
8Isaac Briggs to Thomas Jefferson, 15 May 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
of a section of the Erie Canal, for the Erie Canal while
9Isaac Briggs to Thomas Jefferson, 9 May 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Briggs, Isaac; and Erie Canal [index entry] Clinton, DeWitt; and Erie Canal [index entry]
10Isaac Briggs to Thomas Jefferson, 21 May 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Briggs, Isaac; and Erie Canal [index entry] Clinton, DeWitt; and Erie Canal [index entry]
11Isaac Briggs to Thomas Jefferson, 17 November 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Briggs, Isaac; and Erie Canal [index entry] Erie Canal [index entry]
12To James Madison from Isaac Briggs, 16 May 1812 (Madison Papers)
...national capital in the 1790s, and Jefferson had appointed him to survey parts of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and 1804. Later in his life Briggs worked as an engineer on many canal projects, including the construction of the Erie Canal (Ella Kent Barnard, “Isaac Briggs, A.M., F.A.P.S.,”
13Isaac Briggs’s Account of a Meeting with Madison [1 November 1820] (Madison Papers)
...state, Briggs surveyed parts of the Louisiana Purchase lands between 1803 and 1807, and laid out the post road from Washington to New Orleans. Later in life he worked as an engineer on several canal projects, including the Erie Canal (
14Isaac Briggs to Thomas Jefferson, 16 February 1816 (Jefferson Papers)
...Briggs’s expenses himself. The legislature did not vote to settle his federal accounts until 1818. Briggs resigned his federal surveyorship in 1807 and returned to other business ventures. He worked as an engineer on a section of the Erie Canal, and when that was completed in 1819 he moved to
15To 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,...
16To James Madison from Churchill C. Cambreleng, 22 May 1826 (Madison Papers)
It gives me great pleasure to be the medium of conveying to you a gold medal, commemorating the opening of the Erie Canal, presented by the Corporation of the City of Newyork and transmitted to me by the Recorder. I must however express my sincere regret that the late hour at which it was received should have deprived me of the pleasure...
17To John Adams from LeRay de Chaumont, 14 February 1825 (Adams Papers)
upon our land, immense new tracts which they prefered for many years...other causes too long to be detailled, like the sudden fall of produce & even the making of the great Erie Canal which opened to the Settlers new Countries beyond us...all combined to reduce allmost to nothing the price of our vast properties. I had mean time become security for several of the Land holders—stored to take a...
18DeWitt Clinton to Thomas Jefferson, 25 April 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Clinton, DeWitt; and Erie Canal [index entry] Erie Canal [index entry]
19DeWitt Clinton to Thomas Jefferson, 27 March 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Clinton, DeWitt; and Erie Canal [index entry] Erie Canal [index entry]
20To 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 (
21To 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 (
22To 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 (
23Thomas Eddy to Thomas Jefferson, 16 May 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Erie Canal [index entry]
24To James Madison from Valentine Gill, 4 April 1817 (Madison Papers)
Valentine Gill eventually left Nova Scotia and was employed in 1819 as a draftsman on the construction of the Erie Canal. He published at least two maps, one of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the other of Rochester, New York (
25Valentine Gill to Thomas Jefferson, 12 April 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
as an engineer surveying the route for the Champlain and Erie canals. Gill settled by 1819 in
26To 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...
27To James Madison from Simeon Hubbard, 12 July 1826 (Madison Papers)
DeWitt Clinton was a primary proponent of the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825.
28To John Jay from Peter Augustus Jay, 22 November 1821 (Jay Papers)
The Erie Canal. See also Samuel Young (1779–1850), Saratoga County Bucktail politician, Convention delegate, Erie Canal Commissioner (1816–40), and later New York Secretary of State (1842–45).
29To John Jay from Peter Augustus Jay, 12 May 1820 (Jay Papers)
...Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Robert Fulton, and others, who were charged to purchase the rights of the former Western Inland Lock Navigation and Northern Inland Navigation Companies in 1812. This new company began construction in 1817 on the Erie Canal after the sale was completed by a court-appointed panel of appraisers including Richard Varick and Obadiah German.
30Thomas Jefferson to DeWitt Clinton, 14 April 1817 (Jefferson Papers)
Clinton, DeWitt; and Erie Canal [index entry] Erie Canal [index entry]