By Randy Koniowka
This is part one in a series entitled "Notes on Cohoes History."
Prior to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the area that would soon become a thriving industrial city was nothing more than a bucolic Dutch farming community. It was after all, the rich fertile soil of the Mohawk and Hudson River Valley's that attracted the Dutch to settle here.
However, a new age was dawning. And it would be the beginning of the greatest transformation of society in all human history. It was the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in America.
While Cohoes can claim many "founders," including such illustrious names as Henry Hudson, it can only claim one name as it's "industrial founder." The person that transformed a small farming hamlet into one of the greatest industrial centers in American history. That person was Canvass White.
If the name sounds famillar it should. We do after all have both a Canvass Street and a White Street. In fact, Canvass White is the only person to have both his first and last names used as city streets. Must have been an important guy.
"He was extremely important," says Daniele Cherniak of the Spindle City Historical Society. "His development of technology for the Erie Canal and his design for a power canal system, led to the industrialisation of Cohoes."
So who was Canvass White?
Born in Whitestown, New York in 1790, young Canvass would not be content in manual farm labor. His creativity lay beyond mere boyhood curiosity, for he devised many tools for daily use on his family's farm.
Unlike many young men of the era, he completed school. Upon graduation, he enlisted in the Army as a Second Lieutenant and fought the British during the war of 1812. Wounded, but not severely, he returned to New York to resume his studies in engineering.
In 1816, he joined the Army Corps of Engineers for the Erie Canal, which at the time, was the largest public works project ever attempted in the United States. One year later, he convinced canal commissioners to send him to England, where industrialisation was already well underway.
White returned with a trove of documents and drawings. His documentation of the English canals had provided canal commissioners with a blueprint for a way forward in New York. For there was little in the way of scientific documentation on canals in the United States in the early 19th century.
But what had perplexed engineers most of all, was how to construct the locks. They needed a cement that was suitable for lock construction, and for which none existed at the time. White developed what was called hydraulic cement and received a patent in 1820. It worked beautifully.
Canal commissioners used some 500,000 bushels of White's new cement. However, they never asked White's permission, nor ever paid him for the rights to obtain the cement. White filed suit against the state for a patent rights violation. The state settled with White for ten thousand dollars if he would discharge all patent rights claims against the state. White, however, would never get a dime.
When White arrived in Cohoes to begin work on the section of canal that needed to rise above the Cohoes Falls, he marveled at not only the falls incredible natural beauty, but of the immense potential for water power. The English has used water to power their industrialisation, and White knew the same could be done in America. When the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, White would devote all his attention to that very concept.
Looking out at the falls, perhaps at the spot where many of us do today, he envisioned a dam above the falls which would divert water into a series of canals, which could then be diverted to power turbines, which could power mills.
In 1826, with the financial backing of De Witt Clinton, Stephen Van Rensslear and Peter Remsen, the Cohoes Company was officially incorporated. It's initial working capital was 250.000.
According to it's charter, the company "shall have full right, power and authority to cut, construct, and make a canal or canals from said river, to supply water for the purposes of said corporation."
In 1830, White turned over daily operations of the company to his brother, Hugh. And in 1834, due to failing health, he moved to Florida where he soon died. He was just 44 years old.
Henry Clay once said of Canvass White, "no man more competent, no man more capable. And while your faith in his ability and fidelity increases, your friendship will grow into affection."
Indeed Canvass White was a man with incredible ability. But it was his visionary zeal, his remarkable capacity to look two steps forward and his dedication, both to the completion of the Erie Canal and to the industrialisation of Cohoes, that puts Canvass White in the distinct place he now sits in our history, that of a true American visionary.
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