October 21, 2025: Erie Canal Studying: DeWitt Clinton

[On October 26, 1825, the Erie Canal officially opened. So this week, I’ll honor the 200^th anniversary of that huge & hugely important project by highlighting a handful of figures connected to it, leading up to a special weekend tribute to my favorite current civil engineer!]

I highlighted the most famous political layers to DeWitt (and his even more famous uncle George) in Monday’s post, so here are three additional contexts, ones more closely linked to the transportation project that he made possible:

1)      Steam: In 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad (M&H) built a new steam engine that they named the DeWitt Clinton. Clinton had died in office in 1828, and it made sense for a New York railway company to honor him in this way; moreover, the Erie Canal was seen as a transportation competitor to the railroad, so the locomotive naming could be read as a peace gesture. But it’s also worth noting that, in an era when steam navigation was still new and at least somewhat controversial, Clinton consistently championed the technology as a vital resource for not just transportation (in shipping as well as railroads) but also and especially the public good.

2)      Freemasonry: Clinton was initiated into New York’s “Holland” Masonic lodge when he was just 21 years old, was elected Grand Master of the state’s Grand Lodge 16 years later, and for the last 12 years of his life was the Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of Knights Templar in the U.S., a national organization he helped create. His connection to Freemasonry became a source of potential scandal in 1826, when a man named William Morgan threatened to publish a book exposing the organization’s rituals and subsequently disappeared for good; Governor Clinton issued three proclamations offering rewards for information, but to not avail. Yet without eliding that mysterious and tragic case, I’d add that it seems important to note that one of the greatest champions of our most elaborate civil engineering project was a Mason!

3)      Jesse Hawley: Clinton began his affiliation with the Erie Canal project around 1810, and was a founding member of the Erie Canal Commission organized at that time. But his own interest in the project was due to another and even more compelling figure: Jesse Hawley, a New York flour merchant whose transportation debts (due directly to the lack of affordable operations for traversing the state) led him to spend 20 months in debtors’ prison between 1806 and 1808; and who during that time wrote and published fourteen essays arguing for the canal in the Genesee Messenger under the pseudonym “Hercules.” I love that this huge national project began in many ways with one man writing his way through an unjust prison sentence, and DeWitt Clinton can help us remember him.

Next Canal context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?