Low Bridge, Everybody Down

I am very much enjoying working on this blog while convalencing. I have forgotten how fascinated I once was with this era and these places as a child. Before I was intrigued by the stories of Mark Twain, I was captivated by life on the Erie Canal. In part, this was because of the involvement of the Irish laborers who actually dug the canal. Given the fact that I have Irish connections on both sides of the family and have listed to Celtic music all my life, this is no real mystery. I once used to think how wonderful it would have been to be a boy walking the mule pulling the various cargo boats and families along the canals to the west.

Bruce Springsteen's version of the song on YouTube can be found at the end of the post. Starts a bit slow, but builds up to the sort of excitement that the song used to cause. I wonder if he remembered it from his youth, or if he just thinks about it as another folk song about workers.

It is a delightful song that I remember we used to sing in school with the movements. The people used to ride on top of the canal boats which had a low cabin roof rising just above the gunwales. They had to be kept low so as to be able to pass beneath the bridges across the canal. In fact, in Deansville, the old maps show just such a bridge across the Chenango Canal. It is near the lot that I think Thomas Dean built his mansion. From the census data, it looks like our family may have lived near the Deans. Unfortunately, the Deans had several farms apparently and I am not sure exactly where our folks would have been. Perhaps the historians in Marshall will be able to find out for us.

In any case, when you get to the "low bridge" part of the song, children squat down, duck walking, until they "pass under" the somewhat movable bridge made of children's arms. Then, duck walkers get up and walk erect in a large circle being "pulled" by the boy and the mule who tramp somewhat to the side and ahead of the "barge" and the people on "it". This is done while everyone sings the song. I mention this because you might want to learn the song and use it when you have to work with a large group of younger children. Great fun and wait until you see how they fight over being the "bridge", "passangers and boatmen", "mule" or "boy".

You can also listen to Burl Ives singing, Erie Canal. Even though I very much like listening to Ives, the sound quality is not all that good. However, the pictures are fantastic! And, I still get chuckle after all these years over the dress and the flagpole comedic image.

There is a serious side to this of course. De Witt Clinton, who had been a Senator at various stages in his political career, became governor for the State of New York in 1817. He was able to finalise the beginnings of the Erie Canal. This would dramatically change the political, social and cultural landscape of Oneida County. The building of the Chenango Canal would have an lesser, but important impact on the region. The railroads would change the patterns again.

Although, my great, grandfather's list has Dexter "Deek" Felton down as "a sailor", I wonder if that was a euphemism for canal boatman. Elizabeth Bulman, his wife, would bear Sarah Jane Felton 1842 according to the list. Either FAB was wrong about this, or Sarah was the second child born and the first had died. Elizabeth is shown as head of her household in the 1840 census in Marshall. Deek apparently died of smallpox in the autumn of 1873 in Wisconsin. I certainly cannot find him in the 1880 census. I do find Betsey. However, Fenton is as bad as Bulman in terms of spelling variations and transcription errors in the databases.