Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company

The Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company was a limited liability corporation founded in Pennsylvania on September 29, 1791.[1][2][3]

The company was founded for the purpose of constructing a transportation canal, the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Canal and improve navigation on the Schuylkill river.

William Penn's plan for a second settlement in Pennsylvania

The idea of uniting the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers by a canal was first proposed and discussed by William Penn in 1690.[4][5] Penn's plan, conceived a few years after he had founded Philadelphia was to make "a second settlement" on the Susquehanna river, similar in size to that of Philadelphia itself. He made this plan, titled "Some Proposals for a Second Settlement in the Province of Pennsylvania" public in England in 1690.[6] The route envisioned by Penn was a road up the west bank of the Schuylkill to the mouth of French creek near present day Phoenixville heading west to the Susquehanna via present day Lancaster and a Susquehanna tributary, Conestoga creek.[6] Although Penn first proposed the project of continuous water transportation from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, he did not call for the building of a canal.[6]

Early Petitions

In 1762, Philadelphia merchants petitioned the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly to commission a project for the passage by water up the west branch of the Susquehanna River with an intervening portage to a navigable branch of the Ohio River.[6] In 1769, another petition to the Assembly requested that then Province make the Juniata river navigable down to the Susquehanna river. Both petitions were unsuccessful but neither mentioned canals as an essential element for the proposed improvement.[6]

River Surveys of 1769-1773

In 1769, the American Philosophical Society with Benjamin Franklin as its first president was organized with six standing committees, one of which was on "Husbandry and American Improvements".[7] One of the first projects the committee looked in February, 1769 was a canal between the Chesapeake and Delaware bays using the Chester River in Maryland and Duck creek, near Smyrna, Delaware some fifteen miles south of the present location of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal (C&D Canal).[7] In March, the committee was tasked with preparing a "scheme of application" for the Philadelphia merchants for defraying the expenses of conducting a route location ("proper levels") for the canal as well as construction costs.[7] In April, the committee discussed a more northerly route using the Bohemia River, a tributary of the Elk river with headwaters extending into Delaware using Drawyers Creek .[7] In June, this route was reported being feasible only with locks as the cost of constructing a clear passage from river to river was to great.[7] That same month, Thomas Gilpin, a member of the merchant committee submitted a alternative "plan of a canal and elevation" using the original southerly route along the Chester river and Duck creek.[7] In April 1770, W. T. Fisher produced a map of the several canal routes proposed for connecting the Chesapeake and Delaware bays.[7]
In August 1771, the committee then became aware of the prospect of joining the Susquehanna and Schuylkill rivers by means of a canal.[7] One of the key features of that survey was its emphasis on the middle ground or summit level, roughly four and a half miles between the headwaters of the Quitapahilla, near Lebanon, and those of Tulpehocken, near Myerstown. The survey was conducted by Dr. William Smith, Provost of the College of Philadelphia, John Lukens, Esquire, Surveyor General of the then Province (now State) of Pennsylvania, and John Sellers. In 1771, the Society recommended the third route for a canal.[6][8]
The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly then appointed a committee of its own to survey the Susquehanna, Schuylkill, and Lehigh Rivers and in 1773, David Rittenhouse delivered its report.[9] Nothing became of this work due to the coming of the Revolution.[10]
In total, the Society sponsored studies of three routes to the connect Philadelphia with the Susquehanna valley, one by canal across the Delmarva peninsula(1769-1771), the second was a paved road from the Susquehanna valley to a river port south of Philadelphia and the third (1773) was a canal using the Schuylkill and Susquehanna rivers and their tributaries, the Tulpehocken and Swatara creeks.[3][6]

Society for the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation

The project became the goal of the Society for the Improvement of Roads and Inland Navigation [5] organized in 1789 with preeminent, wartime financier Robert Morris [8] as president, David Rittenhouse, William Smith and John Nicolson.[3] The Society petitioned the General Assembly to again survey the river routes, only this time it acted upon by the State.[3]

Pennsylvania State River Surveys of 1790

A 1791 map exhibiting a general view of the roads and inland navigation of Pennsylvania, and part of the adjacent states based upon the river surveys of 1790/1791.

In the spring of 1790, the General Assembly passed a resolution on Mar. 31, 1790 that authorized river surveys.[11] Governor Thomas Mifflin commissioned Timothy Matlack (1736–1829), Samuel Maclay (1741–1811) and John Adlum (1759–1836) to survey the Swatara, West Branch of the Susquehanna river, Allegheny River, French Creek with a portage to Lake Erie; the Kiskiminetas/Conemaugh to Stony Creek, the future site of Johnstown, with a second portage to the Frankstown branch of the Juniata and then down the Juniata to the Susquehanna River and onto Harrisburg.[11]
Mifflin also appointed other survey teams:[11]

Maclay surveyed the Swatara and Quitapahilla Creeks to Old’s Iron Works, then by land to Lebanon.[11] Continuing on to survey a gap in the Allegheny barrier range in early September,1790, Maclay determines that Poplar Run Gap is the potential site for a future road across the Allegheny Mountains.[11]
On Dec. 14, 1790, Maclay and the other commissioners reported on their recommendations for rivers west of the Allegheny front or barrier range. They recommend three routes; one via the Juniata and two using the West branch. The first uses the Juniata to go over the barrier range at Poplar Run gap to the Kiskiminetas, a tributary of the Allegheny River. The two West branch of the Susquehanna river routes, one via the north branch of Sinnemahoning creek, a tributary of the West branch and thence over the barrier range to the Allegheny river, and one via west branch of the Sinnemahoning creek and thence also over the barrier range to the Allegheny river. They also recommended the Allegheny and French Creek with portage to Lake Erie.[11][12]
Maclay and the other commissioners found that most of the waterways could be constructed but several portages were recommended to reduce costs such as the Lebanon summit crossing of four miles, a road from French creek to Presque isle on Lake Erie and an eighteen mile portage over the Allegheny mountains at Poplar run. The latter crossing was south of the route eventually selected in 1831 for the Portage railroad which when built was thirty-six miles in length. Both the 1791 and 1831 routes converged on the Little Conemaugh River as the route into Pittsburgh.
On Feb. 10, 1791, reports were given on the second round of river surveys regarding improvements to the Delaware River from the bay to the New York state line. Improvements were also recommended for the Schuylkill river with a portage road or canal from Reading to the Susquehanna River as well as improvements for the North and West Branches of the Susquehanna and a second Allegheny portage to reach Lake Erie.[11] In that same year, the Society presented proposals to the State proposing to connect the Atlantic seaboard with Lake Erie.[5]

Chartering the companies

This plan was prior to the creation of the Western and Northern Inland Lock Navigation Companies in 1792 which took the first steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk river and construct a canal between the Mohawk and Lake Ontario [13] but that effort with private financing was insufficient. The Society proposed a canal route, 426 miles [5] in length connecting Philadelphia with Pittsburgh by canal up the Schuylkill river to Tulpehocken Creek to a summit-level canal near Lebanon and thence by way of the Quitapahilla and Swatara creeks to the Susquehanna river.[3]

This action resulted in the formation of two companies The first was the Schuylkill and Susquehanna Navigation Company incorporated in 1791 to open a communication between the Schulykill and Susquehanna rivers from Reading on the Schuylkill to Middletown on the Susquehanna The second was the Deleware and Schuylkill Navigation Company incorporated in 1792 to open a canal from Philadelphia along the east branch of the Schuylkill 16 miles to Norristown. Robert Morris was the president of both companies.[3]

In 1811, the corporation was merged into the Union Canal Company which closed in 1881.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Companies Incorporated in the Eighteenth Century | Scripophily USA - American Stock and Bond Collectors Association". scripophilyusa.org. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  2. ↑ Pennsylvania Statutes accessed at Google Books
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Canals for a Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790-1860. University Press of Kentucky. 1993. ISBN 978-0-8131-0815-5. Reprint of 1990 volume.
  4. ↑ Engineering Record, Building Record and Sanitary Engineer, Volume 40, Charles Frederick Wingate, McGraw Publishing Company, 1899 Accessed at Google books on July 30, 2016
  5. 1 2 3 4 Bishop, Avard Longley. The State works of Pennsylvania. Vol. 13. Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1907.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Swank, James Moore. "Progressive Pennsylvania: A Record of the Remarkable Industrial Development of the Keystone State, with Some Account of Its Early and Its Later Transportation Systems, Its Early Settlers, and Its Prominent Men." JB Lippincott, 1908. Accessed at on July 31, 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Volume 1769-1774. (1885). Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 22(119), 23-94. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/982528
  8. 1 2 Albert J. Churella (2012). The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917, Volume 1. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 976. ISBN 9780812243482.
  9. ↑ 8 Pa. Arch., viii, 6609–10, 6748, 6853; Brooke Hindle, David Rittenhouse (Princeton, 1964), pp. 94–6.Accessed at on August 18, 2016.
  10. ↑ David Rittenhouse Papers accessed at on August 18, 2016.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Baer, Christopher T. "A General Chronology of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company Predecessors and Successors and its Historical Context." Archived from the original on (2007), updated May 2015.Accessed at on July 31, 2016.
  12. ↑ Pennsylvania State archives,House Journal, Appendix, pps 28 - 43
  13. ↑ Calhoun, Daniel Hovey. The American civil engineer: Origins and conflict. Technology Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960.

Bibliography

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