Saturday, April 15, 2017

Middlesex Canal Museum Art

See if you can spot Faneuil Hall!
WHERE IS UR PASSPORT DEAD MUSQUASH

I have a belly shirt and a pig on a leash!
HELLO I SEE U R BUILDING A CANAL!



Middlesex Canal!!!!!

 Story time!  Sometime last year, I went to this restaurant in Woburn with my fance food friends, and it was in the old Baldwin mansion.  I of course wanted to know if they were connected to any of the Baldwins I knew (the brothers Baldwin, and the best Baldwin, James) but it turns out this Baldwin was a dude who fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary war, and propagated an apple and was so into it that it was eventually called after him.  During this wikipedia dive, I found out that Baldwin was also the first superintendent of the corporation which built the Middlesex Canal. 

What the fuck is the Middlesex Canal, and why had Lizzie and I, the brilliant historians that we are, as evidenced by this blog, never heard of it? We went to the Middlesex Canal Museum to find out more.

The museum is in Billerica, by the Concord River, which served as the main water source for the canal.  (Horn Pond in the Wu was an ancillary source).  That dam in the first picture has existed in some form since the 1600s.  I made a dam pun to the fabulous volunteer staffing the museum, Neil, but he ignored it.  This was our first indication that Neil was a smart man. 

Post Revolutionary war, it was evident that a more efficient means of obtaining raw materials and shipping goods was needed, and the roads were either shit or non-existent, so a bunch of business bros were like "yo let's build a canal," and business bro #1 John Hancock was governor at the time, and they formed a corporation that sold private shares to finance it.  In a who's who of the revolutionary set, shareholders included ol' big signature himself, John Hancock, eventual Prezzes John Adams & John Quincy Adams, James Sullivan (of Sullivan Sq fame) and of course our apple bro Loammi Baldwin.  They broke ground in September of 1794, and all 27 miles of the canal, from Charlestown to East Chelmsford, were hand dug over the course of ten years.

The canal itself was generally only 3.5 feet deep, and in a practice called "not crossing streams" so they could control the level of the water, the canal didn't connect with any of the other water ways nearby, so they had to build aqueducts (8 total) to ensure smooth sailing over rivers like the Shawsheen and the Merrimack (parts of the giant aqueduct over the Shawsheen still exists).  There was some sweet lock action, too, to deal with changes in height in relation to sea-level. 

FUN FACTS:

Passage on the canal was not allowed at night, so there were taverns built, including the "Horn Pond House," by, you got it, Horn Pond, and Horn Pond itself had a little island on it that housed a dance hall and a bowling alley.  Woburn as always brought the party. 

Musquash, aka Muskrats, and other similar animals would eat the sides of the canal, so people were paid to kill them and bring in their little dead bodies.  RIP Musquash :(

Eventually there was a canal built which connected the Charlestown mill ponds to the Boston Harbor, which, at the time, was located by Faneuil Hall.  Guess what there's a street there now called CANAL STREET.

The canal shut down in 1853.  Railroads came along and were like "lol we operate in the winter how about you?" and the canal was like ":( no" and it quickly fell into disrepair.  Bridges were ripped down, and the canal filled in in parts.  Parts of it are under the Mystic Valley Parkway, and Boston Ave in Medford crosses the Mystic River where the canal did, but parts of it are still visible and walkable, including a stretch by the aforementioned Baldwin Mansion (which was moved across Rte 38 bc the original location was made into a parking lot, natch). The shareholders lost their money and the canal WAS PROMPTLY FORGOTTEN. 

Anyway, if you have a chance, go check out the museum.  Hopefully Neil will be on duty, because he was super knowledgeable, and had all the hot canal goss.  Plus there are EXCELLENT displays.  10/10 would recommend for Neil + Dioramas. Lizzie bought me a sweet canal mug and xmas ornament, so if you want to come over my house and look at those, maybe I will let you...