C & O Canal (MD)

These compilations offer a day-by-day list of canal-related news items from the Cumberland Alleganian and other newspapers from several years. Items include canal boat arrivals and departures, accidents, arrests, and conditions along the canal. Also included are a few reports from other newspapers, such as the Alexandria Gazette, The Shepherdstown Register, and the Hagerstown Herald and Torch Light. The compilations are available in PDF format and are listed by year.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was home to a number of families whose histories have been researched by William Bauman of the C&O Canal Association. Since these add to our understanding of the canal, we are grateful for his sharing them with us.

This collection of Chesapeake and Ohio Canal items was made available by Michael and Linda Marmer of Maryland. Particularly of interest are the canal boat registrations from 1857, and a payment slip for an assistant clerk of the company, signed by Alfred Spates, president of the Canal Company.  Two letters written by combatants during the Civil War tell of the attack on Dam 5 by Confederates and the use of the canal towpath as a route west.

This project was inspired by a comment in Thomas F. Hahn’s Towpath Guide to The C&O Canal (25th anniversary edition, 1997, sadly out of print). He wrote of the Rock Run culvert (at Mile Post 8.93): “This culvert is a fine example of one of outstanding structures under the canal which most do not see. Recommended for viewing; carefully work your way down to the stream it carries to see if you don’t agree” (Hahn, 32).

Newspaper articles mainly from Hagerstown, but also Cumberland and Harrisburg, tell the story of activities along the Chesapeake and Ohio canal; the flooding and wash aways, the drownings, slave activities, damage during the Civil War, news of the use of the canal (including how many tons of canal were carried to Williamsport and Georgetown) and other stories.

In 1884 two academics from Ohio, Dwight and Walter Biscoe, journeyed through the Civil War battlefields of West Virginia and Maryland. They took photographs of their journey, from Harpers Ferry, Maryland Heights, the Antietam battlefield and cemetery, Pleasant Valley, Antietam Furnace, and the National Road from Cumberland towards Pennsylvania.