The Farmington Canal

In 1821 the first word of a canal swept through the Great Plain and in 1822 a charter was granted to the Farmington Canal Company to construct a waterway from New Haven to the Connecticut-Massachusetts state line. In 1823 a similar charter was let in Massachusetts for a canal to head south to meet the Farmington Canal. This company was the Hampshire and Hampton Canal Company.

During the construction of the canal the area around Plainville and Farmington presented few problems except for the marshlands. It was so flat that it was known as the “Long Level”. This is why Plainville had no locks. Trees were felled and the canal was dug by hand. The canal would rise 220 feet above sea level to the Massachusetts state line by the use of 28 locks. All metal parts were hand forged and the timber cut from trees in the area. There was little conformity in either material or design.

Apart of this canal system was the Farmington Aqueduct. Built in the 1820s this impossible structure was constructed to carry the Farmington Canal over the Farmington River. Passengers going from Plainville, the Great Plain, to the town of Unionville would cross the aqueduct or headed to Granby. The aqueduct was sometimes described as the long boat to keep water in There was a narrow shelf like tow path along the side of the canal for the horses. The aqueduct was 280 feet long and was supported by huge stone piers. It stood 40 feet above the river. The stone, which was used to build these piers, was floated down the river from Simsbury on flat boats. The water lime cement for the mortar was found in Southington just in time for the construction.

Timothy Colvin [Generation 5] owned one of the small farms, which the canal passed through. During the construction of the Farmington Aqueduct he decide to become involved in the venture. He mortgaged his farm and bid on part of the canal feeder project. This turned out to be a serious mistake. In a letter written by Martha (Holmes) Fish on August 17, 1973 she relates the story as she heard it.

“Timothy Colvin is the one who worked on the aqueduct. His wife’s parents gave them their farm. He mortgaged it to invest in the canal and of course lost out His wife’s family paid off the mortgage and said that it was the last time they were going to give it to him. I am quite sure it went through his farm; It was the North Hampton-New Haven Canal. It went through Congamond Pond as part of its waterway. The farmers were often displeased in having their farms cut up and their water supply cut off and would sometimes chop holes in it for the water."

The canal was plagued with structural problems from the very beginning. They expected the canal to leak for the first year or so as the wood swelled. Some areas of the canal never stopped leaking. Muskrats dug into the banks causing washouts, in fact the canal company set a bounty on them. Small wash outs would end up as large wash outs, sometimes washing the boats out into the meadow. In Farmington where the canal was perched on the side of a hill, a breach caused a boatload of coal to fall into the river below.

The canal boats were long and narrow, typically 50 to 80 feet long and 8 to 12 feet wide. They were flat bottomed and about four feet deep. A long line connected to two or more large mules or horses propelled the boat. These big cumbersome freighters carried the equivalent of a modern trailer truck. Two miles per hour was their speed. Smaller boats and passenger boats could make two and one half miles per hour. At times the traffic was heavy. In September of 1839 a total of 106 boats cleared at New Haven carrying 3,947,155 pounds of cargo. At the New Haven Harbor these goods were transferred to ocean vessels and shipped all over the world.

The canal was also burdened from the very beginning with a very shaky financial foundation. The canal company owned only the canal and not the boats. Therefore they earned only money from usage fees. The building and maintenance cost a great deal more than anticipated. These heavy expenses and lack of control kept the company always on the brink of financial disaster. The best years for the canal were from 1836 to 1838. Operations continued through the middle of the 1840’s. When the railroads were constructed in 1845 and completed in 1856 the fate of the canal was sealed. When the canal closed for the winter in 1847 it was never to open again as a complete waterway. The Farmington Aqueduct slowly disintegrated. By the 1860’s only a small portion of the woodwork still existed. The stonework lasted longer but as the years passed it too degenerated. After the flood of 1955 followed by the demolition work of the Army Corps of Engineers, little remains of any of its structure.

Note: Much of the information for this article was taken from three sources, all authored by Ruth S. Hummel, a local historian in Plainville, Connecticut and President of the Plainville Historical Society from 1968 to 1972. She has also authored many short sketches of our ancestor, Sam Camp.

May 1, 1992
Revised October 11, 2002