By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
So many interesting facts surround the historic Delaware Canal in Pennsylvania, they could fill a book.
And now they have.
”The Delaware Canal: From Stone Coal Highway to Historic Landmark” is Bucks County author Marie Murphy Duess’ second book from the History Press.
The first, “Colonial Inns and Taverns of Bucks County: How Pubs, Taprooms and Hostelries Made Revolutionary History,” was published last year.
The final chapter of her first book discussed the historic bed-and-breakfast inns and restaurants that dot the Delaware Canal.
”That little bit of information about the Delaware Canal left me wanting to know more, and I thought readers of that book might feel the same way,” Ms. Duess said.
”The Delaware Canal” covers the 60-mile manmade waterway’s history from pre-construction conflicts to its heyday in the mid-1800s and beyond. Readers will learn all about the mules that pulled the canal boats, how little the immigrant laborers earned to dig the canal by hand, the supplies and equipment carried by the boatmen on their journeys, what a typical day was like on the canal and more.
Ms. Duess’ book also discusses the towns through which the canal travels, but it’s not dry history. The people are brought to life in all their troubles and triumphs.
For example, the laborers who dug the canal were mostly Irish immigrants earning less than $1 a day for their efforts. As a bonus for a job well done, they may have earned a bottle of whiskey.
Their drinking and fisticuffs as they blew off steam at the end of the day made them unwelcome at the canal’s southern terminus, Bristol Borough, according to the book.
If readers aren’t already canal enthusiasts, they may be by the time they finish the book. They’ll learn the canal was much more than just a way to transport goods and anthracite coal from western Pennsylvania to the East Coast.
Ms. Duess, who lives in Wrightstown, Pa., puts a human face to the joy, misery and heartache that was the Delaware Canal.
Despite the wealth of information that was made available to the author about the canal itself, she admitted to a little difficulty in her research of the Underground Railroad’s connection to the canal for the chapter “Human Cargo.”
Ms. Duess said, “Very little was written at the time about the work that was being done by abolitionists here. It was dangerous work. It was clandestine to the point that sometimes a family wouldn’t know that a father, a son or mother was involved.”
Readers will wince along with the author as she relates what she discovered. Claustrophobic herself, she said she “could almost feel the panic” runaway slaves must have felt as they crawled through tunnels from the canal to nearby safe houses, coming to rest for a night in “windowless chambers.”
The boatmen and their helpers also come to life.
”I could almost hear the boatmen calling out to the lock tenders as they worked the canal and the bells on the mules’ harnesses as they walked the towpath beside their drivers,” Ms. Duess writes in the book’s preface. “I have to smile when I think of the barefoot children walking along the canal on beautiful summer days, yet I wince when I remember that they also walked in the rain, cold and snow.”
The days of the boatmen and the mule tenders were long and difficult.
”Boats would move from 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock at night, and mule drivers took breaks by riding on their mules,” the caption says under one old photo of a young boy riding a mule along the towpath. “They would tie their wrists to the mules’ traces so they wouldn’t fall off if they fell asleep.”
The photos Ms. Duess selected for inclusion come from a variety of sources, including local historical societies, restaurants and inns along the canal, the Friends of the Delaware Canal, her own collection and the National Canal Museum in Easton.
A photo from the Friends of Delaware Canal shows a set of rather large false teeth that were discovered when a lock in New Hope was reconstructed. The teeth, along with other finds, are now on display at the lock tender’s house in New Hope.
The book also includes much information about the coal industry served by the canal. A moving chapter tells all about the “breaker boys,” the children who worked in the mines.
”I found the photograph where they are sitting hunched over, and the boss is standing over them, stick in hand, ready to beat them for taking a rest or stretching their little backs, and it really came to life for me,” Ms. Duess said. “I wanted to hold my nephews a little closer to me. I’m so grateful that practices like this aren’t legal in this country anymore.”
Former Bucks County Congressman James Greenwood, who has lived beside the canal for 30 years, most recently in New Hope, wrote the book’s foreword. In it, he spells out the indignities the canal has suffered at various geographic points since it ceased operation in 1931.
”Its working days over, the Delaware Canal has served us still in its retirement for more than three-quarters of another century,” Mr. Greenwood wrote. “Threatened with deteriorating locks and gates; leaks and abandonment; insulted by highway and railroad crossings; plowed over with a shopping center’s parking lot; and repeatedly battered by a recent series of raging floods, the canal has yet endured, rescued repeatedly by the affection and commitment of its more recent travelers.”
The Delaware Canal is a National Heritage Landmark, and its towpath is a National Heritage Trail.
With an almost poetic list that describes who today’s canal travelers are, Mr. Greenwood paints a picture of why the canal remains important today.
He notes modern travelers are “hikers and bikers, handholding lovers, birdwatchers and dog walkers, painters and picnickers, locals and visitors, kids toting fishing poles, parents with strollers — we come with cross-country skis, canoes and cameras to rest and to play. And, sometimes, when reminded, as we are in Marie Duess’ excellent work, we think of our forebears who plied these waters from before dawn to well past dark.”
”The Delaware Canal, From Stone Coal Highway to Historic Landmark” is available locally at Farley’s Books in New Hope, Canterbury Tales in Peddler’s Village in Lahaska and the Doylestown Book Shop. The book is also carried by the National Canal Museum in Easton. It is priced at $19.99.
Ms. Duess will give a talk about her book Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Margaret R. Grundy Memorial Library on Radcliffe Street in Bristol Borough.
She will be signing books Oct. 5 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Harvest Day at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Washington Crossing, Pa. All books sales from the event will benefit Washington Crossing State Park.
Ms. Duess will hold another book signing Nov. 9 at 1 p.m. at the Upper Makefield Historical Society, Makefield Friends Meeting House in Yardley.
Friends of the Delaware Canal will have copies signed by the author for sale at the Bucks County Pumpkin Festival from noon to 9 p.m. Oct. 25 and 26 at Fonthill Park in Doylestown.

