The Film: Interview Transcripts: David Frew

David Frew, Ph.D., maritime author and executive director,
Erie County Historical Society and Museums, on
canals and towpaths

The daunting part of crossing our country, since there were no airports, no thru-ways, no train stations, no bus stations, was how to move along, and the terrain here was just terrible.  It was beautiful in the context that it had these huge, wonderful native trees, but there were swamps and bogs, and the only real way for them to travel was to follow the Indian routes, and most of those were along creeks and waterways.

One of the most interesting aspects of the topography around Erie is something you still can see today.  If you go to the Peninsula and look back toward town, there appears to be a row of mountains or hills, just to the south of us.  That’s actually a very important geological feature called the Appalachian escarpment.  That’s the ridge line, glacially enhanced, which separates the water systems.  The water on the other side of the escarpment flows to the Mississippi River.  So, if you can get over that escarpment from Erie, Pennsylvania and into the French Creek system, you’ll end up going to the Allegheny River, to Pittsburgh, and ultimately to the Mississippi.  Now, the flow of people worked just the opposite way.  Since the creeks went up and down seasonally, they would wait until after the Spring runs when things dried out and became harder and followed the old Indian trails, which traversed the creek beds, and anything we know about moving around through those huge, virgin forests that were just impassable leads us to believe that they followed the creek beds using the old Iroquois trails.

One of the really interesting aspects of Erie, Pennsylvania’s history is the creation in the 1840s of a canal that went from Erie, Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh.  It was a tow-path canal, and wherever possible, it used native rivers and creeks, like French Creek.  It went from Sassafras Street and followed Lee’s Run using the water from Lee’s run, up and over the escarpment, through Girard, through Albion, down into Conneaut Lake and then ultimately popped out at Beaver and joined the Mahoning River and flowed into the Allegheny and the Mississippi.

The canal was a tow path canal, so naturally, there were pathways on either side of the canal, and those pathways essentially followed the native American trails.  It was one of the really easy ways to move, just before the Civil War. So at the peak of people trying to run away from the South, the canal and its tow path was available as a walkway.  I’m confident that many runaway slaves walked that tow path, following along from community to community.

navigating the Great Lakes

conflict on the bayfront

finding safe harbor