Erie Canal trip touts waterway’s history, early depictions
ALBANY, N.Y. — In the fall of 1825, John Henry Hopkins travelled from Buffalo to Albany on the Erie Canal just days after the 363-mile waterway had opened. Along the way, the Episcopal minister from Pennsylvania drew scenes of what was then considered a marvel of modern engineering.
This month, the co-founder of a Vermont history museum is travelling by tugboat on the canal, stopping at about 30 communities over the next six weeks as he discusses the waterway’s impact on the nation’s growth in the 19th century and hands out prints of Hopkins’ artwork, many of them never published and rarely seen by the general public.
“He left us an incredible series of images of the communities, of the canal, that fill in a tremendous amount of information,” Cohn said in a telephone interview from aboard the C.L. Churchill, a 52-year-old wooden tugboat owned by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes.
Starting this weekend, Cohn and his fellow crewmembers will visit communities along the canal as far west as Rochester, giving public talks about the waterway and presenting copies of Hopkins’ artwork to local museums and historical societies. Cohn was meeting Friday with state Canal Corp. officials to iron out the details of his itinerary, which will be posted on the museum and canal agency’s websites starting early next week.