Canal Walking Tour

A few weeks ago Nancy invited me on a tour of the D&R Canal. Last year, Don and I toured the canal houses, but Nancy missed the open house and was hoping to go inside the Port Mercer Canal House in Lawrenceville. I just wanted to spend time with Nancy.

Our tour was sponsored by the West Windsor Historical Society, which confused me because we were starting in Lawrenceville. I learned near the end of the trip that the Port Mercer Canal House is on the modern day border of Lawrenceville and West Windsor, and across the street from Princeton. If you stood in just the right spot, in a position normally only seen while playing Twister, you could be in three separate towns.

Paul Ligeti with the West Windsor Historic Preservation, Vicki Churdro (Canal Park historian), and Jeff Lang with the Lawrence Historic Society were our guides. The talk started at the house with a brief history of the canal. The canal, which has the feel of a permanent landmark, was hand dug in the 1830s, starting just north in Kingston. To put that date in perspective, it did not exist when George Washington and his troops marched through Mercer County during the Ten Crucial Days that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War. I found that concept mind blowing.

While the canal was being built, the Camden-Amboy Railroad was also being built. The railroad was finished first (it was a lot less labor intensive to build a railroad). At first they were joint companies. The railroad officially opened in June 1834. It took another four years to complete the canal.

The canal was operated by having mules on one side of the tow path pulling the boats. It could accommodate very large vessels. By 1840 houses were built along the the canal, many to operate the locks the bridges. There were 14 locks on the canal, and one lock on a feeder canal. Steam boats were introduced on the canal in the 1840s.  The mules continued to be used until World War I, then they were phased out.

We were standing in the Village of Port Mercer, which in its day had six houses, a train station, shop, and mill. The basin was added to augment the mill. According to deeds from the 1830s, Joseph Gillingham owned the mill. Boats could pull into this alcove to onload produce, and offload coal. It is hard to imagine today with Mercer Mall and Nassau Park Pavilion just on the other side of the townhouses, but this was a mostly agricultural area until the 1980s.

This area was also called: Clarksville Basin (Clarksville Road is about two miles away) and Port Windsor. By the 1850s the name Port Mercer stuck.

The canal was seven feet wide in the 1830s, and expanded to eight feet in the 1850s. The width of the locks impacted what types of boats could travel on it. The canal was dredged regularly in the off season. It is not dredged as often now.

Our retired historian, Dennis Waters, added that the watershed divided the space between the Raritan and Delaware rivers. We are only about 50 feet above sea level. In the Colonial era, this area would flood every spring from Stonybrook to Shippentaucken to the Delaware. In 2021 the Canal House flooded during Hurricane Ida.

The soil is very rich, making it perfect for agriculture. It it flat. Here the canal flows north, but on the other side of the berm the creek flows south. The Port Mercer dyke is perpendicular to the canal to control some of the flooding between the two watersheds. 

The historians pointed to an obelisk hidden in plain sight. This one commemorates

the path Washington took in late 1776/early 1777 as he marched the troops to Princeton. In 1914 the Sons of the Revolution put 12 obelisks along the route. Some still exist, including one in the middle of Quaker Bridge Road, one by the turn to Nassau Park Pavilion, and other one just up Quaker Road towards Princeton Pike.

The railroad was parallel to the canal from 1839 to 1863 when it was moved a few miles away to a straighter path. The store that was on the canal was originally a train stop. Today 75% of the buildings still exist. There was a downturn when the railroad moved. 1892 was the last profitable year for the canal, though it continued until the 1930s. The store was taken down within the past century. Maybe it was falling apart. Or maybe, the owners wanted a little bit of waterfront property. The yellow house was a hotel in the 1840s. The red and blue houses were tenant homes in the 1830s to 1850s. Today the three are private homes. Some of the owners (including the family that moved in early that week) were on the tour with us.

After walking on the private property of the former inn, and other homes still 
standing, they said we were standing on the demarcation line between the two halves of New Jersey. In those days our state was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey, today it is North Jersey and South Jersey with many arguing there should also be a Central Jersey.

The canal house is not the original building. It is where the bridge tender lived with his family. It was his job to swing the bridge and collect tolls during the day six day a week (boats were not supposed to run on Sundays). The captains would use a conch shell to announce when they were nearing the bridge. When we wasn't available (he often worked on farms to earn extra money), his wife and children did the work. John Pittman was the tender in the 1860s. Jams McGuigan held the role for 40 years. The last family were the Arrowsmiths, including a husband, wife (Anna), and eight children in a tiny three bedroom home with a kitchen in the basement. The historian assured us the children were spread out, so likely all ten were not living in the house at the same time. The house seemed even smaller than our 1,000 square foot row home on Plum Street in Trenton.

The children skated on the canal and spent much time outside. Tragically their son William crashed through the ice and died. Their daughter, Carrie, continued to live in the house after it became a monitoring station for the state. She finally moved out in the 1960s when he rent went from $10 a year to $30 a month. At that point the state took it over as a water supply house. In 1974 the D&R Canal State Park was formed. The following year, the Lawrenceville Historical Society was formed.

The kitchen, which is now a gift shop, was added in the 1900s. The original Sears furnace is still in the basement.  The bathroom was added in 1975 by the historical society, up until then, the family used the outhouse. 

It was a lovely spring day for a stroll. The original intent was to walk about a mile and a half each way. I'd be surprised if we walked more than half a mile. It was good seeing the path used by cyclists, runners, and fishermen. The park is such an asset.