The Google and Yahoo and Wikipedia searches for Erie Canal stopped yielding new stuff rather quickly. I keep being referred to the same sites, getting the same information.
I went a few pages deeper into the Jesse Hawley Google search, and found a three-line bio on a website put up by three 10-year-olds at P.S. 97.
They did it through an organization called ThinkQuestNYC which integrates technology into classroom work. Or used to. ThinkQuest was funded by the banking industry. In 2009 the blog on their website went silent after a desperate plea for alternate funding sources. Sad, that.
All other links were repeats of the ones I've already visited.
I searched for some of the more prominent "engineers" ("engineers" in quotes because there were no engineers then: land surveyors yes, engineers, no) who worked on the canal—Canvass White, Judge Benjamin Wright, others— but always came back to the same sites.
Except for a link to marblehistory.com. A short piece there called Wright the "Father of American Engineering."
Decided to look into the history of surveying since that's how all these guys got their start. I found the Surveyors Historical Society, their magazine "Backsights" various state and national surveying organizations, real and virtual surveying museums, surveyors who dress up in period costume in their free time and, I guess, survey stuff.
There goes another perfectly good afternoon!
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