Canal Items from the Wayne Sentinel - 1830, 1831

Submitted by Richard Palmer

Wayne Sentinel

Palmyra, Friday April 23,1830

Canal Navigation.- The Canal opened on the 20th inst. and the packet and line-boats have commenced their regular trips. Business will now revive and our villages on the great Erie Canal will feel the beneficial effects of the opening of navigation. Already we perceive the change in our own village. Enterprise, bustle and activity are every where to be seen. The villages on the canal have a decided advantage over our inland villages, and are fast outstripping them in business and increasing population. In the village of Palmyra, as flourishing in as any between Albany and Buffalo, an astonishing change has taken place within a very few years. The location of the Wayne County Bank at this place, must be attended with the most happy consequences in regard to the future growth and respectable standing of this city of the desert.


Wayne Sentinel

Palmyra, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 1831.

Melancholy and fatal accident.-

Col. Daniel Hendee of Lockville*, in this county, and formerly of this village, was drowned in the canal or lock, at that place, on the night of the 29th ult. The circumstances were as follows: A boat had got entangled in the lock, at a late hour of the night, and Col. Hendee who had the charge of the lock, was assisting to extricate the boat.- He was suddenly missed, but no particular alarm was felt for his fate, until some minutes had elapsed, when a fruitless search was made for him both in the lock and through the neighborhood. The search was renewed early in the morning, when his lifeless body was found in the canal a short distance below the lock. The supposition is that he must have fallen into the lock while engaged as above stated, and drowned instantly- his body going out of the lock with the boat. Col Hendee has left a number of orphan children, and a large circle of friends and connexions to deplore his loss. His funeral was attended on Friday last.

*Newark