Canal Tug Project N

A few winters ago I began this project and enjoyed wonderful collaboration in the comments section and email with parts A through M, and then I ran out of photos.

This is a somewhat degraded version of an image from a glass plate, which still exists, although I don’t have access to it.  Let me pull out some sections so that you can get a closer look and draw some conclusions.  I’ll share a piece of info later in the post..

 

 

 

The photo was said to have been taken at 3:15 pm on August 28, 1907 in Pendleton NY.  Given that date and the wooded bank of the waterway, wolud this be the predecessor to the Barge Canal?  The photographer’s name is not given.  The wooden tugboat A. A. Bellinger is alongside a barge.  The Merchant Steam Vessels of the US for 1906 page 182 says the 43′ x 12.2′ tugboat was built in Buffalo in 1880.  I’m not sure the function of the barge.  Are those bicycles on the cabin top of the barge?    One person on the tug is back to the camera.  A person stands atop the barge.  Two people–a man and possibly a child?– sit on the wagon drawn by a single horse.  Another wagon, with a cover, is parked in a rutted area beside the waterway.  What else?

Many thanks to Craig Williams for allowing me to see the image, and others, housed in the archives of the Canal Society of New York State, who holds their annual winter symposium in Rochester on Saturday March 2.  Registration and more information can be found here.  See you there.