Locating Workers' Camps on the C&O Canal

Workers cutting the Chesapeake and Ohio canal in 1864.

Illustration for Harpers Pictorial History of the Civil War (McDonnell Bros, 1886).

Construction of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal took place between 1828 and 1850. Stretching 185 miles from Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland, the canal was intended to transport goods between the coal producing Allegany Mountains in the west and the port cities and industrial centers in the east. The laborers who constructed the dams, aqueducts and the Paw Paw Tunnel established camps along the way. Archeologists believe they have found evidence of the camps where the laborers lived.

Skilled tradesmen, carpenters, and stonemasons were needed for the locks, aqueducts, and culverts. Laborers worked 12-to-15-hour days in all kinds of weather, beginning at sunup and continuing to sundown. The back-breaking work of digging the canal prism, however, was accomplished by the lowest-paid laborers using the simplest of tools—shovels, picks, and wheelbarrows. The workers would spend much of their day in the ditches, mired in mud or water up to the waist. Injuries were common on the line. Maiming and death far from rare.

Most laborers on the canal were Irish immigrants, with a few Germans and native-born Americans. Enslaved people worked on the canal early on, but that practice had largely been abandoned by the time construction reached the Blue Ridge, near present-day Hagerstown, Maryland. Between 1834 and 1840, the C&O Canal Company experienced at least ten significant disturbances, and virtually continuous labor unrest. Ethnic groups often banded together against one another (for example, German versus Irish) and expressed their anger at the working and living conditions by fighting with each other.

Workers carve the canal with horses and tools. NPS photo.

Identifying Workers’ Camps

Archeologists expected to find an archeological “signature” left by laborers, simply because hundreds of people were employed over many months to work. Archeologists, however, did not expect to find substantial or clear evidence of structures or camp layouts. The workers did not have much money, and the C&O Canal Company kept expenses at a minimum to maximize the investors’ returns. At the end of the day, the workers returned to small houses and primitive living conditions. They lived in makeshift shanties at the worksite, often in a bunk house with 15 to 20 other men. In some cases, married men constructed huts for their families who traveled with them along the canal line.

Archeologists identified several potential camps using different methods. One method involved testing locations where major canal projects occurred, because these were likeliest to yield information about the workers’ camps. By revisiting these old collections, archeologists arrived at a new interpretation. The historic artifacts in the assemblage pointed to the locations of workers’ sites. The possibility of the Chick Farm and Monocacy sites being canal workers’ camps led archeologists to refine their methods for identifying additional locations where workers lived and worked.

Archeologists searched relevant documentary records. These included maps, newspaper accounts, and diaries as well as the extensive collection of C&O Canal Company records. These searches enabled them to identify sites at the Paw Paw Tunnel.

Monocacy Site and Chick Farm Site

The largest of the C&O canal aqueducts was built across the Monocacy River, a large tributary of the Potomac River. Excavations at the Monocacy site recovered numerous artifacts recovered from the upper strata dating to the first half of the 1800s, including cut nails, bottle glass, fragments of white clay tobacco pipes, and sherds of earthenware dishes. The site could have been a warehouse of some kind, or an outlying barn. Or, it may have been a canal workers’ camp. Nails, bottle glass, and tobacco pipes are exactly what archeologists would expect from a workers’ “shanty town.”

Another site that may represent the remains of a workers’ camp was found at the Chick Farm in Frederick, Maryland. An assemblage of ceramic sherds was found in the soil layer dating to 1825, but the density of ceramic artifacts rapidly decreased over the next ten years. The dates correspond to the period of canal construction near the Monocacy River. Construction and woodworking tools were also recovered from the site. They included gouges, a chisel, augers, a shovel fragment and broken picks. The artifacts suggest that it was a work yard used by canal work crews in the 1830s.

Workers stand around a historic brick clamp. NPS photo.

Paw Paw Tunnel

Other documents within the C&O Canal Company records refer to the workers’ camp and company office at the Paw Paw Tunnel. The tunnel was constructed to bypass a part of the Potomac River that meanders 5 times in 6 miles. It was lined on the inside with 7 to 11 layers of bricks, approximately 5 million bricks in all.

A common method of brick-making in the early nineteenth century consisted of firing stacks, called clamps of dried, unfired bricks. After bricks were molded from clay and binding materials and dried in the sun, they were added clamps for firing. The clamps were constructed on a level ground surface or platform. The unfired bricks were stacked in several parallel rows about three bricks thick, leaving gaps for air to pass through. Fuel, usually wood, was placed in the flues, or alleys, between the rows. After the height of each row had reached about two feet, arches of brick, creating tunnels, connected the rows. A rectangular structure of brick was built over the arches. The exterior of the clamp consisted of bricks stacked closely together to maintain the necessary heat within the clamp.Initially the C&O Canal Company intended to fire the bricks for the Paw Paw Tunnel, using local materials with clamps constructed at the work site. Eventually, the bricks were found to be of poor quality and not be suitable for use. The company records do not indicate what happened to the brickworks but it is likely the bricks and clamps were abandoned in place.

Archeologists excavated a site near the Paw Paw Tunnel and identified three features. Two features were carefully laid brick platforms located approximately 2 feet below ground surface. A linear layer of thick ash and charcoal lay over part of one of the platforms. The deposit measured approximately 2 feet wide and extended the length of the platform. The coal and ash deposit possibly represent the flues of workers’ brick clamps. The coal and ash deposit identified on the clamp at the site may represent the last time the Paw Paw Tunnel workers fired clamps before they abandoned the brickworks in 1838.

Excavations also revealed the substantial remains of the canal company office and store. The foundation consisted of three courses of carefully laid brick, surmounted by a two layers of flat, roughly shaped stone. Additional testing showed that the wall measured 70 feet in length, running in an east-to-west direction. Limited excavation around both ends did not produce any evidence of the perpendicular walls. The existing wall suggests the structure was quite large.

The only artifacts recovered from the unit were machine cut nails, a small sherd of whiteware, and a fragment of clear bottle glass. The near absence of domestic artifacts in the deposits dating to the canal construction period is important. Records indicate that the contractor lived in this area along with some of the workers. Based on excavation results, however, these individuals appear to have left little evidence of their presence in the form of glass, ceramics, or other artifacts. The paucity of such materials reflects the finding at other possible canal workers’ site along the canal. In every instance, these sites contain little conclusive evidence that the workers were ever here.

Remains of a brick clamp. The dark streak is ash left by the fire that baked the bricks. NPS photo.

Conclusion

The Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal is one of the most intact and impressive surviving examples of the American canal-building era. Although some of the most sought-after archeological sites were the canal worker’s camps, the findings were inconclusive. The only concrete evidence of canal construction documented archeologically has been the brick clamps and workshop foundations at the Paw Paw Tunnel Supervisor’s house. Several sites along the canal have yielded a handful of nineteenth-century artifacts that might have been left by canal workers, but could also be from railroad workers, people travelling the canal, or nearby farms.

Sometimes in archeology the failure to conclusively document people’s activities in the past is as important as recovering sure evidence. In this case, not finding clear evidence of workers’ shanties and camps suggests that they were constructed with limited resources and that the workers, themselves had few material goods of the types that can be recovered archeologically. The data also point toward a rather surprising inference, that the camps were kept relatively clean. Every human settlement generates trash, and if the trash generated by a camp where a hundred people spent six months were strewn about the camp and trampled into the soil, it ought to be possible to find some trace. But if much of the trash was carefully collected and disposed of in privy pits or other defined spots, the site would be much harder to find. In fact, it appears the only lasting expression of Canal Workers’ hardship is their impressive achievement—the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.