IV

IN WHICH RANDEL KEEPS SEEKING THE MOST ELIGIBLE ROUTES

“THIS DAY SENT OUT through the post office about 160 copies, being all that remained on hand, of the first Edition of The Exhibit of the oppression of John Randel. Three of them were returned by the post office, whether the parties were not to be found, or refused them, I cannot tell.” So wrote Mathew Carey, the prominent Philadelphia publisher, in November 1825. Carey defended Randel in one of the most publicized, longest-running, most financially punitive lawsuits of the era, and as he wrote this entry, the legal struggle was just beginning. Carey printed and distributed several pamphlets—most famously, Exhibit of the shocking oppression and injustice suffered for sixteenth months by John Randel, Jun. Esq.—in unwavering public support of Randel, despite, as he noted in the same entry, potential apathy on the part of his audience. Undeterred, Carey’s highly visible outrage was costly: “I have spent my money to a great extent (about $150), made many deadly enemies, exposed myself to obloquy.” But, he added, “I do not regret it nonetheless. It is one of the best acts of my life.”¹

This lawsuit, between Randel and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company, as well as several related lawsuits, unfolded over more than a decade. The cases laid bare the intense politics, personal rivalries, and finances that underlay the building of America. And they flayed Randel, shattering his finances, revealing disturbing facets of his personality. It was with the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal lawsuit and the many that followed that he began to earn his reputation as an erratic, litigious man. Increasingly, Randel’s vision for the future—his opinions about the routes and engineering of canals, the routes and mechanics of railroads—brought him into conflict with some of his contemporaries, most notably, in the case of the Chesapeake & Delaware lawsuit, Benjamin Wright, a judge and surveyor turned engineer from Rome, New York. Despite his legal and economic setbacks and cautions from employers, Randel became uncompromising in his middle age. He held to his visions, his calculations, and his convictions with an obsessive fervor.

Exhibit of the Shocking Oppression by Mathew Carey.

Randel’s trouble with the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal began on America’s ur-canal, the Erie. His unrelenting, unabashed quest for precision led him to miscalculate, politically and professionally.

THE ERRONEOUS DREAD OF BOLD MEASURES

Just as the young United States established property lines so land could be claimed and “improved,” so it needed to establish connections between those improvements, channels of transportation and communication, themselves “improvements.” The term was the watchword of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Improvement was the American enterprise, as Basil Hall, a Scottish captain who traveled through New York State in the late 1820s, aptly described:

It may be proper to remark, that about this period I began to learn that in American the word improvement, which, in England, means making things better, signifies in that country, an augmentation in the number of houses and people, and above all, in the amount of the acres of cleared land. It is laid down by the Americans as an admitted maxim, to doubt the solidity of which never enters any man’s head for an instant, that a rapid increase of population is, to all intents and purposes, tantamount to an increase of national greatness and power, as well as an increase of individual happiness and prosperity. Consequently, say they, such increase ought to be forwarded by every possible means, as the greatest blessing to the country. I do not assert that Americans are entirely wrong in this matter; far from it; increase of population is sometimes a symptom of prosperity.

But, he added, “Much of the wealth, and power, and happiness of nations have their origin, and still more their permanent support, in circumstance of which little or no account is taken in America.”²

Over several decades the meaning of “improvement” evolved. Initially, as Hall noted, it was a blanket term encompassing everything from clearing land and expanding population to building structures and institutions. When, at the turn of the century, DeWitt had instructed his surveyors to note and assess every improvement, he typically meant deforested or farmed land and built structures. But by the mid-nineteenth century “improvement” came to mean, more narrowly, public transportation.

The growing focus on transportation had its official roots in 1807, the year the commissioners started work on the New York City grid, when Congress asked the secretary of the treasury to study and report back on the possibilities, costs, and challenges of national infrastructure. Albert Gallatin issued his Report of the Secretary of the Treasury; on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals in 1808. Gallatin started by noting that “The general utility of artificial roads and canals, is at this time so universally admitted, as hardly to require any additional proofs.” He then furnished additional proofs, emphasizing that “no other single operation, within the power of government, can more effectually tend to strengthen and perpetuate that union, which secures external independence, domestic peace, and internal liberty.” Without a network by which people, goods, and information could move, politicians and business leaders realized that there might be no further “improvements” and that the newly assembled states would not become tightly stitched into an ensemble.³

Gallatin’s report reviewed each region, describing the setting, geography, and scope of projects under way or required. He argued that state or local projects needed to be linked in one great inland system. Attached to the report were two supporting statements: one from Robert Fulton, the inventor and businessman, who was then testing one of the earliest American steamships on the Hudson River, and one from Benjamin H. Latrobe, a well-known architect and engineer, who had devised in 1798 a means of bringing fresh water to Philadelphia through steam-driven pumps. Fulton, a published canal booster, described how great civilizations advanced from roads to canals. Although the United States needed both, particular attention must be paid to inland waterways, he contended, with a tinge of utopianism: “There is another great advantage to individuals and the nation arising from canals, which roads can never give. It is that when a canal runs through a long line of mountainous country, such as the greater part of the interior of America, all the ground below for half a mile or more may be watered and converted into meadow and other profitable culture. How much these conveniences of irrigation will add to the produce of agriculture and the beauties of nature, I leave to experienced farmers and agricultural societies to calculate.”⁴

Internal Improvements. Detail from the 1828 “Maps and Profiles of the Canal Line on the North Branch of the Susquehannah River from Nanticoke Falls to Northumberland.” Record group 17, records of the Board of Canal Commissioners. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Latrobe, for his part, reviewed practical details attending the specific projects and raised a critical concern: the shortfall of engineers. “The difficulty of carrying canals parallel to our great rivers, the scarcity of engineers possessing knowledge and integrity, the want of capital, and above all the erroneous dread of bold measures, and the fear of uselessly expending money in works hitherto unknown among us, has deterred those interested in improving our navigation, from deserting the beds of our rivers, while it was practicable to keep them.” The word “integrity” appeared often in recommendations for engineers, in discussions of reputation and skill; Randel’s letters of support, for example, often described his integrity. A valuable quality in any era, integrity was notably coveted at a time when so few people knew what they were doing or had any means of vetting a man or his services. Financiers, civic bodies, and the public were all vulnerable to huge losses on engineering projects, short-term and long-term. Few national proof-of-concept canals or, later, railroads existed; most models lay across the ocean in markedly different landscapes. (“As many Americans were willing to point out, everything was bigger, better, and deeper in America; the mountains were higher, the frosts more intense, the snows deeper, the spring freshets more violent,” notes Julius Rubin in Canal or Railroad?) Techniques and true understanding of terrain and physical hurdles often arose on the job. As a result, estimates of cost could be, and typically were, off by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Integrity was thus a vital quality for civil engineers or surveyors. Without integrity—as judged by their church, their mentors, their colleagues, their former employers—they would not survive professionally.⁵

One of the canals Latrobe reviewed in his remarks and Gallatin cited as integral to nationhood and the internal network was to be in New Jersey, running between the Delaware and Raritan Rivers, linking Philadelphia and New York City. Such a canal would obviate a longer trip via the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware River. Rather, boats could go directly from the base of New York Harbor into the Raritan River and then, via canal, to the Delaware River, just northeast of Philadelphia, cutting about 160 miles and several days off the journey. Randel fastened his hopes on this canal as his chance to raise himself from surveyor to something grander. He hoped to reach the lofty perch of civil engineer, specifically one instrumental to the great national work of infrastructure- and nation-building. An intelligent gamble, but a gamble Randel lost.

Randel’s involvement with the Delaware & Raritan Canal arose from his New York City work. As he was setting monuments and bolts on the island, John Rutherford, one of the commissioners of the 1811 street plan and a former New Jersey senator, hired him to survey a route for the proposed canal. Rutherford and others had long advocated such a canal, an idea that William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, had floated as early as the 1690s. In 1816 the New Jersey legislature gave Rutherford and two other canal commissioners authority to survey and map a potential route. They in turn hired Randel. He was to “pursue a level line as far as was practicable from Longbridge farm to the Delaware, and to the Raritan, in the shortest direction that the ground would admit, which line should be run with the greatest accuracy, and be esteemed the base line of the work.” Between October and December, Randel surveyed, set monuments, and recorded elevations. He was also required to do something no record attests to his having done before: he had to estimate water flow. No description of his method survives, but he was assisted by a millwright, for whom correctly estimating water flow was livelihood. It provided good training for Randel’s future work. Ensuring that canals had an adequate supply of water and could sustain the depths required for barges was crucial. Randel and the millwright concluded that the canal and locks would need less than one-eighteenth of the water running through the myriad streams along the route, leaving more than enough for the area’s many mills.⁶

Soon after Randel finished mucking through marshes and estimating bank slope and water flow in New Jersey, he received an enticing offer from New York State. The commissioners for the proposed Erie Canal, many of them Randel’s acquaintances, offered him a position as an engineer—an engineer on an extremely ambitious, technically unprecedented, and politically complex venture.

Visionaries and businessmen had long contemplated a canal running 360 or so miles from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. A trade and travel route wove along the same path well before Europeans arrived on the continent. Arguments in favor of such an extensive canal were varied, but among the most compelling was proponents’ observation that traffic and goods from the west would increasingly run through the Great Lakes and then across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean if New York didn’t intercede. “It is evident that the canal will, if properly effected, turn to the United States the commerce of the upper lakes,” wrote the first group of Erie Canal commissioners in 1810. Despite its length, such a canal seemed feasible. The Mohawk River Valley stretches east-west, a low-slung band wending between the Catskill Mountains to the south and the Adirondack Mountains to the north. The valley was roughly level; the greatest elevation, about 570 feet, occurred near Lake Erie, and the rest of the route was, so to speak, downhill. Gouverneur Morris, Simeon DeWitt, DeWitt Clinton, James Geddes, businessman Elkanah Watson, and politician Stephen Van Rensselaer were among those who first advocated for the canal. And in early 1811, it was Morris who—just as he signed and placed his wax seal on Randel’s map of New York City—was tapped to present a convincing case for funding to Congress. Federal financing was not forthcoming, however, and so the state shouldered the cost, amid many objections. “Ironically, the grand improvement that would fix forever New York’s national commercial hegemony prevailed against the opposition of every single delegate from New York City,” writes John L. Larson in Internal Improvement.⁷

A great deal has been written about how the Erie secured that commercial hegemony and about the environmental and economic changes the canal entrained. Land along the route followed a transformation the Scottish visitor Hall vividly portrayed: “We reached the village of Syracuse, through the very center of which the Erie Canal passes. During the drive we had opportunities of seeing the land in various stages of its progress, from the dense, black, tangled, native forest—up to the highest stages of cultivation, with wheat and barley waving over it: or from the melancholy and very hopeless-looking state of things, when the trees are laid prostrate upon the earth, one upon top of another, and a miserable log-hut is the only symptom of man’s residence,—to such gay and thriving places as Syracuse; with fine broad streets, large and commodious houses, gay shops, and stagecoaches, waggons, and gigs flying past all in a bustle.” The waters of the artificial river came to fertilize a cultivated landscape along 364 miles as they flowed and stepped up and down eighty-three locks.⁸

On that waterway, goods moved quickly. Markets opened up, and tolls along the canal added up. One historian has calculated that in 1800 four horses could pull one ton 12 miles on a typical road over the course of one day—a road often deeply grooved with ruts, pockmarked with deep holes; a road of dirt, gravel, rough-cut stone, or bumpy with tree trunks placed one after the other. (“Throughout the nineteenth century, European travelers rated American natural roads as the worst in the world and American turnpikes little better,” describes one scholar.) On the canal, in contrast, a team of horses could pull thirty tons 24 miles in one day. By one account, costs for a ton of freight moving from Buffalo to New York City fell from $100 to $10 and travel time fell from twenty-six to six days. Within nine years of the canal’s completion in 1825, tolls recouped the $12 million or so spent on planning and construction. Albany and other upstate towns boomed, and New York City moved into position as the major U.S. port. Goods flowed readily between the east and the frontier as it pushed west.⁹

Much has also been written about how the many engineers of the Erie Canal became the leading engineers of their day, although none had trained as such. Benjamin Wright—Randel’s future antagonist—had a typical story. He was a judge who had done some surveying, at times quite shoddily, and who then taught himself engineering on the job. He and his colleagues studied European texts, and one of the Erie engineers, Canvass White, made an observational visit to England, walking some 2,000 miles to examine the British system. Because of their rite of passage on the longest, most successful canal of that time, these men were subsequently sought out by other canal commissions—in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois—for their expertise and for the techniques they devised and tested. They invented devices to pull down massive trees and to wrench stumps and roots from the ground; they concocted a local cement. They became coveted experts during the canal boom.

1817 map of the proposed Erie Canal. Courtesy of the Erie Canal Museum, Syracuse, New York.

In 1817, when state funding for the Erie Canal came through and digging began, the long-term professional benefits of Erie employment were perhaps not yet so clear, whereas the future of the Delaware & Raritan Canal seemed assured. Randel turned down the New York State commissioners’ offer to be engineer for the eastern third of the Erie, which was to run from Utica to the Hudson River. Their choice of him for this section of the canal revealed that they “had equal confidence in my capacity with that of Mr. Wright and Geddes,” he wrote in a draft letter to Simeon DeWitt. Wright had been appointed engineer in chief of the central third and later oversaw the eastern third. James Geddes, who had surveyed some of the upstate land Randel had purchased, was in charge of the westernmost portion of the canal, which ran from the Lake Erie terminus at Buffalo to the Seneca River. DeWitt must have concurred with Randel’s assertion of confidence, for he described the eastern section as “the most difficult part of the canal.” There, for 30 miles between Schenectady and the Hudson River, the Mohawk River Valley became particularly steep and circuitous, and elevation fell sharply. DeWitt later wrote that Randel turned down the appointment for “reasons of a private nature.” Perhaps he declined the Erie because he was in charge on the Delaware & Raritan; as chief surveyor he may have anticipated that appointment flowing into an appointment as chief engineer. Whatever the reason, Randel made the wrong choice.¹⁰

Despite Gallatin’s report, opposition to canals cut deep in many places, and the “erroneous dread of bold measures” was quite alive in New Jersey; two attempts previous to Rutherford’s and his cohorts’ had failed. Conflict arose about the water supply, about how the canal should be funded, about who and which state would most benefit. Such opposition and conflict was typical. As Larson explains, “Very quickly—and with no little irony—people found the seeds of paralyzing conflict within the broadly popular and virtuous objectives of internal improvement. They took to supporting or opposing public works according to their private or local interests, and sometimes according to whether they believed that the revolution had empowered the nation, the states, or private individuals to impinge on the conditions of life for the larger community.” Because of the ongoing debate, the Delaware & Raritan Canal lay dormant until 1830. The 44-mile canal was finally completed in 1834, nearly twenty years after Randel surveyed the route.¹¹

By 1820, Randel knew he had misjudged. He was not among the men emerging as famous, sought-after engineers on the Erie. He fretted and obsessed about the consequences of his decision. But neither Randel’s personality nor his personal economy could tolerate obscurity, any more than they could tolerate obloquy. So with some well-placed aid, Randel inelegantly inserted himself in the foreground. He compounded one unfortunate professional decision by making several worse ones.

No longer needed in New York City or New Jersey in early 1821, Randel traveled to Albany with Matilda on a Hudson River steamboat ($12, he noted), sending his horse and wagon separately on a sloop ($5). With his father’s help, he colored and varnished his newly engraved New York City maps and settled into tending the garden of his Albany home at 168 North Market Street, hiring workers to plant and to construct a stone wall. (Now Broadway, North Market Street was one of the central and original streets of Albany and ran parallel to the river.) Randel loved his garden, and even from afar he cared for it, writing letters to caretakers to ensure that plants were well protected. One winter, for instance, he issued detailed instructions for the care of his fig, madeira, and walnut trees.¹²

On May 16, Hermanus Bleecker, a powerful Albany lawyer, visited Randel and asked him to survey “without instruments” (that is, cheaply and informally) a route for the easternmost part of the canal, for which “they the citizens” would pay $25 or $30 a day. The following day was rainy, but Randel traveled in a stagecoach to Schenectady, about 15 miles northwest of Albany, along the turnpike he had surveyed when he was eighteen. Construction of the eastern third of the canal was proceeding apace eastward from Rome and would soon reach Schenectady. At that point the commissioners would need to make a final decision about exactly how the canal would run between Schenectady and the Hudson River—a decision with important economic consequences and thus a controversial one. The general view held that from Schenectady the canal would run along the south side of the Mohawk River Valley to a town with spectacular waterfalls, Cohoes Falls—close to where the Mohawk empties into the Hudson—and then down to Albany. A small feeder could link the Erie Canal at Cohoes Falls to the Hudson River just opposite the city of Troy, on the east side of the river. But another idea had been raised as well: that the canal would at some point cut out of the Mohawk River Valley and travel more directly to Albany, which was then 6 miles south of Troy. If the canal diverted to Albany, Troy would not be the effective terminus and would be deprived of revenue from the canal traffic. Citizens in both towns agitated about the route. Randel went over the land alone for several days and then met with Bleecker and three other men, including “Dudley,” probably Charles E. Dudley, the mayor of Albany. He showed them “the canal ground.” The following day was a Sunday, and Randel did something rare: “Remain home, have a relax.”¹³

Then, for a total of six days, he conducted a more detailed rapid-assessment survey. Accompanied by three assistants, Randel moved from peg to peg along a proposed route, starting at canal peg No. 4774, which “I call No. 1 odd.” He noted meadows, houses, winding paths, and the depths of creeks, sketching some of them in cross section. He notched an apple tree; he notched a cherry. The minimalist notations in his field books do not convey the rough character of the land he was hiking, although it is sure he felt the physical challenges of the elevations and steep embankments of the Mohawk River Valley. He must have carefully observed the powerful falls at Cohoes too, considering how best to run a canal through this terrain, the roughest—and perhaps the most beautiful—of the entire route.¹⁴

After his survey, Randel returned to Albany, worked on his calculations and, again, his garden. On June 8 he went back to Schenectady, this time to meet with the canal commissioners and engineers to talk about the Schenectady-Albany route. The following day, a Saturday, he called on the mayor of Albany to submit his account (for a total of $112.50: “only $100 being appropriated by them the Corporation of the City of Albany . . . the remainder to be paid by individuals”).¹⁵

A few weeks later, after finishing this special assignment for Bleecker and the “respectable body of citizens,” Randel went public with his survey findings. On June 27, Stephen Van Rensselaer, one of the canal commissioners and a powerful, rich Albany businessman, introduced in the Albany Daily Advertiser a report in which Randel presented conclusions based on his rapid survey. In his report, entitled Description of the Route of the Erie Canal from the Mohawk to Hudson’s River Explored by John Randel, Jun. with Calculations of Its Comparative Advantages, Randel said he had studied the land east of Schenectady to determine the best route. He proposed an alternative to following the Mohawk River Valley all the way to the Hudson River: he suggested a 3.5- to 4-mile shortcut in the form of a tunnel (“through ground apparently consisting of yellow clay,” which would provide the requisite brick). It would run just south of the Mohawk Valley to Glen’s Creek, about 3 miles west of the Hudson River. He pointed to the Blisworth Tunnel on the Grand Union Canal in Northhamptonshire in England as a model. A tunnel along his proposed route, he argued, would trim 7.5 miles and cut transportation costs by 30 percent, saving merchants $114,750 a year on freight. A positive assessment from Philip Hooker, a famous Albany architect and a member of the Society for the Promotion of Useful Arts, about the feasibility and cost of such a tunnel followed Randel’s report.

Randel’s efforts in Manhattan had pushed beyond official requirements because of his exactitude and attentiveness to accuracy. And his creation of instruments had revealed his deep interest in mechanics and invention. His tunnel proposition reflected both facets of his personality. As Simeon DeWitt noted in a short introduction to Randel’s newspaper report, “Tunnelling is a novelty in our country, but the commissioners well know that, in Europe, it has been adopted in many instances without hesitation, and practiced in form to more than double the distance here required.” Randel was not the first to suggest a tunnel for the canal. Such a proposition had been raised in an 1810 canal commissioners’ report: “It may become, therefore, in many cases, more advisable to pierce the earth by a tunnel, than to take down the top of a hill.” It had been discussed as a possibility on the south side of the Mohawk River Valley too. But by describing it in detail in the newspaper and including an architect’s positive review, Randel introduced the concept to many New Yorkers in an authoritative way.¹⁶

Randel’s Albany Daily Advertiser report accomplished several ends. The public now associated his name with the Erie Canal, and with the positive opinion of one canal commissioner, Van Rensselaer, and one well-respected leader, DeWitt, both of whom desired the canal to favor Albany over Troy. And he had proposed a solution worthy of respect—an ambitious innovation, one requiring engineering skill and experimentation, one revealing sophisticated knowledge about advanced English engineering and infrastructure.

I SHOULD BE PLEASED TO SEE YOU, OR RECEIVE A LINE FROM YOU

Whether Randel’s newspaper report successfully established further credibility is unknown. He certainly aggravated a number of commissioners and engineers and ignited even livelier discussion about the particulars of the eastern route. The commissioners and engineers met in Albany to discuss alternatives on July 13. A few days later, at 4:00 in the afternoon of July 16, Randel went to James Geddes’s lodgings to hear “his objections etc. to my plan.” Other Erie men were also in the room: William C. Young, William C. Bouck, Myron Holley, and Canvass White. (Young was a surveyor, Bouck a commissioner, Holley oversaw construction and was treasurer, and White was the engineer who had conducted canal reconnaissance in England.) After the meeting, which lasted more than an hour and a half, Randel rushed home to write about it: “I have this moment returned and about 15 minutes ago the above was said and I now commit it to writing that I may be correct.” Randel recorded asking Geddes when a decision about the eastern route would be made, making clear his own predilection: “Albany would not be willing to give up till they must.” Randel then quoted Geddes’s response: “They who will publish letters to the public must bear the consequences, for his part he did not intend to descend to particulars, but for his part he thought it would have been a disgrace to him or any of the engineers to have made such a statement. I turned to Mr. White and asked him if that was his opinion also he replied yes.” In other words, both men rebuked Randel for publishing his survey findings and his proposed plan and for thrusting an alternate route into public view. They were of the opinion that Randel should have been more diplomatic.¹⁷

The canal route east from Schenectady remained unsettled.

For the rest of the summer, Randel surveyed for DeWitt in the Onondaga Salt Springs, the town of Salina, and elsewhere. His presence in upstate New York encouraged and facilitated his interest in the Erie, to no good end. In mid-August he briefly met Benjamin Wright and showed him his idea for the route. Wright was, per the commissioners’ orders, reviewing all options. He apparently said to Randel then that “he had never examined this route,” meaning Randel’s. A few days after their tête-à-tête, Randel copied notebooks in the possession of Daniel Judson, one of Wright’s assistants, and “shewed him the whole route.” By copying Wright’s records, Randel got a clear sense of Wright’s ideas and some of Wright’s calculations. By this point a third alternative had been suggested: after Schenectady the canal would not travel along the south side of the Mohawk River through the valley but would cross the river and use the northern side of the valley, which appeared to have more stable ground.¹⁸

Late September brought Randel’s next political misstep—the seed of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal lawsuit. On September 19, under the heading of “Calculations of Direct Route of Erie Canal from Schenectady to Albany,” he entered into one of his field books figures for the amount of soil needing removal and the cost and time it would take, based on the calculations Wright had made for the commissioners for a cubic foot of sand: “. . . then 27 cubic feet, or 1 cubic yard, weighs . . . 1.182 tons. 1 horse will draw in a scow 50 tons 2 miles an hour & return empty 2½ miles an hour average per load 2¼ miles per hour. To manage this load will require 1 horse at a daily cost of .75 cents, 1 Rider at a daily cost of .75 cents, 1 at the helm at a daily cost of .75 cents. daily cost per load = $2.25. This horse will haul 10 hours per day.” And on it went. A stream of mathematical consciousness. The calculations prompted Randel to communicate with Wright.¹⁹

Randel’s draft letter of September 28 sounded collegial. He remarked that he had found the cost of removing the earth “will be much less than you or I estimated.” He continued, using “we” frequently. He concluded that the route he had proposed would be cheaper and could be completed faster than any other. And, he added, “I am particularly desirous of seeing you before I publish my calculations”—perhaps for professional courtesy, perhaps respect for Wright, or perhaps a better appreciation of the political fallout of publishing without advance warning. Randel apparently did not hear from Wright expediently, and composed another letter to him a few days later, suggesting they meet in Rome, wherever convenient for Wright. “Will you therefore have the goodness to leave or send a line to me at Utica, to be left at Bagg’s Tavern,” Randel requested. “I should be pleased to see you, or receive a line from you.”²⁰

Randel continued surveying for DeWitt through the cold winter. He worked with a crew of chain men, ax men, and a flag man. The men wallowed through boggy sand and spongy swamp. At one point Randel sprained his leg and his frequent partner in the field, Charles Brodhead, who had been working on the canal but was now surveying again in the new towns, became severely ill. In late November snow and moisture interfered with the needle of the compass and the crew had to stop for a half a day. Randel spent his thirty-fourth birthday in the field, away from Matilda. He spent Christmas in the field as well.

Randel included recipes in his notebooks, and several notable ones were recorded in this region or during this season. Even in miserable field conditions, he sometimes ate and drank well—or, just as likely, his thoughts turned to eating and drinking well.

 

SMALL BEER

(recorded in Liverpool, New York)

 

2 gallons molasses

2 ounces ginger

4 ounces hops

6 gallons water boiled, strained & when blood warm, put in 1 quart yeast to make one barrel of beer. Let it work 1½ days & then bottle it.

 

LOAF CAKE

(recorded in Preeble, New York)

 

1 quart milk

5 pounds flour

3 pounds sugar

2 pounds butter

8 eggs

½ pint yeast

2 pounds raisins

1 ounce cloves

1 ounce cinnamon

1 nut meg

1 table spoon salt

1 quart milk, ⅓ of the butter and sugar to be mixed and left to rise: after which, add all the other ingrediants together with a gallon of brandy, or wine.

 

IRISH BUTTER

(Joel Hancock of Virgil, New York)

 

8 ounces salt

3 ounces loaf sugar

2 ounces salt petre

8 pounds of butter

(For 8 pound Jerkin Butter put it in a close tub for winter.)²¹

 

Also during this season, perhaps when holed up in a tavern or a tent during inclement weather, Randel took his rough draft of calculations of earth excavation, horse exertion, distances, descents, ascents, as well as many other additions and divisions, and crafted them into a publishable form that would earn Wright’s enduring enmity.

By the end of the year, it appeared that Wright and the commissioners had quietly and privately settled on a plan. According to newspaper reports, the route was to go to Cohoes—and thus first to Troy—and thence to Albany. The canal would cross the Mohawk River two times and follow a northern path through the Mohawk Valley. The choice was certainly not what Randel had suggested, either in the Albany Daily Advertiser or in his communications with the commissioners and engineers.

On January 11, 1822, in apparent response to this news, a “Friend of the Canal” published a commentary in the Albany Argus about the eastern part of the route. The particulars of the western portion had all been published, the author said, so as “to attract the aid of scientific men, to unlock the repositories of useful, local, knowledge . . . The eastern section, on the contrary, has been managed as a close concern, withdrawn with retiring diffidence from the public eye.” And so the Friend obligingly laid bare the issues for the eastern end, which was the scene of “two adverse conflicting powers, equally abhorrent of a straight line.” The Mohawk River is “a broad unbridled and impetuous stream,” and traversing it twice would be impetuous, ill-conceived. The chosen route made little sense, the Friend argued, even though Mr. Wright pronounced it “the most eligible, if practicable.” More of the same appeared on February 5.

On February 15 the Friend took a new tack. The proposed route would not survive natural forces: snowmelt would bring the level of the Mohawk River dangerously high, dangerously quickly. There would be flooding, the volume of water would be too great for the canal. Debris and ice would destroy workmanship: “The embankments exposed to the pressure and motion of the water, will have become porous, leaky, demolished or dissolved.” Repairs would finish just as the seasons of flood and ice were again to commence.²²

On March 5, the Argus curbed the “Friend” series. The situation had changed, an editorial stated, because the commissioners had finally released their final plan and report. Notwithstanding the great respectability of the author of the Friend letters, the Argus maintained that on examination of the previously withheld details, the commissioners’ current plan did make sense. The paper published an excerpt from the report. The Friend’s insights had become superfluous.

Randel did not agree. A month later, as set out with little fanfare in his notebook, he published a forcefully written and argued seventy-two-page pamphlet, Description of a Direct Route for the Erie Canal, at Its Eastern Termination: with Estimates of Its Expense and Comparative Advantages. The author “regrets, sincerely, to be compelled to advance any thing, which, even by possible construction, may implicate the correctness of conduct of any public officer, and more especially officers vested with such high and important trusts as the Canal Commissioners or their agents; yet the immense importance of the subject requires that facts be stated without reserve, and thoroughly investigated.”²³

Randel arrayed in resplendent detail his evidence that the new route promoted by Wright and the commissioners was 14 miles longer and significantly more expensive than yet another, tunnel-less alternative route he had devised. (The tunnel having been discarded, he wrote, because Mr. Wright’s concerns about the permanency of such a wall in the bed of the Mohawk River on the new route “are no doubt well founded,” and thus “there can be no propriety in now urging the adoption of a tunnel for the eastern termination of an impracticable route for a canal.” To wit, Mr. Wright was correct about the tunnel not working, but only because he had chosen an incorrect route.) His introduction stated that he had requested information from Wright, “in this expectation however, he has, unfortunately been disappointed; Mr. Wright having recently informed him that he has no leisure to bestow upon this subject.” According to Randel, his proposed direct route would cost $714,855 versus $1,620,826 for the commissioners’ new route. Randel’s attention to figures was central to his view of himself as an engineer. As historian Daniel H. Calhoun notes, the ability to make an estimate that was realistic and that could direct whether the project should be done or not was what differentiated the “ordinary competent surveyor” and the engineer. The latter was thought to have that expertise—construction and cost were the engineer’s responsibility.”²⁴

The document contained a chronology of events and communications as well as intricate details about elevation, water flow and supply, distance, terrain, labor, costs, and time. It also set forth intriguing ideas for methods. For example, Randel described how boats might remove excavated earth using “pyramidical troughs” running down the banks to an elevated crossbeam, like a miniature pier, under which boats could wait to collect the descending dirt. “These troughs will diverge as they extend upwards; and along their sides, the men employed in digging would be disposed, shoveling into them. Thus saving the expense of wheeling, and subjecting a whole face, or inclined cross section of the deep cut, to be worked at the same time.” The idea was essentially arterial. A series of troughs could fan out across the canal bank and be placed next to the men who were digging. The contents of these many troughs would run down the bank and empty into a main trough. The main trough in turn would run into a boat, and the dirt could be floated away and dumped elsewhere. Men would have to shovel their dirt only a short distance, and it would simply slide away for removal, instead of needing to be carried away in a wheelbarrow, as was usually done.²⁵

Randel may have escalated his Erie critique for a variety of reasons. Some Erie scholars have argued that he was in the pocket of Albany while Wright was in the pocket of Troy, that Randel was merely a front man and behind this pamphlet stood Albany powers, men such as Simeon DeWitt and Stephen Van Rensselaer. Randel’s own notes support that conclusion. First, he had commented to James Geddes on July 16, 1821, that Albany would not give up easily. Second, the Albany mayor was among the men who hired him to do his survey. Third, he recorded that DeWitt gave him $30 to pay the printer for the pamphlet; although issued in his name, the pamphlet was not paid for by Randel. One writer has also argued that Randel was angry because his reports had been ignored and because despite all the excellent information he had put forth, a less “eligible” route had been chosen. It was probable too that Randel was furthering his own agenda and long-term business interests, establishing his prowess and exactitude as an engineer, his standing as an innovator and a man of science.²⁶

Description of a Direct Route by John Randel Jr., reprinted in 1836. Collection of the author.

Whatever the blend of reasons, Randel deferred to accuracy and correct calculations—lofty authorities. It is unlikely Randel would have made himself professionally vulnerable, for his mentor or for politics, without conviction and belief in his argument. Math contained a truth Randel thought was self-evident, above the fray—if he could just get Benjamin Wright and others to see the math, conflict would evaporate, truth would shine. They would build earth-removing troughs; they would follow the most fit and proper, the most eligible route.

But they did not. The Erie went to Cohoes and a feeder canal emptied into the Hudson opposite Troy, which sits on the east side of the river. From there the Erie traveled south to Albany.

AFTER RANDEL PUBLISHED his pamphlet, his life resumed its normal rhythms. He sent grass seed—eastern clover, western red clover, and timothy—to Oneida. Matilda’s uncle and aunt came for a short visit to Albany; relatives and friends stopped and stayed as they passed through on their way to Oneida or down to New Jersey. Randel had one of his assistants plant a garden of yellow potatoes, blue potatoes, and large potatoes, despite “ground very dry and dusty.” In late May 1822 he set out for Oneida, and then traveled on to Syracuse to survey for DeWitt.²⁷

Unfortunately for Randel, the day he reached Syracuse, three canal commissioners arrived by boat, had tea, and continued on to Salina to review work with Benjamin Wright and Canvass White. Over an early breakfast the following day, Randel bumped into Wright. His account of that meeting is one of the most cryptic and confusing of his field book entries. He noted that he asked if Wright had received a letter from him. Randel then launched into a many-page description of past events involving governor DeWitt Clinton and Randel’s work on the route and a sealed letter with specifications from Randel in it. He said he gave the letter to Wright, who read it and then told Randel he should make clear his authority on certain subjects. “For example you mentioned how boats are loaded at Spanish River. Now I don’t know anything about it, nor where to find any account of it,” Randel quoted Wright as saying. “I told him my father was taken prisoner by the British in the Revolutionary War and arrived to that River where he observed this process and that I did not know that there was any account of it published.” Spanish River, now Sydney, was a town on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and the site of a major Revolutionary War battle in 1781. While a prisoner, Randel Sr. had apparently observed something similar to the earth-removing troughs his son later proposed in his Erie pamphlet.²⁸

Randel concluded the entry with what was, if accurate, Wright’s indictment of himself. “He said I had no right to expect him to answer such specifications as he could not do it without incriminating himself which he would not do for any resolution of the Commissioners. It could not be expected of him that he should acknowledge he had done wrong.” Randel’s entry is silent on how breakfast finished.²⁹

Randel knew by the end of the year that he had badly erred. Engaged as he remained with Wright and with trying to set the record straight—perhaps only as a form of self-justification—he could see that the Erie stance had hurt him. “The stand I have been compelled to take in opposition to the Engineers of the Erie Canal makes it thoroughly presumptive with those who are unacquainted with the subject in dispute that I am deficient in skill as an engineer. It is therefore of the first importance to me that I be placed in a situation where I may have the opportunity to act,” he wrote to DeWitt on Christmas. “To recover my former standing will now require an effort which unaided by you I fear will fail for as I have been compelled to oppose the egregious errors and waste committed by the Engineers on our canal they in return are compelled in self defense to contend that I am ignorant of the subject upon which I have written.”³⁰

In the immediate short term, this meant that Randel hoped DeWitt and other patrons, including Governor Clinton, New York State chief justice John T. Lansing (whose land Randel had surveyed in his youth), and Stephen Van Rensselaer, would provide references for an application. Randel had seen an advertisement for a civil engineer for public works in Virginia, and in December 1822 he wrote to inquire what kinds of public works the job entailed and at what salary. The deadline was January 31, and although DeWitt and Clinton did send letters of recommendation, Randel didn’t apply. He missed the deadline. As it turned out, he had already been asked to consult on yet another canal. His involvement with the Delaware & Raritan Canal and the Erie Canal, despite his frustrations and anxiety about both, had finally paid off and brought him to the attention of others bound up in the country’s canal fervor.³¹

WE REGRET EXTREMELY YOUR DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS

While New Jersey and New York politicians and businessmen had been advocating for the Delaware & Raritan and the Erie, respectively, a tristate alliance of politicians and businessmen was similarly engaged not far to the south. The idea for a short canal cutting east-west across the neck of the peninsula between Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay predated Penn’s for the Delaware & Raritan. Augustine Herman, a surveyor for Lord Baltimore and one of Maryland’s first settlers, had proposed it as far back as 1661. Ralph Gray recounts the story of this short, significant canal in wonderful detail in The National Waterway, one of the few books to explore Randel’s history and character at some length. In brief: Philadelphia businessman Thomas Gilpin initiated surveys in the late eighteenth century and in 1803 assembled a board for the canal company. Two potential routes were identified: an upper route, running from Elk River, near the town of Elkton in Maryland, to Delaware Bay, either at the town of New Castle or via Christina River; or a more southern route that would run from Back Creek, Maryland, to St. Georges Creek, which emptied into Delaware Bay. In 1803 the upper route was chosen, and work began the following year under the direction of Benjamin H. Latrobe, whose testimony would accompany Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin’s report. The next year it ceased for reasons of politics, topography, labor, and capital.³²

Several years later, after the War of 1812, Mathew Carey’s exhortations revived the project. Promoters such as Carey understood that such a canal, although less than 20 miles long, would shorten travel between Philadelphia and Baltimore by several hundred miles—300, in fact. It would also provide a crucial link in an inland waterway that could protect vessels from dangerous sea travel, an idea central to Gallatin’s report. In March 1822 an engineer named William Strickland was engaged to do yet another survey and review the earlier choice of the upper route. A few months later Strickland said he supported the original plan, with a slight modification. The company’s board of directors, however, was not convinced.

That same year the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company directors wrote to New York governor DeWitt Clinton, asking him to recommend engineers “of competent talents & experience.” Before the end of the year, the board hired Wright. In December 1822 it also hired Randel to review all previous surveys and reports and to locate the “most eligible line,” for which he was to receive $200. That Randel and Wright were working together seems not to have daunted Randel. As of March 1823, his records suggest no ongoing tension with the judge. Indeed, quite the contrary. He noted to the president of the company that Wright wanted his help as they examined the various proposed routes. Randel also wrote to Turner Cormac, another company employee, that Wright had approved his cost estimates and his dirt-directing troughs, noting, “I have taken much pains to explain to him the position of the troughs and boats . . . I find that he had never before, as he now acknowledges to me, fully understood how they were to be worked. Now he understands them, and sees everything plain and easy he cannot imagine any reason why they should not exactly answer this purpose.³³

“It may be a matter of surprise to you, how all this has come to pass,” Randel went on to Cormac. “We met accidentally in one of the public offices, he expressed a desire to see my maps etc of this route and I invited him to my house. Here I laid before him my report and all my maps, plans, estimates etc answered all his inquiries and endeavored to give him . . . a complete knowledge of the country. Although Mr. Wright has been my opponent, but not so I believe any more, I have never ceased to consider him a man of sound judgment.” Randel was naïve. Wright had nothing in the vicinity of a similar opinion regarding him.³⁴

Randel’s recommendation about the Chesapeake & Delaware’s best route challenged Strickland’s and Latrobe’s selection of the upper route. Unsurprisingly, Randel championed the more technically challenging southern route, which would require what came to be called “the deep cut,” a profound slice through the earth that would render the canal sea level, permitting an influx of ocean water. The proposal solved the problem of ample water to fill the canal, something the company and all the surveyors had worried about. Although filling the canal high enough to carry boats would no longer be a challenge on Randel’s route, there were other obstacles. The route demanded greater excavation, particularly across one 80-foot ridge. Randel “is full of the throughcut,” reported the company secretary, Henry D. Gilpin, to his father, Joshua Gilpin (son of founding board member Thomas Gilpin). The deep cut Randel advocated was, according to a later assessment, considered “one of the greatest works of ingenuity and skill in the world.” It also proved more expensive, because the soil was so wet and continually sloughed off what were supposed to be firm embankments.³⁵

At the time Randel championed the deep cut, the idea was generally unpopular. “There is a powerful party opposed to Randel consisting of all Strickland’s friends,” Gilpin noted. Nevertheless, the company kept its options open and requested that the War Department review and assess Strickland’s and Randel’s proposals. At the same time it hired Randel’s younger brother William to test the quality of the soil. William arrived on May 14, 1823, and set out to “bore along the line his brother has laid out.” Wright arrived after a time; Gilpin found him “a very nice man.” Although Wright’s mind was not made up, he naturally favored the path Randel had rejected; “far from having any bias against the upper route, he is evidently inclined to it, if he can get water which he looks upon as the great impediment,” Gilpin wrote. June and July were filled with borings and soil testing. The summer also brought a visit from the U.S. Army’s Board of Engineers. (Engineers had been part of the military since the Revolutionary War, and Thomas Jefferson established a permanent board in 1802, now called the Army Corp of Engineers.)³⁶

Traveling from Albany to Delaware and Maryland, a journey of several days, was painful for Randel during these months. Matilda had become quite ill. In March, Randel wrote to his friend John Telfair that “Mrs. Randel has dropsy in her bowels accompanied by a tumor external of her abdomen. She can walk about the house but has lost flesh so as to make her bones project. As to the tumor three doctors differ in opinion. One not knowing what it is, but certain it is no tumor. The other two being certain of it being a tumor. All of them are skillful men. She therefore in this state of doubt only takes medicine for the Dropsy. Father and mother are in bad health. My anxiety and fears on her account you may imagine better than I can describe.” Matilda moved into her parents’ house in Bloomfield, where Randel stayed by her side. She died on August 11.³⁷

From that moment on, Randel’s life had a different quality. His life with Matilda seems to have been a moored one, family-centered, happy. After her death, Randel was often embroiled in some controversy, some court case; the records that endure suggest periods of imbalance and poor judgment, even paranoia.

After Matilda’s death, Randel briefly stopped working. Henry Gilpin understood. “Be assured Sir that your domestic afflictions must render needless any apology for the little delay that has occurred in sending on those instruments for completing the boring,” he wrote. Randel did get back to work on August 28. Then October brought the death of his father. And Randel himself apparently became—or had already been—very ill. “We regret extremely your domestic afflictions, not only as they obstruct the prosecution of your labor on our behalf but as they have been attended with the production of so much suffering to yourself,” Gilpin wrote. A decision about the route had to be postponed until the army engineers could meet with Randel to review the questions they had about the lower route. They could not do that until later that winter because of his poor health.³⁸

A FEW MONTHS LATER, at the end of January 1824, Randel received some good news: the Army and the company had selected his route and were to hire him as an engineer. But disappointment arrived hand-in-hand. Randel was not to be in charge. The board had appointed Wright chief engineer of the entire project, and Randel was to report to him. His assignment was to construct the eastern half, the site of his deep cut and, as on the Erie, the most challenging portion of the canal. Not only did it contain the highest elevation (the aforementioned 80-foot ridge), but it was thick with marshland and boggy ground near the Delaware Bay terminus. On March 26, Randel signed his contract. It seems safe to assume that neither he nor Wright and the canal company directors ever imagined the legal scrutiny that contract would soon undergo. Randel was to have four years to finish his section of canal, which was to be 10 feet deep and 66 feet wide at the surface, narrowing to 36 feet wide at the bottom. He placed advertisements for workers in newspapers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Delaware. And, ever proud and self-promoting, Randel advertised the fact that his route had been selected over the others, the directors having “unanimously adopted the Deep Cut Route, as projected, laid out and recommended by the subscriber.”³⁹

Work began in April. Randel devised a tramway, one of the country’s first, to remove excavated earth. (Perhaps the pyramidical troughs were not expedient on that section, although it is hard to imagine that he would not have insisted on building and testing them.) Hundreds of men were employed, and Randel was instructed to work through the winter, forcing his men to labor in frigid water. As was typical, Randel received a salary, out of which he was to pay his crew and other expenses. After he established his subcontracts with laborers, though, Wright—with the approval of the board of directors—reduced his pay. Bound by his subcontracts but now earning less than he had been promised, Randel started losing money. In addition, worried about the schedule, he bought some costly machinery for underwater work. He remained ill, pushing himself physically despite his aliments, and pushing himself further and further into debt.

Wright well knew Randel’s situation but was not disposed to intervene. One of the canal company board members resigned, however, protesting the mistreatment of Randel and saying that he could not longer “conscientiously” continue on the board. Paul Beck Jr. noted that Randel’s outlay for men’s wages was five times greater than what he himself earned: “I resigned because from the acts of the board toward Randel, it was manifest to me that his ruin was inevitable; and I did not choose to be accessory to it . . . I specify the allowance on one occasion of $600 for work amount to $3000; I speak, however, of the tendency of their whole conduct. I believed that the board was governed by Wright, and that he had determined to ruin Randel.”⁴⁰

During this period Wright wrote a letter to John B. Jervis, a civil engineer known for his canal work and his later work on New York City’s Croton Aqueduct, who had apprenticed with Wright, airing his intense dislike of Randel.

I go on here as I expected, in hot water with my worthy friend Mr. R, who always moves by high purpose and will probably as all other high purpose steam engines eventually burst. All that I am afraid of is that I am too near him and some of his steam may splatter on me; as I find he is much disposed to throw his steam in all directions—altho his own wish would be to direct it toward me—as he considers me as standing in the way between him and “everlasting fame.” I hope he will sleep better when I am further off from him than he now does—for in a few words I think him the most complete hypocritical lying nincompoop (and I might say scoundrel if it was a Gentlemanly word) that I ever knew except it is his Brother and Old Father Putnam and they are both here and excellent aids they make for him.⁴¹

As chief engineer, Wright was in a position to indulge his animosity, to make life intensely difficult for Randel. Randel’s contract with the canal company gave Wright the power to assess his work, and if it was to be found lacking, according to Wright, and Wright alone, the company could annul the contract. Despite reduced wages, ongoing illness, and mounting debt, Randel worked continuously through the winter of 1824 and into the summer of 1825, when records show he had 514 men working for him and 154 teams of horses. It was miserable work. “I did not think that Randel’s workmen managed well; they were too much in mud and water,” commented an observer.⁴²

Randel’s unrelenting pace, despite great cost to himself, was not unusual. His Manhattan and upstate New York fieldwork had shown the same quality. Wherever he was, he pushed himself and his crew to work hard, quickly, and with exactitude. But as he cut through spongy mosquito-infested marshes in Delaware, he must have realized that Wright was sabotaging him and decided that excellent performance would be his defense. He must have also reasoned that a success on the deep cut would elevate his professional reputation, even if he was not engineer in chief.

Once again Randel was wrong. Wright routinely visited him in the field to assess his progress and to certify the number of cubic yards of the canal that had been dug. Despite the ample progress others saw—Randel had finished close to half of his section within a year, well ahead of schedule—Wright reported to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company directors on July 30 that Randel had neglected his duties. It later came out as testimony that Wright lied and instructed his assistant to lie. “I did hear Benjamin Wright give directions to Henry Wright to make short and false estimates and certificates of Randel’s work. He said he would ruin Randel’s credit and break him up,” noted an observer named Dr. Gemmel. At least one member of the canal company board was a party to the dissembling. Henry Wright received a letter from a director at the company, “approving of his conduct in relation to Randel, and requesting him to persevere in it. Wright showed me the letter,” said Dr. Gemmel, “and immediately burnt it.”⁴³

Benjamin Wright and his men had support on the board of directors, but even so, there was much talk about what to do concerning Randel. The directors met in August to discuss Wright’s “certificate,” or report, on Randel’s neglect of duty. Whispers about that meeting soon made their way to the work zone. “I heard various rumors at the canal that the contract was about to be taken from Randel; there was quite a riot, and the work suffered much hindrance in consequence of these rumors,” said engineer George W. Smith. Smith went to talk with the canal company directors, who assured him the rumors were unfounded. “I returned to the canal and endeavored to quiet the apprehensions of the workmen and others . . . I am confident that John Randel did not know of the certificate until it was officially communicated to him.”⁴⁴

On September 10, Randel was finally informed that Wright’s certificate showed neglect of duty. On September 12 he wrote to the canal company requesting the specific details of his failing—presumably to counter with his own tallies of cubic yards dug, miles finished. The board refused his request. On September 19 the directors relented and met with Randel, who asked “for time to prepare his defense.” He was given ten days. Randel was, again or still, very ill. His friend Smith tried to intervene on his behalf. “I stated that Randel was ill, had been cupped on his head and neck; that he was then attacked with coma,” said Smith, who was a well-traveled man of science, who greatly admired Randel, and who noted that one of Wright’s canal choices “has been the subject of much ridicule among scientific men; it is perfectly absurd.” Smith sought to read Randel’s defense to the company in his stead. “They still refused to let me appear for him. I remarked that they treated him with neither justice nor common decency.” Smith found the company’s refusal “unjust and cruel.”⁴⁵

The following evening the board met again. “I had hoped this day instead of writing to go down by the boat,” Gilpin wrote to his father on October 1. “But last night after great discussion the Board discharged Randel, and this of course puts us in a good deal of bustle—and prevents my leaving town at present.”⁴⁶

All the discussions about Randel during August and September had rankled Wright no end. “I had a full belief that all my troubles would be at an end on my arrival here, but I find it is not so. This J.R. is so full of his lies and schemes of trouble that I have a new fence before me and as much correspondence as a Minister of Foreign Affairs of any nation,” Wright wrote on September 11 to Jervis. Wright contemplated leaving the company around this time but was apparently begged to stay. “It is really too bad to be so placed—but what shall be done? These Gentlemen are so friendly and totally unable to get on with their difficulties with R without me to protect them that they will not listen a word to my quitting them & say that my reputation is connected with theirs and we must go together.” He noted in another letter, “the drama thickens apace. And I think the Board will be obliged to come out & say something—I had a piece prepared for the paper and was determined to publish it. But the Board said & begged I would not.” Wright must have hoped he would be finished with his nemesis once Randel was fired. But their feud just changed venues.⁴⁷

NOTHING BUT SICKNESS AND SORROW

For Randel, the dismissal was shocking. “GENTLEMEN, I have received this morning, with equal surprise and affliction, your resolution of the 30th Sept.,” he wrote on October 1. “I hope it is no satisfaction to you or to any one else to know, that having sacrificed my health by unwearied exertion and exposure in your service, you have now employed your combined power and influence to ruin my fortune and my reputation, and to leave me as a reward for all I have done and suffered, nothing but sickness and sorrow, and perhaps a broken heart.”⁴⁸

A lawyer later characterized Randel’s shock in less emotional but equally descriptive terms. “Randel must have been amazed to learn that he had abandoned the work in July when he knew that all August and September he had been delving in the mud, in the midst of autumnal fevers, paying five hundred men their daily wages, exhausting his funds and draining his friends; and submitting himself twice a month to the inspection of the ‘committee of works,’ who, armed with champaign and Cook’s pills, ventured in this unhealthy region to see how fast a man could complete a work that he had abandoned. Surely he must have been in a trance all this time, or the abandonment is false and its operation fraudulent.”⁴⁹

Mathew Carey, one of the men most instrumental to the canal company’s creation, found the treatment of Randel unconscionable. Carey plunged into the fray to defend Randel, alienating many of his colleagues, business associates, and social acquaintances. His first support of Randel emerged in a formal protest printed just a week after the dismissal, on October 8, 1825. Carey hoped Chesapeake & Delaware stockholders (“such of them as are friends of justice—as abhor the idea of crushing an unprotected individual by the exercise of uncontrolled power”) would act. In his protest, he outlined a chronology through which, in his view, Wright and the board’s “spirit of hostility” toward Randel was revealed. He noted that the fees to be paid Randel by the company had been reduced, that Randel had lost money and had been sustained by the “aid of his friends and his own private fortune.” (What private fortune that could have been in 1825, a few years after Randel had complained about his inability to pay for his house in Albany and after numerous other complaints of financial struggle, is not clear. It may well have been that there was a discrepancy between how Randel was perceived or presented himself and the reality of his finances.)⁵⁰

Carey went on to chronicle other abuses, including the endangerment of Randel and his workers’ health by making them toil unnecessarily on a frozen marsh. He laid out contradictions between Wright’s account and that of the board. About Wright he had nothing good to say: “Because Judge Wright, the accuser in this case, was an infinitely more suitable object of accusation himself, for neglect of duty; as, while he was in the receipt of a large salary from the board, he was absent the chief part of the spring, and almost the whole summer, surveying sites for canals in other states.” Carey noted that Wright thus avoided the “sickly season,” while Randel did not.⁵¹

Carey’s criticisms were well founded. Wright’s fear of working in unhealthful conditions was transparent in his correspondence to Jervis. And Wright had often been absent on the Erie as well. Indeed, he had opponents among the Erie commissioners, several of whom did not approve of him or his methods. It must have upset Randel deeply to see Wright—a less attentive, less inventive engineer—reaping acclaim for the Erie Canal, which opened to great fanfare in October 1825, just as Randel’s work on the Chesapeake & Delaware was being unjustly criticized. And it must have upset him to see the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company, which had chosen his route, so utterly turn their backs on him. Repeatedly and unsuccessfully, he sought to meet with the directors and to obtain a written list of his offenses and failings.⁵²

Carey, however, was able to provoke a response. On October 13, one stockholder wrote that he rejected Carey’s version of the truth: “In management, Mr. Randel is notoriously deficient, as can be proved by the acknowledgments, at many different times, of George Gillaspey, Esq., a member of the board—and he never had an hour’s experience in canalling until he commenced this work; though he published a book in New York, upon the subject, that did not add to his credit or importance.” The author went on to say that it was Wright who got Randel the contract: “In this the Judge was culpable; to recommend a man without experience, inflated with vanity, and extremely visionary.” He denounced Randel’s abilities and his nepotism in hiring his brother William. “Extremely visionary” was, in this context, an insult. Canal work was perceived as practical work undertaken by practical men for practical ends. This stockholder, and others of that time, deemed a visionary approach excessive, more individualistic and indulgent than the situation required. (A newspaper article about canals and rails captures the contemporary meaning: “This is no visionary, or impracticable scheme, got up like some bubbles of the day, to delude the unwary and inexperienced.”)⁵³

This response only deepened Carey’s resolve. His first protest occupied a single printed page and went into select details. His next publications, called an “appeal” and a “last appeal,” were longer and published in several editions. Then he issued the twenty-three-page Exhibit of the shocking oppression and injustice suffered for sixteen months by John Randel, Jun. Esq. Carey said that when he had written his protest he had possessed “an imperfect view of the affair, and was by no means aware of the extent of the injustice and oppression which Mr. Randel had struggled with.” Now that he had a “view of the whole ground,” he hoped to show that “the United States has scarcely ever witnessed a harder or more cruel case.” Carey called for a juried trial. He listed sixty-six facts that proved the innocence of Randel and exposed the company’s shoddy behavior.⁵⁴

Carey stated that he had no conflict of interest: “With Mr. Randel I have no concern whatever, to the amount of a cent. My acquaintance with him has been very slight; is of quite recent date; and will probably terminate with the settlement of this affair, as there is no congeniality in our habits or pursuits. Of course I have no private or personal motives to stimulate me to the course I pursue.”⁵⁵

Carey’s motivations were likely more complex. He had published an attack on the “horrible oppression” of Catholics (his faith) in his native Ireland, and as a consequence had needed to flee and hide for a time in Paris, where he met Benjamin Franklin. He retuned to Ireland, only to have to flee again because of a libel charge, which came on the heels of jail time because of his anti-English writings. He boarded a ship—so his story goes—dressed as a woman (“and must have cut a very gawkey figure”) and headed to Philadelphia, where he established his printing company. Edgar Allan Poe described Carey as having a “hatred of oppression” in his 1836 review of Carey’s autobiography. Carey spoke out on many issues throughout his life, including religious freedom, public charity, and unequal pay for women. “But can they withhold relief from her who comes in her desolation and weakness—woman, who, by the law of her being, is excluded from paths in which coarser men may make a livelihood; and, by the custom of society, is OBLIGED TO ACCEPT LESS THAN HALF OF WHAT THE MOST STUPID OF THE OTHER SEX CAN EARN, as a compensation for her unremitted toil,” he wrote in one of his essays. His rhetorical flourishes were not limited to his defense of Randel.⁵⁶

Mathew Carey by John Neagle. Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.

James N. Green of the Library Company of Philadelphia, an expert on Carey, thinks Carey’s involvement with Randel’s case had less to do with righteousness and more to do with canal advocacy, “which takes over his life between 1825 and 1830, until he gives up in disgust.” Beginning in 1821, Carey had first pushed for the revival of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and in 1825 had pushed for a canal over the mountains of Pennsylvania. “Because he was such a good writer and such a stubborn person, he convinced otherwise intelligent citizens of Philadelphia to support it. [Randel] ties into his crusade,” Green says. “He probably doesn’t care that much about Randel. He is appealing to the sense of justice to try to get Randel out of this [controversy] and get back to building the canal.” If true, Carey’s strategy backfired. The lawsuit delayed work on the canal. And Carey alienated other engineers as well as some important businessmen.

The passionate defense by Philadelphia’s “Fiery Irishman” even may have convinced Randel and his entourage that the case was strong enough to pursue. “Judge Geddes and Simeon DeWitt called at 7, with J. Randal. Had a long conversation with them on Randel’s affairs, which I explained to them. They are perfectly of accord with me,” Carey wrote in his diary. (The inclusion of Geddes at that meeting is notable, because of Geddes’s involvement with the Erie Canal and his disapproval, as expressed in Randel’s field books, of Randel’s outspoken critique of Wright a few years earlier. It suggests that the company’s treatment of Randel was indeed perceived by many as egregious.) Although many of Randel’s patrons and associates may have supported Carey’s strategy, Randel’s lawyers did not always heed his advice. “I am sorry I cannot do what you wish,” John Sergeant wrote to Carey. (Sergeant initially represented Randel.) “I have, as I hope you know, the greatest respect for your purposes and motives upon this and upon all occasions, believing them to be generous and liberal. But since the conversation in my office, you have been aware that the counsel of Mr. Randel did not agree with you as to the best mode of obtaining relief for him. In my relation to Mr. R., I must be governed by his wishes and views, aided by the other professional gentlemen who have the charge of his case, and all of whom I believe agree in opinion as to the course to be pursued.” There is no record of Carey’s response.⁵⁷

RANDEL’S COLLISION with the company was in some regards unexceptional. Many engineers of that era found themselves in similar situations. Historian Daniel H. Calhoun notes that Loammi Baldwin, a contemporary of Randel’s also dismissed by a canal company, felt frequent frustration because his employers had no real understanding of the work: “All this splendid display of wealth and science was made under watchful committee, and subcommittees of Boards of managers, without the aid of engineers. And can you wonder at the consequences.” Baldwin, whose independent suffer-no-fools personality resembled Randel’s, also noted that “the circumstances under which the engineer is placed, are too confined and perplexed, for him to perform his duty with facility and despatch . . . In short, the engineer has a great deal of labor and responsibility, but no independent power.” Charles Ellet, an engineer who worked on canals and who sought to establish suspension bridges in the United States, had similar experiences. Many years after Randel’s troubles with the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company and Benjamin Wright, Ellet was dismissed by the James River and Kanawha Company for, in essence, disagreeing with Wright. Ellet, like Randel, seemed to prefer working as an independent; he too was driven by visions of innovation. As Calhoun notes, such individual temperament increasingly lost out against the “company man” as the nineteenth century progressed.⁵⁸

Wright was a prototypical company man. He was likable, as Henry Gilpin noted. By contrast, Ralph Gray describes Randel as volatile and “quarrelsome by nature.” This had not always been true. When working in Simeon DeWitt’s upstate office, Randel had been agreeable; it is unlikely that DeWitt would have so favored him had he been otherwise. And although he irritated the Common Council of the City of New York by requesting more money, he does not seem to have fought extensively with the aldermen either. His “quarrelsome” nature may have originated with professional insecurity, which grew after he left Manhattan. It was a good strategy in some instances. Quarreling about the route of the Erie had brought Randel into the public eye, perhaps even secured him the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal contract. Quarreling about the miserable situation in Delaware was a sane, justifiable response. But after the events of 1825, Randel’s combativeness seems to have developed an embittered quality and to have become more deeply rooted. Thereafter, quarrelsomeness seems to have defined his personality everywhere he went.⁵⁹

IN THE EARLY DAYS of the conflict, a negotiator named Nathan Bunker went back and forth between Randel and the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company, seeking to reach some compromise. “I believe Jno. Randel, jr., and the company had no intercourse. I understood they could have none. I had myself an interview with J. Randel, at my own fire-side, very early in the controversy, (in the stage of it that I took part in,) in which I had hoped some good might result. When I conversed with the canal company the next day, I found they were extremely wide apart in their feelings,” Bunker later described. “I found there was an exceedingly hostile feeling between John Randel and the company. When I discussed with either party the matter in controversy, I found a very angry feeling between the parties, and no desire to conciliate.”⁶⁰

After consulting with lawyers and collecting materials, Randel filed a suit against the company, charging breach of contract. Philadelphia’s district court registered the suit on January 1, 1826, but ruled that the case instead should be brought in one of the states where canal tolls were collected—Maryland or Delaware. Randel and his legal team then brought the case to the Court of Common Pleas in New Castle, Delaware, on June 18, 1828. On a matter of jurisdiction due to a change in state law, the case was then transferred to the Delaware Superior Court in 1832 and was finally heard there in 1833, eight years after Randel’s dismissal. During those years Randel went into even greater debt, postponing payment of bills, lawyers, and assistants until the case was settled, banking on the belief that the suit would be resolved in his favor. He had as many as four clerks copying papers, going over records, contacting potential witnesses. “He retained a great many professional gentlemen, all that he could reach,” according to one account.⁶¹

Randel’s legal team was led by John M. Clayton, a significant political figure in Delaware as well as in Washington, D.C., and “fully master of every weapon of argument and eloquence,” according to contemporaries. Randel’s case against the company was not the only one Clayton was working on. In 1831 the Delaware Court of Common Pleas heard a case of trespass that, according to a press report, “has excited an unusual degree of interest.” Landowners along the canal had sued the company for flooding their land, “by which they have lost use of the marsh, and the health of the neighborhood, it is said, is materially affected.” The company had shown “unpardonable indifference.” Clayton and George Read Jr., another member of Randel’s legal team, prevailed. Their clients won $6,000 in damages.⁶²

That same year Clayton and his team also brought a case against Benjamin Wright, John Randel Jr. vs. Benjamin Wright. Randel’s lawyers contended that Wright had been given a position over Randel in which he was to act impartially, but that he instead “maliciously” sought to harass and embarrass his “rival engineer” and to turn the company against him. The lawsuit placed damages at $100,000. The Court of Common Pleas declared a nonsuit on the grounds that the case was really between Randel and the company. Randel and his legal team appealed, unsuccessfully. “At the June Term, 1832, that court affirmed the decision [of the lower court]. The case was not much argued, if at all, in the Court of Appeals.”⁶³

The case between Randel and the company, however, was much argued. “The troublesome nature of the controversy may be inferred from the facts, that the counsel for the canal company filed sixty-two pleas, to each of which there was a replication or answer. The whole of these were afterwards withdrawn: the record broken up: new counts added to the declaration: twenty-nine new pleas and demurrers filed, to each of which there was a replication or a joinder in demurrer, as the case might require, all of which were drawn out at full length,” the U.S. Supreme Court later noted. (Demurrers argue for dismissal; the documents may admit that the facts of the case are true but nevertheless maintain that there is no ground for a lawsuit.) The endless back-and-forth filings drew out the case. When it reached Delaware Superior Court in the spring of 1833, the judge, Samuel M. Harrington, declared that there had been enough. He ruled on the demurrers, finding for Randel: “And let these judgments stand, as both sides have heretofore been allowed to amend repeatedly; and they have come down to the argument and to judgment on these demurrers with their eyes open. There will never be an end to this cause if the parties are to demur when they please, and amend as often as the demurrers shall be ruled against them.” Harrington then set a date for the case to be heard the following term.⁶⁴

Although Harrington had been forceful, Randel and the company did not stop generating demurrers in the winter of 1833. Beginning on November 29, Harrington dispatched their most recent motions. “The court was engaged a week in hearing the argument of some new demurrers which had been filed by the defendants since the proceeding term,” reported the National Gazette. Finally, on December 9, the jury was empaneled. The infamous case, John Randel, Jun’r. vs the President, Directors and Company of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, commenced.⁶⁵

According to a report in the Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiser, “the testimony was voluminous . . . and (with the exceptions and arguments arising on it) occupied a week in laying it before the jury. The arguments of all the lawyers took more than a fortnight.” Clayton was a “tall, commanding, thoroughly well-developed figure,” according to a memoir by a colleague. And he was deeply absorbed by the case. “I shall never forget the labor, as an amanuensis, he required me to perform at the time he was pleading to issue the great Randel case,” the colleague wrote. “Most of the pleadings in the case were dictated by him, without any book before him, as he walked the floor of his private office . . . As in the Randel case, so in other cases. His whole soul was, as it were, given up to them, where there was to be contest. He would think, or talk of nothing else; you must listen to him about his case, or question, or leave him.”⁶⁶

The lead attorney for the company was James A. Bayard, with whom Randel later became entangled over some land transactions. Bayard and his team sought to prove, with various measures of cubic yardage, that Randel had not fulfilled his duty. Bayard’s principal strategy was to object to the introduction of evidence—everything from the original contract to testimony, including that of Paul Beck Jr., the canal company board member who had resigned, and that of Randel’s bother. William had been deposed in Albany in October 1829, while sick with a “pulmonary consumption” that left him too weak to write or to read aloud. The clerk appointed by the company to question William also became sick during the deposition; he “was seized with mania a potu”—what we would call delirium tremens resulting from drunkenness—“and his friends carried him off.” Another clerk finished the interview. William died a year later, in October 1830. Now, three years after his death, the canal company was objecting to his evidence. Clayton was incensed: “William S. Randel’s deposition has been returned near three years; opened, published, and a copy actually taken by the defendants. During the life of the witness no objection was made to the execution of this commission, and no exceptions have been filed since.” After copious objections by Bayard et al., Harrington ruled for admission. “If ever there was a case in which a prepared deposition would be allowed, this is such a case,” he noted. “The witness was languishing in a dreadful disease, which would certainly prove fatal, and whose violence would be greatly excited by conversation.” In short, the company owed it to the witness. He had given his life to comply with their wishes and make the deposition.⁶⁷

In his summation, Bayard had to address the notable absence of a witness for the defense. As he put it: “There is another matter—the Gentleman has said that Benjamin Wright has been kicked out of the cause or like a trembling coward forsook his master. It is true we have been deprived of his testimony. We took extraordinary pains to summon him as a witness. We had him here for two weeks at a great expense it then became necessary for him to go to New York and on his return found that the Court had adjourned. He then went back to New York and we daily expected his presence here until the close of the testimony and on account of his absence many things will remain in doubt which could fully have been explained.” Wright never took the stand.⁶⁸

On January 21, 1834, Harrington charged the jury. “The period has at length arrived in the progress of this cause when you are to become the chief actors in it,” he said. “We are trying, gentlemen, an action of covenant: an issue of breach of covenant: an inquiry into loss and damage arising from breach of covenant: and a claim of compensation in damages for breach of covenant.” The jury deliberated for four days and returned with a stunning victory for Randel: an award of $229,535.79 (including damages and costs). In today’s terms, the settlement would be more than $6 million—then an unprecedented amount.⁶⁹

Many newspapers relayed the “great verdict,” italicizing the stunning figure. “This laborious and important cause was concluded on Saturday . . . Thus has terminated the most arduous trial, with the heaviest verdict, sounding in damages, that, we believe, has ever occurred in this country,” reported the Delaware State Journal. The size of the award suggests many interpretations, among them: Clayton had presented a mesmerizing and compelling argument, much more so than that of the counsel for defense; Randel was likable; Randel’s position was one the jurors could identify with; the canal company was disliked; the evidence of mistreatment and breach of contract was irrefutable. Whatever went through the minds of the jurors, they, to a man, felt the company had treated Randel shamefully and should suffer the consequences.⁷⁰

Randel must have been euphoric. His decade of suffering was apparently over. He had been powerfully vindicated, exonerated. He could repay his debts, carry his head high, live well. His professional conduct had been upheld by the court. But the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company flouted the ruling and set out to ensure that Randel would never collect. Exceedingly hostile feelings persisted.

WHOSE INTEGRITY AND CORRECTNESS

The court case consumed much of Randel’s attention between 1825 and 1834, and at the outset must have made him despair about his professional future. Who would want a man accused of dereliction of duty, despised by one of the most powerful and famous engineers in the country (Wright had built the Erie Canal!), a man who would take on his employers in such a public way? Nevertheless, Randel found ample employment as the case made its way through the legal system. His reputation for accuracy as a surveyor was untarnished, and so, it seemed, was his reputation as an engineer. He was hired for several jobs, including a canal survey in Pennsylvania and work in upstate New York, and appointed chief engineer for one of the first American railroads—direct competition for the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, which must have brought him no small delight.

Randel also married again. He had fame, or at least a high public profile, and continued employment despite the lawsuit, so it is unsurprising he would remain a promising match. Letitia Massey was the daughter of Sarah née Strong and John Massey, a Philadelphia shipping merchant, who probably moved in the same business circles as the canal directors and Carey. Letitia had attended the Bethlehem Female Seminary (now Moravian College), the first school for women in America. Letitia, thirty-one, and Randel, thirty-nine, were married in June 1827 by the Reverend Benjamin Allen, rector of St. Paul’s Church in Philadelphia. Allen had known Randel during his marriage to Matilda and approved of him. The reverend had written a letter of support that Carey published in his extensive pamphlet (along with letters from Simeon DeWitt, DeWitt Clinton, Stephen Van Rensselaer, and an upstate New York judge, Isaac Davies). “Having known Mr. John Randel, Jun. fourteen years, and being requested by a friend of his, to state my impressions concerning his general character, it gives me pleasure to say, that I never knew any man of whose integrity and correctness I have been in the habit of entertaining a higher opinion,” Allen wrote. (A few of the letters Carey published predate the controversy and appear to have been the letters of recommendation Randel had requested for his Virginia application.)⁷¹

Notwithstanding Randel’s many supporters, Letitia probably knew she was marrying an irascible man. Perhaps she even relished the controversy. From almost all records that survive—mostly court documents relating to lawsuits or land—Letitia appears to have been Randel’s active ally in the quarrels to come. She pushed him to pursue connections. She appears to have been legally and financially astute. She assisted him with business. She read his letters and when needed took action. Writing from Owego, New York, she informed one of Randel’s assistants that a lawyer had outstanding questions about the canal lawsuit. She instructed the assistant to travel to New Castle, Delaware, to procure documents and answers. She also provided an update on Randel’s work in Owego: “The remaining twenty miles of road to be graded, is to be contracted for to-morrow. This keeps Mr. Randel very much engaged; he will, I hope, after to-morrow, have a little leisure, and write to you, and also attend to Stancliff & Draper’s account. Do write, and let us know if you see Mr. Clayton, and what is to be done. Will the suit be tried this August term, or will the cholera prevent the court sitting? Our best respects to your mother and brother, Very Respectfully, your friend.”⁷²

Letitia oversaw other assistants as well. Her mother, Sarah, came to live with her and Randel in Wilmington, Delaware, at one point and said she often saw Letitia paying Randel’s men. Letitia “is very much in the habit of taking receipts,” Mrs. Massey reported, but she did not take them from the young gentlemen, as “she thought them honorable, and there was no use for them.” Randel relied on Letitia’s opinion about employees. “I mentioned to Mrs. Randel that you spoke of employing B. Newcombe; she thinks he is intemperate; I do not know him. If you have not already employed him, you had better employ some other person more eminent at the bar,” he wrote to his secretary.⁷³

Letitia helped with a clay business that Randel, ever entreprising, tried to start. He intended to send clay from Delaware to Philadelphia, where brick making and tile manufacturing were thriving. He had a tub built for clay in New Castle but needed iron bands to hold the tub together. He asked an employee to buy some iron and send it down by steamboat, and then left the matter in the hands of his wife: The iron can be sent “with a letter to Mrs. Randel, so that she may have it sent at once to the blacksmith.” With Letitia’s help, he did send at least one shipment of clay to Philadelphia. There appear to be no records describing how the business fared.⁷⁴

In addition to aiding her husband’s business when needed, Letitia ran the household, which had at least one servant, and bore at least three children. John Massey Randel was born on July 14, 1831. When he was two, Letitia and Randel had him vaccinated for smallpox. In the fall of 1833, shortly after that smallpox scare, another son arrived—Richard Varick DeWitt Randel. And a daughter, Letitia Massey Randel, was born on May 24, 1835. Letitia and Randel sent their son John to school in Wilmington and Philadelphia, and then to study medicine with his uncle, Walter Williamson, at the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, where John wrote a thesis on hydrophobia, or rabies. Only John survived to adulthood. Richard died in July 1834, at the age of ten months; Letitia died in January 1837, at the age of nineteen months. Randel and Letitia may have had another son, Alexander McLeod Randel (in all likelihood named after a well-known Presbyterian pastor), who would have been six when he died in 1834.

Title page and poultry diagram from American Domestic Cookery by Maria Rundell. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

A decade or so after her marriage, Letitia bought or was given a copy of American Domestic Cookery Formed on Principles of Economy for the use of Private Families, by an “Experienced Housekeeper” whose non-de-plume name was Maria Rundell. The book was first published in 1822; Letitia dated her copy 1839. None of the pages are folded, none have particular or revealing stains, none imply a well-loved dish. But the book offers a glimpse into what Rundell thought about the women of her time. The words may have resonated for Letitia too. “In the variety of female acquirements, though domestic occupations stand not so high in esteem as they formerly did, yet, when neglected, they produce much human misery. There was a time when ladies knew nothing beyond their own family concerns; but in the present day, there are many who know nothing about them . . . United with, and perhaps crowning all, the virtues of the female character, is that well directed ductility of mind, which occasionally bends its attention to the smaller objects of life, knowing them to be often scarcely less essential than the greater,” Rundell explained in her introduction. She encouraged prompt payment of tradesmen, aptitude with figures, and particular attention to dinner: “Perhaps there are few incidents in which the respectability of a man is more immediately felt, than the style of dinner to which he accidently may bring home a visitor.”⁷⁵

If Letitia followed Rundell’s advice and recipes, the family had some wonderful meals. Ducks abounded near Letitia and Randel’s Maryland home, as John James Audubon described in a visit to the area: “The number of birds set in motion becomes inconceivable, and they approach the points so closely, that even a moderately good shot can procure from fifty to one hundred ducks a day . . . the innumerable ducks, feeding in beds of thousands, or filling the air with their careering, with the great numbers of beautiful white swans nesting near the shores, like banks of driven snow . . .” A few of those ducks may have found their way into a particularly enticing Rundell dish: “Half roast a duck; put it into a stew-pan with a pint of beef-gravy, a few leaves of sage and mint cut small, pepper and salt, and a small bit of onion shred as fine as possible. Simmer a quarter of an hour, and skim clean; then add near a quart of green peas. Cover close, and simmer near half an hour longer. Put in a piece of butter and a little flour, and give it one boil; then serve in one dish.”⁷⁶

SHORTLY AFTER Letitia and Randel’s wedding—indeed, that same month—canal commissioners in Pennsylvania asked Randel to direct a survey along a route called the Susquehanna North Branch. Although Letitia often traveled with Randel, just as Matilda had, she did not accompany him on this trip, perhaps because the conditions were rough. The crew walked 365 miles, worked eighteen- to nineteen-hour days, and many became severely ill. On the trip Randel met Charles Ellet, who was then in his teens and had not yet earned his reputation as an excellent engineer. Ellet—whose temperament was, as noted, similar to Randel’s—found his boss “a shrewd, calculating, close observing man, and withall a sociable, pleasant, agreeable companion who can convert a word and even a look to answer his own purposes, to be a source of inspiration to other and greater matters than those to which they often relate.” By the end of the trip, Ellet championed Randel to his family: “Still in the face of every disadvantage has the principal part of the work been accomplished, by the skill, industry, experience and perseverance of Mr. Randel. And after all the privations and hardships which he has undergone for the people of Wilkes Barre his only thanks have been hard thoughts and his only reward ingratitude. So difficult it is for a man once persecuted to ever find peace again. Our reception here may appear otherwise in the papers, but they do not relate the facts. These are things for the family only. I would not have them mentioned; nor indeed any words of mine where Mr. Randel’s name is used.”⁷⁷

HIS SKILL, ZEAL, INTEGRITY, AND MASTERLY KNOWLEDGE

That Pennsylvania survey was Randel’s final canal-related job. The Railroad Age was rapidly replacing the relatively brief Canal Age. Railroads had originated in England in the 1820s and soon traveled across the Atlantic. The first U.S. rail lines were short, local projects, part of an experimental frenzy nearly every state engaged in. Between 1830 and 1840, railroad mileage in the United States grew from 73 to 3,328 miles, and by the decade’s end only four of the twenty-six states lacked rail lines. “The most fanatical railroad partisans writing in the 1830s, men like D. K. Minor of the American Railroad Journal, could not predict the speed of trains, length of lines, size of locomotives, volume of traffic, revenues, or sums of invested capital that would characterize the industry by the time of the Civil War,” writes John L. Larson, the author of Internal Improvement. In the early 1860s the transcontinental, first advocated by the businessman Asa Whitney in 1844, began to stretch across the country from California, with the construction of the Central and Union Pacific lines. By then the eastern and central parts of the country had almost 31,000 miles of rail.⁷⁸

Surveyors’ camp. Detail from the 1827 “Map of the Canal Route between Pittsburgh and Conneaut Lake.” Record group 17, records of the Board of Canal Commissioners. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives.

Randel, mesmerized by new technologies, mechanical innovation, and a challenge, found employment on several of the country’s early local railroads: the New Castle & Frenchtown, the Ithaca & Owego, the Lykens Valley Coal Company, the Central Rail Road of Georgia, and the New-York & Albany. His first appointment came in April 1830. William D. Lewis and Samuel Nevins, two directors for the New Castle & Frenchtown, appointed him chief engineer at an annual salary of $1,500. The company’s intention was to compete head-on with the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal and to provide travelers with a faster, more comfortable trip between Philadelphia and Washington.

The New Castle & Frenchtown directors and Randel read a great deal about British railroads. They discussed alternatives and debated during each stage of construction. Randel’s survey seems to have been the only aspect of the project not scrutinized too intensely. Randel ensured a largely level path (along an old turnpike) and a route of gentle curves, “enabling us to pass through them without abating [the train’s] velocity.” He had his men set down 58,000 sleepers—bases to set the tracks on, similar to ties—of stone and later wood, because stone took so long to obtain. The crew spiked iron rails from England on top of wider, supporting rails of yellow pine. Randel used what became the standard gauge.⁷⁹

Work progressed quickly. Within two years of Randel’s appointment, horses pulled the first carriages along the rails. The February 1832 trip between New Castle and Frenchtown took one hour and twenty minutes; about half as long as it would have taken by stagecoach and one-third as long as it would take a wagon loaded with goods. The board of directors then instructed Randel to rapidly ready the line for the locomotive, which would soon arrive from England. (It was assembled with difficulty by Philadelphia engineer and jeweler Matthias W. Baldwin, who went on to design and construct many early American railroads. Studying British designs and imports was instrumental to his success.) To ready the track for the demands of a steam engine, Randel hired more men; at one time, 1,100 were working night and day. He reported to the directors that he too worked round the clock and “gave the whole my personal attention for upwards of 20 out of the 24 hours of each day.”⁸⁰

Stock certificate from the New Castle & Frenchtown Railroad. Courtesy of the collection of Mark D. Tomasko.

The first locomotive successfully ran just a few months later, on July 4, at an average of 12 miles per hour. Occasionally the train reached speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour. For Randel, achieving such velocity on the first run portended greater speed to come: “I have no doubt that the whole distance of 16 miles and a half from New Castle to Frenchtown, can be passed over with this Engine and tender, in the short space of 20 minutes, or at the extraordinary rate of 50 miles per hour; a speed far surpassing, and perhaps trebling the velocity which for some time to come will be agreeable to the passengers crossing this peninsula.”⁸¹

Randel also submitted his final report on July 4. As always, he had several ideas for improvements. He suggested installing a “switch with its excentric cam or wheel (upon a plan believed to be entirely new) to be put down at the crossing of the rail way near, & west of the Engine house at New Castle”; he noted that he had already given a mechanic his plan for the switch. (Such switches enable trains to move from one track to another.) He wanted safety wheels installed as backup in case car wheels broke: “I have caused an example exhibiting the principal of this Improvement to be applied to one of the Cars for your examination.” He had also nearly completed a “detaching link or lever,” so the crew could release the passenger cars from the engine if needed (in case of accident, or perhaps boiler explosion, which was common in early engines). He “had prepared an example” of fenders and cushions to be fixed to the end of the carriages to soften the ride. In addition, “a Scraper to be attached to the front of the Engine or forward Car for the purpose of removing all obstructions from the Road (even Cattle) has been invented and planned, but want of time will deprive me of the pleasure of completing it at present.” His list of improvements concluded with a generous offer: “If the Directors request it, I will give them my permission to use the above improvements upon this Road.”⁸²

Contemporary and modern views vary on Randel’s accomplishments on the New Castle & Frenchtown, Delaware’s first railroad. The most positive assessments came from Randel himself, his great-nephew, some news accounts, and the directors of the company. A negative evaluation comes from historian Larry D. Lankton, who reviewed the railroad for the National Park Service in 1976. According to Lankton’s report, Randel and his cohorts had little idea what they were doing; Randel managed his workers ineffectively and made poor decisions; the entire enterprise was unprofessional and haphazard. The directors were heavily involved with the daily activities; they recognized their own lack of knowledge and needed to be thoughtful at every costly step—and they were aware of Randel’s lack of engineering experience. “His subsequent, mediocre performance only served to demonstrate that surveying and engineering were two related but different skills,” Lankton writes.⁸³

Lankton’s assessment echoes descriptions of efforts on other inaugural U.S. railroads. Randel was not alone in his inexperience. No one much knew what to do, and the New Castle & Frenchtown was among the first rail lines to experiment with the form and, particularly, with locomotive as opposed to horse power—that is, having horses pull cars along the rails. Just as they had on the Erie and on many other canals, pioneer U.S. railroad engineers bricolaged, importing some techniques from England, making others up. Various companies and their engineers experimented with track designs and materials, with gauges (the distance between the two rails, which today is standardized in most places at 4 feet, 8.5 inches, but which varied widely until the late nineteenth century), with horse-drawn cars, and with British and U.S. engines.⁸⁴

George Johnston, who wrote a history of Cecil County, Maryland, in 1881, described the New Castle & Frenchtown railroad as an oddity: “It was of very peculiar construction, and were it now extant, would be a great curiosity. The rails were placed about the same distance apart as in modern roads, but instead of being laid upon wooden sleepers, were placed upon blocks of stone ten or twelve inches square . . . The great defect in the road was the want of something to keep the rails from spreading apart, and it was soon discovered that the only way to remedy this was to resort to the use of ties extending from one rail to the other, and to which both rails were fastened, as in modern roads.”⁸⁵

For other historians, the railroad was progressive for its early use of a steam locomotive and for its use of semaphores. John C. Hayman credits the New Castle & Frenchtown with pioneering flag signals: “As the train left a terminal a white flag was hoisted, a black flag if it was late or became disabled.” A train worker down the line would see the flag in his telescope and pass the information to the next point, “so that news of the train’s departure reached the other end in very short time.”⁸⁶

In his own day, Randel earned praise from the press and his employers. “Since the commencement of operations upon our Rail Road, those who have traveled upon it, so far as our information extends, have spoken in very favorable terms of the plan and execution of the work. The Board of Directors, considering that both are the result of your skill and labour, desire that you will receive this letter as a testimony of their high estimation of your talents, ability, and skill as a Civil Engineer; of their thanks for your industry, zeal and fidelity in prosecuting the work; and of their respect for your character and correct deportment as a man.” The timing of this public support for Randel was notable. The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company lawsuit was approaching the courtroom of Judge Harrington, and Randel’s “industry, zeal and fidelity” would soon be under intense legal scrutiny.⁸⁷

The directors’ support of Randel did not waver as time went on, although the New Castle & Frenchtown itself was financially shaky by the 1840s because of competition from the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad. When Randel sought employment on the Harlem Rail Road in New York City in 1845, his former employers endorsed him: “His skill, zeal, integrity, and masterly knowledge of his profession, carried him through that important enterprise at so early a period in the construction of Rail Roads, in a manner to satisfy us entirely, and to place that work, even at the present day, in advantageous contrast with almost all existing Roads of the kind,” wrote William D. Lewis and Samuel Nevins.⁸⁸

FENCES ARE PROSTRATED

Other contemporaries also perceived Randel as able—or as able as anyone else at that time. In the midst of his work for the New Castle & Frenchtown, he was hired by another early line, New York’s Ithaca & Owego, for $3,000 a year. Simeon DeWitt and his son Richard Varick DeWitt held the most shares of stock in the Ithaca & Owego and naturally turned to Randel. Ithaca was connected to the Erie Canal, which ran north of the city, by Cayuga Lake and the Seneca River, but it was not linked to several important markets and suppliers—such as Maryland and Pennsylvania—except by a road running south to Owego, a town on the banks of the Susquehanna River. Both Owego and Ithaca wanted to solidify their roles as important trade centers mediating cargo coming out of the west and east. As an Albany newspaper hopefully summarized, “Ithaca in fact is the key to the trade of the upper counties of the Susquehanna, and distributes salt, plaster, castings, and merchandise, to a great section of country in Pennsylvania. It receives lumber (the finest that comes to this market), produce and coal in large quantities and will furnish an inexhaustible supply of fuel for the furnaces and salt works of our state.”⁸⁹

Initially town leaders proposed a canal, but they could not secure funding. In 1827 citizens called for a railroad, which was incorporated a year later; a U.S. Army engineer was immediately brought in to survey a route. The DeWitts and the board then hired Randel as chief engineer. “Mr. Randel, Chief Engineer of the Newcastle and Frenchtown Rail Road, has commenced active operations on the Ithaca and Owego Rail Road,” the Albany Daily Advertiser reported in July 1831. “The great facilities for making this road, and the admirable nature of its route, surpass all previous calculations. A small part of the road will be made this season and contracts made for the residue this fall, to be completed during the next season. Real estate is rapidly advancing at the points of termination, and capitalists are already seeking investments in the vicinity.”⁹⁰

Construction of the New Castle & Frenchtown and the Ithaca & Owego overlapped, and so Randel raced back and forth between upstate New York and Delaware. He had two unpleasant experiences during this time. In early 1832, a few weeks before the New Castle & Frenchtown line was tested, he was in a stagecoach accident. He injured his head, arm, and hand. In July 1833 a violent storm, with 4-inch hailstones and “sixteen of them weighing about a half a pound,” brought danger and death. “This fine country, which a few hours since exhibited a most beautiful appearance, is now completely destitute; fences are prostrated; many trees torn up, and some buildings blown down and destroyed,” reported the New-York Spectator. The tavern-keeper Albert Johnson was killed, and Randel nearly so. “The deceased, together with J. Dandel [sic], Esq. the Engineer in Chief of the Ithaca and Owego Rail-road, and Mr. Tollfree, one of his assistants, were standing in conversation near the house when the storm commenced, and returned for shelter to the carriage house, both doors of which were open. The door of this building was struck by lightning, and all three of the persons prostrated. Mr. Johnson was instantly killed. Messrs. Randel and Tollfree so far recovered as to be able to rise in about one minute from the time of receiving the shock. The latter was slightly, the former was seriously injured, but has now nearly recovered from the effects of the shock.” An Albany Daily Advertiser account noted that a horse standing alongside the three men was killed as well, and that Randel and his assistant had been accompanied by the president of the rail line, Francis A. Bloodgood, who ran into a shop instead of the carriage house and suffered no ill effects.⁹¹

True to his nature, Randel offered the directors five possible design plans and cost estimates. In the end, the company chose horsepower over steam, so that the line would be cheaper to build. Randel’s work took him through valleys and gorges, across many creeks, around falls, and up and down the renowned hills of the area. He had to use a deep cut through one hill and construct several culverts and bridges. The terrain was challenging and quite unlike the level, smooth land through which the New Castle & Frenchtown traveled, and the line was relatively short—only about 29 miles. With seven hundred men on the crew, work was completed within two years. Labor often proceeded into the night, reported the Ithaca Chronicle, “and the woods have been illuminated by hundreds of candles sparkling along the line.” The first half opened in February 1834; the rest was finished two months later. Ithaca was proud, reported the Chronicle: “Much of the road is finished in a durable and beautiful manner furnishing perhaps the finest specimen of railroad in the union.”⁹²

Although Randel sought, and said he obtained, “the most eligible routes, grades and curves the most gentle, with straight lines connecting them of the greatest length that the country would afford,” there was one elevation he could not tame. The outset of the route at Ithaca was anything but eligible: a stunningly steep hill, more than 500 feet high. This ascent, South Hill, was the first hurdle that horses, and later engines, had to clear. Randel installed a system of horse-turned winches to haul up the freight cars. “The horses went round and round like those that work a threshing machine,” described a contemporary who worked on the railway. “The cars were let down and hauled up the high, steep hill by that windlass-like system. While two cars were down it aided in hauling one car up the plane. A man went along with them carrying oak plugs to use as brakes in case the rope cable broke. The plugs were thrown into the car wheel spokes and caught the wheel against the car.”⁹³

Horses also labored at the Owego terminus. There, the same rail worker described a wild scene: “Four horses worked this windlass down in a pit . . . the belly-bands of the harness were wide and strong and often held the horse clear up from the floor when the cars got under too rapid headway on the steep plane and held them suspended in that position until the cars reached the level and ran into the car houses and were stopped by men who threw oak plugs into the wheels. Then the horses were lowered again to their feet.”⁹⁴

The steep hills were often miserable for passengers as well. The descent was dangerous, and on at least one occasion the handbrake and oak plugs failed. Passengers had to leap from a car as it careened “like a cannon ball” to splinter at the base of the hill. No one died in that accident, including the one sleeping traveler, a Mr. Babcock, who “eventually recovered” from his broken arm, many bruises and cuts; but several engineers died in other accidents. Passengers were routinely called upon not just to save themselves but to help the line run smoothly. Initially the line had no signals, no schedule, and when trains heading in opposite directions met, one of them had to be lifted off the tracks so the other could get by. The passengers did the lifting.⁹⁵

All early railroads were notoriously unsafe. The metal strap rails that Randel used could spring off the wooden rails they were attached to. These so-called snake-heads could pierce the bottom of the cars, impaling passengers. Cars jumped off rails, boilers exploded, trains hit pedestrians. Randel’s own family suffered.When a rail line was laid between Utica and Syracuse (the line later became New York Central), Abraham, Randel’s older brother, received $240 for the right of way across his land and a lifetime pass for himself and Rebecca. But the proximity of the track proved fatal. On the morning of November 7, 1856, Abraham was hit by a freight train; he died that evening, at the age of seventy. The New York Central also killed his granddaughter. “One of the saddest railroad accidents that has happened in Oneida in many years and one that will be fresh in the minds of the people for some time to come, occurred last Saturday evening,” reported a local newspaper in 1895. Helen E. Randel, a “popular young school teacher,” was suffering toothache and set off for town in search of a dentist, accompanied by her fiancé. The family often used the tracks, which ran right by the property, to walk into town or go to church. Passenger train 47 hit Helen and her fiancé, killing both.⁹⁶

The Inclined Plane of the Ithaca & Owego Railroad. Painting by W. Glenn Norris. Image courtesy of the History Center in Tompkins County, Ithaca, New York.

RANDEL SAW the Ithaca & Owego as “destined to become one of the most important links in the chain of internal improvement that has yet been projected in this section of country.” But like many early lines, the railway did not have a long life. The horsepower-based design meant that travel along the rails remained quite slow—about walking speed. The line finally incorporated engines in 1840; Richard Varick DeWitt designed the first one. (“Old Puff,” as the engine was called, was soon replaced by a more effective machine.) According to one historian, the Ithaca & Owego line was an important proving ground for U.S. railroads, as much for its failures as for its successes. The tracks, it turned out, could not well bear the weight of steam engines, and repairs were constantly necessary. The cost of the repairs led the company into foreclosure in 1841. The line was bought and incorporated, over many decades, into a series of other railroad companies. The Ithaca branch, as it came to be called, served the region until 1956. Clarity about the best approaches to railroad construction and design came slowly through experiments, like Randel’s, and with hindsight.⁹⁷

Randel’s employment on two of the country’s first railroads solidified his reputation as an engineer. Barely was he done with the Ithaca & Owego when a Georgian concern requested his services. The board of directors of the Central Rail Road and Banking Company sought a route from Savannah to Macon and “a gentleman of high standing and great experience in his profession” as engineer. The gentleman of high standing and great experience soon differed with the gentlemen of the board. Randel, as usual, advocated a route that made eminent sense from a surveying and engineering perspective but not from a political or economic one. “Perhaps the key to reasons for Randall’s dismissal in May (in spite of the fact that for engineering reasons the southern route was palpably the best route) lies in the fact that, as his successor Reynolds says, the board of directors, for reasons of a non-technical but equally valid nature, entertained a preference for the northern route,” summarized one researcher. Randel’s work in Savannah was brief, lasting only from November 1836 to late spring 1837. And bitter—it was in Savannah that his daughter Letitia died.⁹⁸

Map of the proposed Delaware Railroad by Edward Staveley and John Randel Jr. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

I AM A RUINED MAN

Randel learned a great deal about railways during those three adventures, and during short stints as surveyor for the Lykens Valley and Coal Company (a Pennsylvania line), as engineer in chief for a proposed Delaware Rail Road Company (founded by his lawyer, John M. Clayton), and as engineer in chief for the New-York and Albany Railroad Company. He seemed entranced by trains; several years later, his grandest mechanical scheme grew directly out of his earlier railroad work. But as pleased and proud as Randel must have been to know that his reputation for accuracy, if not diplomacy, was intact and that he was still well regarded by some employers, he doubtless felt encumbered and anxious during his railroad jobs. There was no escaping ongoing entanglement with the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company. The settlement had arrived in early 1834 but had brought neither payment nor peace. The company refused to—indeed, could not—pay him.

Encouraged by his lawyer, Clayton, and supported by the State of Delaware, Randel took matters into his own hands. In June 1834, he announced that he would collect canal tolls himself—“attachment,” in legal language. Though he resisted the idea at first, Randel came to eloquently and energetically embrace the strategy. The company had forced his hand. Days after the case concluded, the board of directors resolved to require all ship captains to pay the canal toll in Philadelphia. They did not publicize their resolution—probably because it was illegal, according to the charter governing the canal, and because the Delaware court had ruled that Randel’s payment was to come, in part, from tolls. And so Randel’s agents began demanding tolls on the canal itself, much to the dismay and surprise of boat captains who had already paid them.

On June 15, Richard Shoemaker had the misfortune of being arrested by the Newcastle County sheriff at the Delaware tide lock, the location established in 1829 for toll collection. Shoemaker was the captain of the sloop Robert and James, and he had already paid $74.44 to an officer of the canal company in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, Thomas P. Crowell, master of the schooner Hiram, fared no better. He had paid $96.28 in Philadelphia. Caught between the company and the law, captains found themselves having to pay twice—and being “artfully induced to believe that I was their oppressor,” Randel wrote. Shoemaker and Crowell were among dozens of captains similarly treated. One witness estimated that attachments were served on as many as 1,500 people.⁹⁹

Randel’s piracy was administered by a young man named William Linn Brown. In the early days of the Chesapeake & Delaware lawsuit, the twenty-five-year-old Brown had arrived to study law in the office of Philadelphia lawyer John Sergeant—the one whom Carey had hoped to influence regarding strategy. Sergeant represented Randel at the beginning of his troubles with the company, and so Brown got to know Randel and often stayed with him. “Mr. Randel told me that Mr. Brown was his personal friend, the nephew of Mr. De Witt [sic], and that Mr. De Witt, Surveyor General of the State of New York, was Mr. Randel’s patron, and therefore he had the utmost confidence in Mr. Brown,” said an observer. When Randel switched from Sergeant to Clayton as his main counsel, Brown stayed with him. Brown was apparently promised 2.5 percent of whatever settlement as well as reimbursement for all his traveling expenses—of which there were many, as he darted around the region at the behest of Randel or Letitia. Brown devoted himself to Randel “against the advice of all his friends” except Simeon DeWitt; “Mr. DeWitt thought Mr. Randel’s cause was a good one, and that he would gain it,” according to later testimony. Several people described Brown during that time as “the second edition of Mr. Randel . . . He manifested a very unusual interest in the affairs of Mr. Randel. I never knew a man take such interest in another man’s business. He employed himself actively at his business. I mean with zeal.”¹⁰⁰

Brown spent a great deal of time on the canal. According to a deputy sheriff, “Mr. Brown was engaged there; he was with us assisting in issuing attachments,” basically writing tickets to boat captains.

He was there, I suppose, a month at a time . . . We were pretty constantly employed; sometimes night and day; sometimes we had nothing to do; but we had to be always there, that is, while he was issuing the attachments . . . at all hours of the night, if we wanted a capias issued, we had to go to Mr. Brown’s room to have it issued . . . We had a watchman. Whenever he saw a vessel coming, he would wake me up. I then went to see if the captain was liable; if he was liable, I called on Mr. Brown. The most that I ever called was four times in one night . . . We had pretty nearly all the country about there to contend against; and to stop the captains, we used to set up till about twelve o’clock at night . . . The country was very sickly at that time—all hands got sick—Mr. Brown got sick—all the deputy sheriffs became sick—myself too . . . the night air was dangerous, and the smell was bad—filth from the stables.

The sheriff jailed many of the captains who did not pay Brown.¹⁰¹

Although Brown’s nocturnal activities were supported by some authorities in Delaware, the strategy was controversial. Through captains Shoemaker and Crowell, the canal company brought two more lawsuits against Randel. For their part, Randel, Brown, and their team tried to establish further legal support for their actions by promoting bills permitting attachment, based on laws in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The bill passed the Delaware senate but was defeated in the house. “I am a ruined man,” Randel wrote in a local paper, “but however crushed and powerless I may be, I yet have a right to appeal, and will fully appeal, to the justice of the public.” Randel was again airing his grievances and taking his problems to the people, as he had with William Bridges and the commissioners of the Erie Canal. He begged forbearance on the part of his creditors and contractors, and concluded his article by saying, “I have come out of this controversy, pennyless and exhausted by it, but yet with a breast untainted, and a heart unstained.”¹⁰²

Soon thereafter, the Delaware Superior Court found for Randel in the cases brought by Shoemaker and Crowell. Still no peace. The following month a court officer delivered to Letitia, at home in New Castle while Randel was working in Syracuse, a notice from the U.S. Supreme Court requiring Randel to appear on the second Monday of January 1836. Randel returned from New York and went to court, again represented by Clayton. The canal company had sought to overturn the Delaware court’s decision regarding the captains, and it had sought to overturn the original ruling in which Randel was awarded the settlement. The U.S. Supreme Court was having none of either. First it rejected the company’s effort to overturn the 1834 case. Then it rejected the company’s arguments to overturn the attachment cases. “This decision leaves the canal company no resource but to pay the money which has been awarded to Mr. Randel by the verdict of a jury,” reported the Wilmington Journal. “The highest judicial tribunal of this state has established the right of Mr. Randel to appropriate the tolls for the payment of his debt, and the supreme court of this union now tells them that they can obtain no relief there.” The editors went on to state, “We repeat, then, as the best advice we can give to the company—and we give it in a perfect friendly spirit—pay this money—put an end to this strife which has for so long a time embarrassed the business of the canal and destroyed its usefulness, and which if persevered in, can only end in the total ruin of the interests of the stockholders and creditors.”¹⁰³

A few months later, fed up with the canal company, the Maryland and Delaware state governments passed bills requiring the company to settle its outstanding debts within five years. Randel had been vindicated. But he was up to his ears in debt. Nothing had come of the Georgia rail work. He had done a topographical and hydrological survey for the city of Baltimore, which was seeking a more reliable source of municipal water, but he was not hired to build the system; the city council decided that the cost was prohibitive. As one friend noted, “I believe the canal debt is his sole reliance. I have been intimate with Mr. Randel for some seven or eight years, and he has spoken very freely to me of his wants. I have tried to borrow money for him on pledge of certificates, and on mortgage of his real property in Delaware and Maryland, but ineffectually.” At the same time, friends and colleagues were increasingly questioning his character and deportment. Letters from this era and volumes of court testimony portray Randel as sometimes paranoid, volatile, and unpredictable. He was sued for payment by several former allies. Perhaps the most tragic reversal involved his relationship with the young man Brown. Long-standing loyalty and friendship turned to bitterness and betrayal. And another series of lawsuits began their voyage to the U.S. Supreme Court.¹⁰⁴

IT IS EQUALLY UNCERTAIN WHETHER MY DESTINY LIES THE ONE WAY OR THE OTHER

Succinctly put, Randel accused Brown of absconding with $10,000 and a power-of-attorney document. Brown countered that he had not been rewarded for his many years of service, and that he had not absconded with anything Randel had not legitimately given him. Court documents from two combined cases (Randel vs. Brown and Brown vs. Randel) include testimony from seemingly every person who met or dealt with either man between 1825 and 1839. Letitia’s mother testified. Randel’s friend from New York City testified. Sheriffs, lawyers, captains, workmen, and acquaintances testified, sometimes dramatically: “The said complainant, with much sharpness and temper, said, if he would not sign such a receipt, he would compel him. And getting still more excited, he struck his clenched hands violently upon the table and exclaimed, ‘I need not have paid you one dollar.’ ” Randel lost in a Pennsylvania court in 1841 but won on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1844. Brown, who had devoted at least a decade of his life to Randel, had been turned out and rejected. Randel, whether in the right, unable to admit wrong, or miserly, gained nothing in the eyes of his acquaintances. Richard Varick DeWitt wrote to John M. Clayton expressing wariness about his own financial agreements with Randel and requesting advice. “Please to regard this Communication as Confidential,” he concluded. “You understand Mr. Randel’s peculiarities too well to make it necessary to say why I ask this.”¹⁰⁵

Richard Varick DeWitt’s father was spared whatever sadness the showdown between his nephew and his protégé might have elicited. In December 1834, just shy of his seventy-eighth birthday, Simeon DeWitt died after a long illness, “a violent cold” he had caught when traveling upstate. Randel had visited him in October, which may have been the last time the two men saw each other. DeWitt was weak, able to walk only across his room. “I still stand poised between Life and Death, under my present disease, and it is equally uncertain whether my destiny lies the one way or the other. Whatever it may be, I am perfectly reconciled to it,” he wrote.¹⁰⁶

In his seventy-seven years, DeWitt had observed and participated in the radical transformation of his country, culture, and landscape. His land had become American. His state had prospered, in large part because he facilitated settlement with his careful grids and maps and because he fought for and funded infrastructure. He had established important cultural and scientific institutions in Albany and participated in those of other cities. He had given a powerful and interesting city “harmonious” proportions. He had trained many young men to be topnotch surveyors and scientists. He had given generously of his friendship and good humor.

Although fond and supportive references to Randel had continued to appear in DeWitt’s writings, some tension had entered the relationship in the 1820s and the early 1830s. Field books are official records, but Randel saw right to purloin some upstate New York field books—to treat them as his private property, complained state officials. Controversy regarding the boundaries of lots in the Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation arose as early as 1824, and DeWitt entreated Randel to send the books back so boundaries could be clarified. “I have never been placed in so disagreeable a situation before,” DeWitt wrote. “I must, therefore, beg of you not to delay a moment longer, what is necessary to enable me to have the lots staked off, and to give such descriptions as that patents may be given to those who want them.” By 1831 the matter had not been resolved. DeWitt wrote to Randel that complaints continued: “You must not let this winter pass by, without finishing this business, and I wish you to say to me in a letter, that it will certainly be done, in order to satisfy those who may otherwise take measures that might be unpleasant to me. I hope you will let me hear from you soon, about this business.” DeWitt would have been displeased, although perhaps unsurprised, to learn that the problem persisted well after his death.¹⁰⁷

Between 1838 and 1839 surveyor general Orville L. Holley sent many pleading letters to Randel. Initially he intended to hire Randel to do more surveys in the Onondaga Salt Spring Reservation; then he begged for the data already in the notebooks. “Now, my dear sir, let me urge you in the most earnest and at the same time in the most friendly manner to write either to Dr. Green, or to me, or to both, and to forward the notes so much wanted without delay,” Holley wrote to Randel in June 1838, ever careful in this and all his other letters to be reassuring and collegial. At that time the New York State legislature required Holley to issue a map and description of all the lots in the reservation being used for the production of salt and those “vacant”; the new survey would necessarily rely on earlier survey notes, which Randel had made many years before. Randel managed to evade Holley’s requests for a long time. He said he had been out of town, caught in a lawsuit, and that his wife was ill, which is why he had not responded sooner. Eventually he did release some notes and go to advise in the field. In July, Holley wrote an optimistic letter to Green: “I am glad to hear that the work is drawing so near to a close. Mr. Randel is now with you, I suppose, as I saw him for a moment in the street here, the other day, as he was hastening to the Rail Road Station to take passage for Utica, on his way to Syracuse. He has with him in his trunk, as I understood him, everything necessary to enable you to complete the map and descriptions.”¹⁰⁸

Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation by John Randel Jr. Courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management, New York State Office of General Services in Albany.

It was wishful thinking. By November, Holley knew that Randel retained still other field books. He exhorted Green: “Don’t let him rest till he sends them on—press him hard.” No luck. Finally Holley sent an assistant surveyor, William F. Weeks, to Maryland to get the notebooks, writing, “You have done wisely in remaining to get such notes &c. as are needed, from Mr. Randel’s papers, maps, &c. All I can say is, for God sake get all that are needed as speedily as possible, and let us my dear fellows have this Salt Springs Reservation off our hands as soon as the fates will permit.” Weeks prevailed, and on February 2, 1839, Holley wrote to Green, “Light shines at last.”¹⁰⁹

Why Randel refused to help or to return documents belonging to the state is not known. He clearly felt that some of his notes were in part private. It was also likely that he hoped he could profit from his knowledge; perhaps he could earn some money because of his intimate knowledge of the land and possession of the notes. Indeed, his resistance was rewarded, for Holley did pay him to assist Green in Syracuse.

RANDEL BECAME a wealthy man when the canal company began paying him his settlement. And yet from that time on, court documents reveal nothing but financial trouble. After the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal case and its myriad related cases, Randel seems to have been constantly in court. Records from New York, Maryland, Delaware, and the U.S. Supreme Court attest to a rich legal legacy for Randel, one usually entailing land, mortgage, and debt. In one New York case, Randel and his nephew, Jesse F. Randel (the son of Randel’s brother Daniel), were jointly sued by a Mr. William A. Beecher. Jesse had borrowed $275 from Beecher and Randel had been the guarantor.¹¹⁰

Although the canal suit had been atypical in both its duration and its award, Randel’s later debt-related litigiousness was not unusual for that time. “Debt was an inescapable fact of life in early America,” writes Bruce H. Mann in Republic of Debtors, noting that debt cases were the most common form of case in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Attitudes toward debt cases changed over the course of Randel’s life—in a way that would have eased his Presbyterian conscience, lifted him off the moral hook. Several legal historians, including Mann, at Harvard University, and Alfred S. Konefsky, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, describe debt cases before and just after the Revolutionary War as largely local, unfolding within a network of interdependent people often well known to one another and governed by moral understanding. During the nineteenth century, markets expanded, cities grew, and familiarity with cycles of boom and bust emerged; Americans lived through the panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, and so on. Debt was no longer seen as the province of the individual and his moral fabric; it became linked to the larger economy and to forces beyond a person’s ethical constitution. “The key psychological change for me is the recognition that there might not be moral stigma associated with failure to pay,” Konefsky says. “If you believed in the free market, you needed to recognize that there were events out of the individual’s control; so they might be overtaken by events.”¹¹¹

Many were thus afflicted. “In no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the United States,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. “It is not uncommon for the same man in the course of his life to rise and sink again through all the grades that lead from opulence to poverty.” Debt was a hallmark of many inventors, who sank money into their visions and devices and were often destitute or overdrawn; Charles Goodyear, Edwin Drake, Elisha Otis, and Nikola Tesla are but four examples. The game may be well played, but it is long and unpredictable.¹¹²

STRANGE AND ECCENTRIC, FULL OF UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND PROJECTS

In 1858 Simon J. Martenet, a surveyor from Baltimore, published a map of Cecil County, Maryland. The map shows the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal cutting in from the east, its westernmost extent emptying into Back Creek near Chesapeake City, which the canal split in two. Back Creek flows to the Elk River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay. The area framed by Back Creek to the north and Elk River to the west is called Bohemia Manor. A few years before Randel was born, Simeon DeWitt surveyed the region on George Washington’s instruction: “Immediately upon receipt of this you will begin to Survey the road (if it has not been done already) to Princeton, thence (through Maiden head) to Trenton. Thence to Philadelphia, thence to the head of Elk through Darby, Chester, Wilmington Christiana bridge. At the head of Elk you will receive further orders. I need not observe to you the necessity of noting Towns, Villages and remarkable Houses & places but I must desire that you will give me the rough traces of your Survey as you proceed on as I have reasons for desiring to know this as soon as possible.” Some of the houses and roads DeWitt noted may have survived to be noted by Martenet. Many were new, constructed as the canal generated a bustling economy. A cluster of those houses, Martenet indicated, belonged to “J. Randall”: two buildings on the north side of Back Creek, including Welch Point, and four buildings and a sawmill on the south side of Back Creek.¹¹³

The canal company earnings had elevated Randel to landed gentry. He bought a farm from James A. Bayard of Wilmington (a lawyer for the canal company) for $12,000 in 1836. In 1837, land records show that Randel owned 740 acres. In 1842 he owned two farms, a steam mill, and about 1,415 acres. He named his land Randelia. Some accounts, including that of a Randel descendent, maintain that he purchased holdings on both sides of the river because he anticipated that the canal and railroad would catalyze a boom, perhaps grow a city to rival New York. Chesapeake City did expand somewhat, but not much. The region never spawned a metropolis, and although Randel sought to establish an enduring estate, only one or two references to Randelia survive. One is in a Maryland land record, and one is in an account by the Cecil County historian George Johnston—not a flattering account, but consistent with Johnston’s assessment of Randel’s New Castle & Frenchtown railroad as a “great curiosity” and “of peculiar construction.”

Detail from Simon J. Martenet’s 1858 map of Cecil County, Maryland. Collection of the author.

Randel tried his hand at several businesses, according to Johnston:

At one time, while Mr. Randel was proprietor of Randalia, he had a steam saw-mill in operation there, and somehow he unfortunately lost a breast-pin which he valued very highly. Work was immediately stopped at Randalia, and everybody in his employ was set to work hunting for the lost breast-pin. The hands at the saw-mill were set to work sifting an immense pile of saw dust, the accumulation of years, on order to find the lost jewel. After much tribulation, the long-lost and much-esteemed bauble was found in the possession of some person, who said he had found it along the road some distance from Randalia, where no doubt his owner had dropped it. The chances for a law suit were not to be lost, however, and the contentious Randel laid his case before the grand jury with the intention of having the person who found the breast-pin indicted for theft, but the grand jury wisely dismissed the case.¹¹⁴

According to Johnston, Randel was “strange and eccentric, full of Utopian schemes and projects.” One of those projects might lie behind a baffling notice that ran in the Cecil Democrat in 1864, the year before Randel’s death. The seventy-seven-year-old engineer advertised for three hundred carts and wagons and five hundred men to appear at St. Georges, a town along the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. To what end, no one knows. A journal entry from neighboring judge James McCauley several years earlier suggests another project. “This day is a day of rain. After dinner went to see John Randel Jr. Found him and wife very polite. Showed me a circular wheel in the center of the table with the degrees marked on it used in platting land. The paper is fastened to the wheel and a square slides along the edge of table to take the bearings or mark lines on the paper. It seemed to be an expeditory method of platting,” the judge wrote.¹¹⁵

Johnston’s assessment was that Randel squandered his fortune in “the prosecution of wild, chimerical schemes for self-aggrandizement.” And as no countervailing account survives, Johnston’s account is the one cited when Randel is mentioned in books or articles. One of Randel’s descendants takes issue with the conclusion and counters with family stories. She recalls her great-grandfather’s fondness for Randel. “He respected him for what he did. Thought that he was a visionary, trying to make the world a better place. That should be enough,” says Lee Howard Vosters, who now lives in one of Randel’s houses on Randalia Road. “He was eccentric, but my great-grandfather really liked him. Darwin and Audubon were in their time considered eccentric. In our family, eccentricity has never been a negative.” She says Randel had a reputation for being very private—not a recluse, but not spending much time with people. “Maybe he was working on projects. He had an engaged mind.”¹¹⁶

Johnston was correct about the squandered fortune, though. In 1849, Randel wrote to Clayton about finding work, saying Letitia did not want him to retire to their farm to “rust out.” And a profusion of court documents chronicles the woes of debt. By the early 1850s, Letitia and Randel were seeking to sell or to protect what remained of their assets, and chancery records and testimony from lawsuits reveal their labyrinthine efforts. In 1852 they put their steam sawmill up for the sale: “One of the very best situations in the union for procuring Timber,” read the advertisement. They owed money—about $14,000—to a neighbor, Jacob C. Howard, and drew up a trust in Letitia’s name, with their son, John M. Randel, as trustee, giving Letitia much of their remaining land. “People often did that to hide assets from creditors,” explains Hendrik Hartog. “This often gets misread by gender historians as women getting their own property. But it may have been a deal within the family to protect family assets. Which obviously didn’t work in this case; they got caught.” Letitia’s was a modern trust, Hartog notes, because she retained the power to sell land and to revoke the trust; probably, he says, either she or the lawyer insisted on those terms or it was standard practice in Maryland at the time. Some of the land in the trust, however, was already mortgaged to Howard. And the language of the cases is complicated, contradictory, and unclear, because, as Hartog notes, a lot was going on outside the court: “Clearly both sides are negotiating and strategizing.”¹¹⁷

If Randel and Letitia did design the trust to hide or protect their assets, that might explain an 1856 New York lawsuit in which Letitia sued Randel for $1,390 through her trustee, their son. Randel had borrowed the money from her and John, who was practicing medicine in Pennsylvania at the time. Letitia won. “It could be a way of scaring off creditors,” Hartog notes. “Although it is unlikely that the trustee would sue the father under these circumstances, it is not impossible. It seems inefficient, and it is expensive.” That lawsuit suggested that Randel and Letitia had perhaps separated. But the two appeared together again, in home and in court, well after the case.

Despite their legal machinations, the Randels’ plight worsened. In May 1858, Cecil County seized their possessions because they had not paid Howard. “On Monday sheriff dispossessed John Randel the celebrated engineer who some years ago obtained a judgment against the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Co. for $226,000. He has trifled it all away,” Judge McCauley wrote. The sheriff’s department listed the seized items in the Cecil Whig, including a family carriage, a buggy wagon, two cows, a wheat drill, a box, seven hogs, twelve pigs, one workstand, one piano, one bureau, one looking glass, a bedstead, a bed, clothing, and a clock. A few months later, on July 13, Letitia and Randel’s only remaining child died. John M. Randel had contracted yellow fever when he had gone to Virginia several years earlier, responding to requests for help from local physicians. He may have been weakened by that illness, or he may have contracted another. There is no record of what killed him, at the age of twenty-seven.¹¹⁸

Although Randel and Letitia had lost their land, they did not stop fighting in the courts to get it back. In 1860 they appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court from the Maryland circuit court, where they had brought a case against Howard on February 18, 1859, that had been dismissed. They described themselves as citizens of New York. And they described coercion, which was not the standard language of a fraud suit. They argued that Howard had intimidated and threatened them. Randel testified that he at first refused to sign Howard’s agreement but Letitia forced him to because she was scared for her life. The Supreme Court could make little sense of the case, writing that “the statements of this bill are vague and uncertain, frequently argumentative, and very rarely plain and direct. The whole bill lacks definitiveness. Agreements, friendly arrangements understandings, and fraudulent devices are spoken of, but the character of the agreements and the nature of the devices we do not learn . . . Are the complainants in a situation to enforce the trust, if one is established? We think not.” Cecil County chancery records show that Letitia kept fighting Howard well after Randel’s death. She was apparently unsuccessful and spent her later life living with Randel’s nephew in New Jersey.¹¹⁹

The Randels and the Howards eventually put aside their differences and married into each other’s families: Lee Vosters’s nephew is John Randall Howard, and Vosters herself was nearly named Letitia. Randel’s small fieldstone home has been extended and modernized, but the original main room endures. It has a low ceiling, a trap door leading to a sleeping loft, and a large fireplace, over which Randel would hang his muzzle-loading gun. Ernest Hemingway once sat in the small cozy room, visiting as a friend of Vosters’s father, Polk Steele Howard, who hunted and fished and knew Hemingway from Cuba. Vosters used to keep a dairy cattle farm, an asparagus farm, and the second largest sheep farm in Maryland on Randelia. Now she keeps blue-sheened guinea hens, corgis, and horses. Tall hedges surround empty fields and line the road. The land of Randelia, although no longer so called, remains green farmland. Thickets and woods hug the waterfront. Ducks still abound.

Randelia today. Photograph by the author.