The Windsor Locks Canal: Yankee Enterprise & Irish Muscle

The expansion of public infrastructure and the immigrants who made it possible have been defining features of American development. In The Windsor Locks Canal: Yankee Enterprise & Irish Muscle, author J. Christopher Kervick details one of the first cases of immigrant-based public works in Connecticut, showcasing the combination of Yankee entrepreneurship and Irish labor in the construction of the Windsor Locks Canal. Relying on more than twenty years of research in the United States and Ireland, this book brings the once-nameless Irish workers to life with stories of their origins in the old country and the infrastructure they created in the new.The story of the Windsor Locks Canal is framed amidst a broader narrative of internal improvement happening across the region. Spurred by the opening of the Erie Canal, the desire for river improvements grew as state governments and aspiring entrepreneurs sought to open up easier transport for commerce. Much of the book details Connecticut's efforts to tame its rivers, through improvements and canals such as the one at Windsor Locks. Kervick explicates the difficulty in attracting sufficient investment and support from legislatures to build the canal and organize a labor force. The contribution of aspiring Yankee entrepreneurs in leading such projects is well-detailed. They created new forms of corporate structures, such as the chartering of a banking company, which became a “precious commodity during this period” (83) and provide necessary credit for the construction.The book also spotlights a the new type of labor used in the canal's construction—Irish immigrants. Kervick uses sources from both sides of the Atlantic to track the laborers, including baptismal records, company documents, contemporary newspapers, and other sources. This immense span of research paints a compelling picture of the hardworking men involved. The author uncovers these workers, once nameless and unknown save for their contribution, and traces origins, motives, and the challenges they would have faced, such as dangerous working conditions and a lack of Catholic services.The Irish are described here as a new type of laborer—a poor, hardworking European immigrant, who would come to settle and shape the country over the next century. Irish laborers were thrown at the project carelessly, with little more regard than pack animals. Disease was rife, killing so many that builders on similar canal projects “expressed a preference for Irish labor over slave labor . . . because a dead Irishman could be replaced in minutes at no cost, while a dead slave resulted in the loss of a several hundred-dollar investment” (122). Indeed, deaths did occur in the project, and due to the lack of any local Catholic community, dying laborers either had to resort to priests brought in from New York for last rites, or forgo them entirely.Unlike the stereotypical image of an assimilating immigrant, no such assimilation into the community occurred. “The expectation . . . was that the Irish would move on to the next project as soon as the present project was complete” (123), Kervick explains. The Irish were cheap and plentiful labor brought in for a single project, rather than settlers. Still, although these Irish laborers did not, for the most part, remain, they are still important as pioneers. Kervick's extensive research fleshes out these heretofore unknown pioneers: “They weren't nameless. Each one of them had a name. We just don't know it” (12). The author accordingly provides the names of the laborers involved listed in an appendix, a fitting capstone for a project dedicated to shedding new light on them. “Combined,” Kervick concludes, “they created an America that became bigger than the sum of its parts. That is the canal's legacy and a reminder of the respect owed to every person who had a hand in its creation” (183).In sum, The Windsor Locks Canal: Yankee Enterprise & Irish Muscle is an excellent and concise case-study into one of the longest-lasting canal projects from the nineteenth century. Kervick's passion for local history and his years of research into the topic are richly felt throughout. The story of the Windsor Locks and its creators, financiers, and laborers are all given attention, particularly the long-ignored Irish laborers who finally come to life in the book's pages. For those especially interested in local history, in the history of immigrant labor more broadly, or of their own hearty Irish ancestors more specifically, the book will not disappoint.