15. A man imprisoned for debt helped inspire the construction of the Erie Canal
A flour merchant in Geneva, New York by the name of Jesse Hawley first envisioned what became the Erie Canal in 1805. Hawley encountered high costs and slow delivery times shipping his flour to markets. He invested heavily in a company created to improve river traffic, via a system of locks, to Seneca Falls, where he milled his flour. The company went bankrupt, his investments were lost, and Hawley found himself in debtor’s prison in 1806. There he began a series of articles and essays, publishing them in the Genesee Messenger, proposing the construction of a canal across upstate New York, connecting Albany to Lake Erie by water. Hawley had no training as an engineer, but his analyses of the difficulties encountered during construction proved remarkably accurate.
So did his assessments of the economic value of the project to New York and the nation. During his 20 months in debtor’s prison, Hawley wrote 14 essays extolling the value of a canal. Among the luminaries he inspired were DeWitt Clinton and Joseph Endicott, political supporters of such a project. Hawley failed as a merchant, though he became a revenue collector for the Port of Genesee in 1817. In 1840 Hawley returned to writing, with a tract examining the need to expand and improve the canal which he had largely inspired while in debtor’s prison. Hawley’s contribution to the creation of the Erie Canal is largely forgotten today, though he was one of the first to suggest its construction and describe its benefits to the world.