In the Episcopal buryin’ ground in Hudson street are the remains of a man to whom New York State, New York city, and the country in general, are vastly indebted–with a debt that will never be paid, not even in gratitude, not even in memory, for who of all the New Yorkers of to-day knows anythin’ of Christopher Colles? And yet Christopher Colles was the man to whom the Empire State, as much almost as to Clinton himself, is indebted for the Erie Canal.
The life and death of Christopher Colles isn’t very encouragin’ readin’ for a man of a thinkin’ and inventive turn of mind, and it don’t speak at all well for the appreciation of men and things in old New York.
Colles was an Irishman by birth, quite clever and tolerably well-educated. He could write and talk in five different languages, and was posted in all the scientific knowledge of his day. He began public life as a lecturer on scientific subjects, and got a hobby on internal navigation–a first class hobby, by the by. He came over with his lectures and his hobby to this country, and went into internal navigation with all his heart and soul. There was such a big field for it here.
In one of his public lectures in the city, Colles was the first livin’ man who ever suggested and recommended a navigable water communication between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. The idea was thought a wild one, as impossible as it was grand, at the time when it was uttered, and when Colles commenced to agitate it practically people laughed at him just as they laughed at Fitch about the steamboat, and Morse about the telegraph. But Colles let ‘em laugh while he talked and worked, and finally got a memorial of his hobby presented to the New York Legislature, and favorably reported upon by a committee thereof.
This was the first startin’ of a scheme which is to-day developed into one of the world’s familiar wonders, the Erie Canal.
But internal navigation wasn’t Colles’s only hobby. He had another hobby, connected with water (most of his hobbies had something to do with water) which was quite as important to New York city as the Erie Canal itself. I mean the supplyin’ of the Metropolis with water.
Colles believed in New York and its growin’ greatness. He saw that its water supply must soon be indefinitely increased, and seein’ this he set himself to thinkin’ about supplyin’ this want. From the first he believed in gettin’ New York’s water from Westchester county, and he tried to get a contract from the city for gettin’ the water supply from the Bronx River.
But even those two Hobbies were not enough for Colles. He paid his attention to the land as well as to the water, and, surveying the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, got up road maps of these States for the use of travelers. These road maps then were what our railway guide books are to-day, only it cost poor Colles a great deal more trouble to get up his road map then it does the publishers to get up the railway guide.
And yet with all his schemes for canals through New York State and all his schemes for supplyin’ New York city with water, and all his road maps through the principal states of the Union, Christopher Colles got poorer and poorer, till, at last, this man of brains and ideas, this man of hard thought and hard work, had to make band-boxes, and peddle ‘em for a livin’ in the city of New York.
And when the band-box racket had a lull, then he tried his cunnin’ hand at other things. He mixed paints for the painters a while and kept soul and body just together on that. Then he went into manufacturin’ proof glasses to test the quality of liquors.
And then at night he went about the streets of New York givin’ exhibitions with a telescope–which he made himself. At daytime he exhibited a microscope, of his own invention likewise, and between these two instruments night and day and a little marine telegraph which he put up on the old Government house at the Bowlin’ Green, he managed to earn about a dollar a day, from a grateful (?) and appreciative metropolis.
He made some friends though, some friends worth havin’–old Dr. Francis for instance, old John Pintard, Jarvis, the artist, Dr. Hosack and Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, five of the very best and smartest men in old New York.
Speakin’ of Colles’s friends, this Dr. Mitchell was himself a man who ought to be ever remembered in New York.
Not only was he for twenty years the leadin’ physician at the old New York Hospital in its best days, but, when he was a member of the New York Legislature, he did for Fulton and his steamboat project then, what Fernando Wood did for Morse and his telegraph in after years–gave ‘em encouragement and official aid, got ‘em what they were after, legislative sanction.
Perhaps it ain’t saying too much to say that every man and woman who now goes up to Albany on the fine day boats, or the still finer night boats, owes dead and gone Dr. Mitchell some gratitude, for if it hadn’t been for Dr. Mitchell’s comin’ to the front with his wisdom and influence, and securin’ Livingston and Fulton the privileges they wanted, the steamboat project might have been at least temporarily abandoned.
As it is, Dr. Mitchell had a hard time of it with the Legislature. The law-makers of that day laughed at what they called Fulton and Mitchell’s “hot water bill,” and one of the members, makin’ a speech, alluded to what he styled “the learned doctor’s tea-pot boat,” meanin’ the steamboat. The legislators grinned, but the doctor got his bill through, and grinned at the legislators.
Of course it was a thing for any man to be proud of, to have five such friends as those I have just mentioned. But one can’t eat friends. Friends ain’t fire and food and clothes and house-rent; besides, Christopher Colles wasn’t the sort of man to live off of friends. So he struggled on as best he could. When he couldn’t do one thing, why he did another. When he couldn’t get a new suit of clothes he wore his old suit. When he couldn’t pay for fuel he did without fire, and when he didn’t have any food he did without a meal. But at last this haphazard sort of a life told on his health, and poor Christopher Colles was stricken with a fever. He got worse and worse, and raved in his delirium about his canals and his water supply, especially his pet idea, the Erie Canal, which he shared with Clinton.
Just before he died he dreamed he was goin’ through Central New York towards Lake Erie on a canal boat, and with this dream, so delightful to him, he passed away. He died alone and in abject poverty.
And there were only three people at his humble funeral, in the Episcopal buryin’ ground in Hudson street–Reverend Dr. Creighton, the clergyman who buried him, and Dr. Francis and John Pintard, the chief and only mourners.
No memorial marked the restin’ place of this progressive man and public benefactor, and the very name of the dead man is unfamiliar to our ears to-day.
But it strikes me forcibly that some of our rich men couldn’t honor ‘emselves better than by doin’ somethin’ to honor the memory of poor Christopher Colles.
