Rethinking the C&O Canal
The old saying goes, “You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole.” Yet for more than 90 years, historians have said that somehow 92-foot-long canal boats on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal fit into locks that could hold boats no larger than 90 feet and probably less. It’s just one of the many questions that modern researchers are finding need to be answered about the C&O Canal. Some have easy answers that go against the accepted history of the canal. Others, like the question of canal-boat length, are still being researched. Both have historians and National Park Service staff rethinking how the C&O Canal operated. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal ended business operations in 1924. Since then, books have been written about the canal, historians have researched the lives of canallers and lock tenders, and the National Park Read more…
The engineering marvel hidden under a mountain
On the day that construction began on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on July 4, 1828, the pressure was on the work crews to get dig the 184.5-mile-long ditch to Cumberland as quickly as possible. Why the rush? The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad broke ground in Baltimore for its construction began on the same day and Cumberland was the prize for both the canal and railroad. The C&O Canal crews worked hard digging the canal and building 160 culverts, 74 lift locks, and 11 aqueducts. However, the canal has only one tunnel—the Paw Paw Tunnel—and it was a major reason why the B&O Railroad beat the C&O Canal to Cumberland by eight years. Construction When planning out the route of the C&O Canal, it could have continued to follow the Potomac River through southeastern Allegany County, weaving along the Paw Paw Read more…
The C&O Canal during the Civil War
While the Mason-Dixon Line being the dividing line between the North and the South, an argument could be made that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was the dividing line between the Union and Confederacy. Running alongside the Potomac River as it does, Virginia was directly south of the canal and Maryland was to the north. Whenever you read about an army crossing the Potomac River, it also had to cross the canal. The unlucky location meant that the canal was vulnerable to destruction by both the Union and Confederate armies “In some instances, battles were fought so close to the canal that the company’s property was hurriedly made into hospitals and morgues,” Elizabeth Kytle wrote in Home on the Canal. The canal boats were considered military targets and Confederate soldiers made a habit of commandeering them at the start of Read more…
Cover art for "Lock Ready"
Here’s the cover art for my new historical novel that coming out next month. Lock Ready is my first historical novel in seven years. It’s also been 10 years since I wrote my last Canawlers novel. Lock Ready once again return to the Civil War and the Fitzgerald Family. The war has split them up. Although George Fitzgerald has returned from the war, his sister Elizabeth Fitzgerald has chosen to remain in Washington to volunteer as a nurse. The ex-Confederate spy, David Windover, has given up on his dream of being with Alice Fitzgerald and is trying to move on with his life in Cumberland, Md. Alice and her sons continue to haul coal along the 184.5-mile-long C&O Canal. It is dangerous work, though, during war time because the canal runs along the Potomac River and between the North and Read more…
C&O Canal murder mystery has surprising solution
One of the oft-told stories of the C&O Canal is that of Lockkeeper Joe Davis. “Lock tender Joe Davis and his wife were murdered here by shooting in 1934,” Thomas Hahn wrote in his Towpath Guide. He expanded on the story in The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Lock-Houses & Lock-Keepers writing that Davis took care of Lock 61 in the last decades of the canal’s operation. Hahn wrote that the bodies of Davis and his wife were burned after the murder to try and cover up the murder. George “Hooper” Wolfe told a similar story in I Drove Mules on the C and O Canal. He did not name the lockkeeper and made no mention of his wife. He also wrote that the lockkeeper was murdered to steal his rare coin collection and that the murderer was later caught in Read more…
Get the "Between Rail and River" e-book FREE Jan. 22-24
To celebrate Canawlers coming back into print in paperback, I’m offering the second book in the Canawlers series, Between Rail and River, for free on you Kindle from Jan. 22-24. Between Rail and River picks up where Canawlers ends. As the Fitzgerald family struggles to make it through the winter of 1862-1863 and what has been a poor boating year on the C&O Canal, the Civil War is drawing ever closer to being fought aboard the Freeman. George Fitzgerald’s unexpected return from the war pits him against David Windover, an ex-Confederate spy, who now works and lives with the Fitzgeralds. Alice Fitzgerald struggles to hold her family together as a vindictive sheriff and a haughty doctor’s wife work to tear them apart. Tony, the street urchin from Cumberland, has found a life aboard the Freeman, but Sheriff Lee Whittaker has Read more…
"Canawlers" back in print!
It’s been a couple years since I allowed Canawlers to go out of print. I still kept getting requests from bookstores and some individual buyers to get copies, though. I went back and forth about it, but since I’m hoping to bring the third book in the trilogy out around Christmas time, I figured I would need to have the first book available, too. So I gave in and brought the book back in print. It is available today and it is still only $17.95. You can order a copy from Amazon and if it’s not in your favorite bookstore yet, they should probably be able to order it. Canawlers is a family saga set on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal during the Civil War. Hugh Fitzgerald proudly calls himself a “canawler.” He works on the C&O Canal transporting coal Read more…
“The Race” is now available as an e-book
I first wrote The Race in 2003 as a promotion that CanalPlace in Cumberland gave away as part of CanalFest that year. It was fun to jump my Canawlers series ahead a decade and write a story featuring Tony and Thomas. With this new release of The Race (which has been out of print for two years), I was also able to go back through the story and fix some mistakes and add a little bit more to it. The Race is set in 1872 in Shanty Town, the rowdy, waterfront area of Cumberland, Maryland. In a drunken celebration of his 20th birthday, canaller Tony Fitzgerald made a stupid boast and an even stupider bet. He will race his canal boat against a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train for three miles along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal where it parallels Read more…
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