​Last week, we discussed the impacts of cholera and yellow fever on Rondout in the 1830s and ‘40s, but New York City underwent similar epidemics throughout the early 19th century. At the same time, rising population in New York City, as well as efforts to fill in its brackish wetlands and shorelines, was creating a problem with the water table and pollution. Fresh drinking water was becoming more and more scarce in the growing city and natural water sources were increasingly contaminated by sewage and industrial wastes. 

Enter a pie-in-the-sky idea for yet another enormous engineering marvel (New York’s canals being the previous pipedreams turned reality) – the Croton Aqueduct. The idea was simple – pipe clean water from the relatively unspoiled Croton River through gravity-fed aqueducts to New York City. Aqueducts were certainly not a new idea – the Romans had invented them, after all – but to construct something on this scale was a rather startling idea.

Following the cholera epidemic of 1832, Major David Bates Douglass, an engineering professor at West Point and one of a new school of civil engineers, surveyed the proposed route in 1833. Bates was an excellent surveyor, but had proposed no practical plans for physical structures, and so was fired in 1835.
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As early as 1835, before construction even began, the project was gaining national attention. An article from the Alexandria Gazette (Richmond, VA) from December 25, 1835 discussed the plan, writing, “In carrying into effect the contemplated plan of supplying the City of New York with water from the Croton River, an aqueduct, we believe, is necessary across one of the rivers. If this is so, the experience gained to that city and the county in submarine architecture, by the works now going on at the Potomac Aqueduct in connexion with the Alexandria Canal, will be invaluable.” 

​December, 1835 gave New York City another reason to want abundant supplies of water – the Great Fire of New York of 1835 wiped out most of New York City and bankrupted all but three of its fire insurance companies. The fire would spur a number of reforms, including an end to wooden buildings (a boon for the Hudson Valley’s brick, cement, and bluestone industries). But many wondered, had the aqueduct already been in place, if more of the city would have been saved.

John B. Jervis, who cut his teeth on the construction of the Erie, D&H, and Chenango canals as well as early railroads, became Chief Engineer on the Croton Aqueduct project in 1836, and construction began the following year.
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The Croton River was dammed and thousands of laborers, many of them Irish, commenced digging tunnels by hand and lining them with brick. On August 22, 1838, the Vermont Telegraph published a good description of the work: “The Aqueduct which is to bring Croton river water into the city of New York, will be 40 miles long. It will have an unvarying ascent from the starting point, eight miles above Sing Sing to Harlem Heights, where it comes out at 114 feet above high water mark. A great army of men are now at work along the line, and at many points the aqueduct is completed. The bottom is an inverted arch of brick; the sides are laid with hewn stone in cement, then plastered on the inside, and then within the plaster a four inch brick wall is carried up to the stone wall, and thence the top is formed with an arch of double brick work. It will stand for ages a monument of the enterprise of the present generation.” 

On November 11, 1838, a newspaper in Liberty, Mississippi reported on a bricklaying contest – “In a match at brick-laying in a part of the arch of the Croton Aqueduct, between Nicholson, a young man of Connecticut, and Neagle, of Philadelphia, the latter was a head when his strength gave way, having laid 3,700 bricks in 5 ½ hours. Nicholson continued a half hour longer, when he had laid 5,350. The work was capitally done.”

On September 12 of that same year, the Alexandria Gazette chimed in again, noting, “There are full four thousand men employed on the line of the Croton Aqueduct, which is to supply the city of New York with pure and wholesome water. About six of the sections will be completed this fall. The commissioners will now proceed to contract for the ‘Low Bridge’ across the Harlem river, according to the original plan. The whole, when finished, will be the most magnificent work in the United States.” 

The Low Bridge the Gazette referred to was originally planned to go under the Harlem River, but this was quickly abandoned. Instead, what is now known as the High Bridge was constructed in stone – its arched support pillars strongly reminiscent of Roman aqueducts. High Bridge was designed by Chief Engineer John B. Jervis and completed in 1848. It remains the oldest bridge in New York City.

Indeed, the High Bridge and the whole aqueduct warranted a lengthy newspaper article – almost the whole page – August 27, 1839 edition of the New York Morning Herald. Cataloging the extant Roman aqueducts around the world, defining the difference between an aqueduct and a viaduct (aqueducts carry water across water – viaducts carry water across roads), and in all comparing the Croton Aqueduct, and especially the High Bridge, quite favorably to all its predecessors.

But not all was well in construction. The Morning Herald wrote extensively of the aqueduct again on September 4, 1839 claiming, “owing to the gross mismanagement that has prevailed in the office of the water commissioners, the expense of the work has been twice as much as it ought to have been, and after all it will be very defective in many of its most important points; and independent of the immense trouble and the large sums of money that will perpetually be required to keep the whole of it in repair, we have not the least doubt that, when the work comes to be proved by passing a large body of water through it, at least one-sixth part of it will have to be pulled down and rebuilt.”

The article continues on in that vein for quite some time – the principal complaint besides cost being that, unlike the Romans (who also used better quality brick and cement), the Croton Aqueduct would be largely hidden from sight, and the iron pipes would “burst upon the first pressure,” claiming that the commissioners “wanted to oblige some friend who was an iron founder, and to give him a fat contract, by which he could get rid of a quantity of old metal.”

Of course, the editor of the Morning Herald seemed to have ulterior motives, as he negatively connected the Croton Aqueduct with President Martin Van Buren’s campaign for reelection in July of that year, and blamed politicking for the delays and purported graft. He also seemed to hold a grudge – the Morning Herald reported endlessly about the aqueduct, but also about purported mismanagement. No other newspaper from the era reported similar claims. However, an article in the Richmond Gazette (Richmond, VA) from July 28, 1842, does hint at the enormous cost of the project, but brings up the 1835 fire and its enormous cost as a justification for the price.

At 5 A.M. on June 22, 1842, water began flowing through the Croton Aqueduct. The water commissioners, aboard the small vessel the Croton Maid of Croton Lake, went with it. The 16 foot long, four-person barge was especially built to traverse the tunnels and continued until High Bridge, which was not yet completed. On June 27, the Croton Maid was carried across the river and the commissioners continued back into the aqueduct, arriving at the York Hill Reservoir to a 38 artillery gun salute.

The following day, the Board of Water Commissioners submitted a report to Robert H. Morris, the Mayor of New York City. It was printed in the New York Herald on June 25, 1842.

“SIR – The Board of Water Commissioners have the honor to Report, that on Wednesday, the twenty second instant, they opened the gates of the Croton Aqueduct at its mouth, on the Croton Lake, at 5 o’clock in the morning, giving it a volume of water of 18 inches in depth.

“The Commissioners, with their Chief and Principal Assistant Engineers, accompanied the water down, sometimes in their barge, ‘the Croton Maid of Croton Lake,’ and sometimes on the surface of the Aqueduct above.
“We found that the water arrived at the waste gates at Sing Sing, a distance of 8 miles in 5 hours and 48 minutes: here we suffered the water to flow out at the waste gates until 12 o’clock, M., when the gates were closed on a volume of about 2 feet in depth. The water then flowed on and arrived at Mill River waste gates at a quarter past 3 o’clock, a distance of 5 miles.

“It was there drawn off through the waste gates for half an hour, and was, at a quarter before 4 o’clock, allowed to flow on. We continued to precede it on land, and to accompany it in our boat, in the aqueduct, to Yonkers, a distance of 10 miles, where it arrived at half past 10 o’clock at night. Here we permitted it to flow at this waste gate until a quarter past 5 o’clock in the morning, when the waste gates were closed, and it flowed on and arrived at the waste gate on the Van Courtlandt farm, a distance of five miles and a half, in three hours and a quarter. Here we permitted it to flow out of the waste gates for two hours when the gates were closed, and it flowed, in two hours and twenty minutes, a distance of about four miles and three quarters, down to the Harlem river, where the Commissioners and their Chief Engineer emerged to the surface of the earth in their subterranean barge at 1 o’clock, June 23d.

“The average current or flow of the water has been thus proved to be forty-five minutes to the mile, a velocity greater, we are happy to say, than the calculations gave reason to expect.

“It is with great satisfaction we have to report, that the work at the dam, on the line of aqueduct proper, the waste gates and all the appendages of this great work, so far as tried by this performance, have been found to answer most perfectly the objects of their construction.

“In conclusion, we congratulate the Common Council of the city, and our fellow citizens, at the apparent success of this magnificent undertaking, designed not for show, nor for luxury, nor for glory; but for health, security against fire, comfort, temperance [note: a reference to the habit of mixing New York water with alcohol to make it safe and palatable to drink] and enjoyment of our whole population – objects worth of a community of virtuous freemen.

“With great respect, we remain, your obedient servants, Samuel Stevens, John D. Ward, Z. Ring, B. Birdsall.
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“P.S. – We expect the water will be admitted into the Northern Division of the Receiving Reservoir on Monday next, at half-past 4 o’clock, P.M. at which time and place we shall be happy to see yourself and the other members of the Common Council.”

In fact, the water did not begin to fill the Manhattan reservoirs until July 4, 1842. The official celebration was reserved for October 14, 1842. The New York Herald reported the following day, “The celebration commenced at daylight with the roar of one hundred cannon, and all the fountains in the city immediate began to send forth the limpid stream of the Croton. Soon after this, the joyous bells from a hundred steeples pealed forth their merry notes to usher in the subsequent scenes. At and before this moment, over half a million of souls leaped simultaneously from their slumbers and their beds, and dressed themselves as for a gladsome gala day – a general jubilee.”

Workers were given the day off and an enormous parade, with representatives from every official organization in the city followed, ending at City Hall Park, where an enormous fountain was flowing. Again, the New York Herald, “For several days previous, thousands of strangers had been pouring into the city from all parts of the country, to see and join in the procession, until there must have been at least 200,000 strangers in the city, making an aggregate with the resident inhabitants of half a million of souls congregated in our streets.”

The opening of the Croton Aqueduct marked a period of transformation for New York City. Already one of the most important port cities in the nation, the abundance of clean water meant that urban and industrial growth could continue apace. The aqueduct was expanded several times, but in 1885 the “New Croton Aqueduct” was constructed. The Old Croton Aqueduct continued to be used until the 1950s, and is today a park – many of its old aqueduct bridges are now pedestrian bridges, as had been suggested during their original construction. The New Croton Aqueduct is still in use, still bringing Croton River water to New York City.

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In these days of pandemics, it is sometimes helpful to look back at the past to see how people coped with them at the time.

Although epidemics were not uncommon in New York State throughout the 18th and 19th century, the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1849 seemed to hit especially hard. Cholera is a waterborne bacterial infection that usually attacks the small intestine and is often fatal. Transmitted through the water supply, especially through water contaminated with fecal matter, cholera causes severe diarrhea and dehydration and is sometimes called "Blue Death," because of the grayish tone skin can take from extreme dehydration. ​

Prior to the 1850s, few cities anywhere in the U.S. had made any organized attempts at sanitation and drinking water supplies were often contaminated by the raw sewage most municipalities dumped right into waterways, or allowed to build up in underground pits and cesspools for outhouses. 

In account of the 1832 cholera epidemic at Poughkeepsie, Dr. Sherrill Hunting, author of numerous medical texts, described the symptoms thusly [editor's note: paragraphs have been added to assist with readability of this historic text],

"About the time when the Epidemic Cholera appeared in this village [Poughkeepsie], in a confirmed manner, some changes took place in the character of diseases, and in the situation of the health of the inhabitants, which subsequent observation showed to be precursory symptoms of the cholera.

"A langour and uneasy sensation was complained of by many, and diseases of the stomach and bowels were very common. At length cases of diseases occurred, attended with symptoms of unusual severity, and somewhat novel; they excited a great deal of anxiety and alarm, and finally engaged the attention of the public authorities.

"As has generally been the case, professional opinions were divided, as to the nature of the features of the new complaint that occurred. During the prevalence of the epidemic, every person in the village seemed to be affected with the primary premonitory symptoms; all had a preternatural red tongue, which sometimes was covered with a whitish slimy moisture; the pulse was small, quickened and rather chocked, it seldom beat free and easy, and in some cases it was very obscure, while the person was about and apparently in good health. In most persons, there was an uneasy sensation of the alimentary canal.

"What was considered the premonitory stage was a diarrhoea, pain and uneasiness of the stomach, nausiea or vomiting, and a difficulty of breathing, as though there was a deficiency in the supply of oxygen.

"When the symptoms passed this stage, the features constituting the formed state of the disease, have often been enumerated, and were about the same here, as were noticed to have existed in other places. Connected with the aforementioned symptoms, they consist of pain and uneasiness of the bowels, and more particularly of the stomach; a weighty or vacant sensation, a tight fullness of that organ, diarrhoea, vomiting, the discharge generally watery, whitish, and fluculent, sometimes dark brown or reddish; spasms generally more or less severe across the stomach, extending to the extremities; in some cases there are no spasms; coldness of the extremities and of the body; pale, purple or leaden colour of the skin; hands and feet moist; fingers shrivelled, withered and soaked in appearance; features livid; eyes sunken and surrounded with a dark zone; voice small, feeble, sepulchral; respiration very laboured; tongue in the moderate cases, red, furry, covered with whitish slime, or a white erect scurff, sometimes entirely clean and red; in violent prostrated cases, tongue pale, cold, blueish; pulse in mild cases, sometimes tense, generally in all, soft, small, slow, gurgling, nearly imperceptible, or entirely so.

"Some have had excessive thirst, others very little - no one case is marked with all those symptoms, but more or less of them are present to constitute the disease; but the invasion is not always in a regular train, sometimes it attacks suddenly, without the premonitory symptoms, except a red tongue and an altered pulse; this I believe always attends."

- From: An essay on epidemics: as they appeared in Dutchess county, from 1809 to 1825; also, a paper on diseases of the jaw-bones; with an appendix, containing an account of the epidemic cholera, as it appeared in Poughkeepsie in 1832 by Sherrill Hunting (1783-1886), published in 1832. 

Sadly, Dr. Hunting's methods of treatment were the common ones at the time - he bled the patients and administered an emetic, or something to make the patient vomit. In severe cases, sometimes "external warmth and friction" were used to try to bring the patient around. He did note that in some severe cases, the blood drawn "remained black and unchanged in the bowl; it seemed to have lost the property of attracting oxygen from the atmosphere, as blood generally does when thus exposed." But dehydration was the real culprit with cholera, and in a time long before the use of intra-venous solution to re-hydrate patients, there was little period doctors could do once a patient was infected. 

You can read Dr. Hunting's book yourself, along with the accounts of individual patients he oversaw. A digitized copy is available online courtesy the US National Library of Medicine. There are reports from the period that the book sold very well in Ulster County as well as Dutchess.

Cholera is spread when infected people contaminate water supplies. Rondout was particularly susceptible to these sorts of diseases due to its role as a busy port. A New York State Department of Health report from 1911 recalled, "Owing to the easy means of intercourse with the seaboard, Kingston has suffered severely on several occasions from epidemics and plague. In 1832 a cholera visitation was felt and in 1849 a repetition caused a fearful loss of life and a great depression in business. In 1852 it broke out again but the lesson learned in 1849 was so well taught and the city was so well cleaned that the epidemic gained no foothold and was soon stamped out." 

The Jeffersonian Republican, a Pennsylvania newspaper, reported the national numbers in an article entitled "The Cholera" on Thursday, July 12, 1849. After the headline of cases and death (outlined above), the very first words of the article were, "The cholera has been fearfully prevalent at Rondout, the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson canal, where a large number of vessels are constantly lying, taking in coal." 

A few days later, on July 16, 1849, the Oneida Morning Herald, based out of Utica, NY, reported, "The little village of Rondout, Ulster Co., situated at the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson canal has suffered greatly. So far there have been 60 cases and 27 deaths by cholera. Rondout is a village containing about 2,000 inhabitants."

​Despite the deaths, several local residents pitched in to help. Dr. Abraham Crispell, a descendant of New Paltz French Huguenots, moved to Rondout in 1849 to start his medical practice. Almost immediately he was confronted with the cholera epidemic. He later served as a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War, working in South Carolina and Buffalo before returning to Rondout at the end of the war.

Daniel B. Stow was another Rondout resident commended for service during the cholera epidemic. A harness-maker, he and three others "performed the heroic work of burying the dead and administering to the needs of the afflicted," according to A History of Ulster County, Volume 2. He was married to Emily B. Delaney the same year, 1849. After the epidemic, he opened a his own harness making shop. 

The cholera epidemic had a negative effect on the D&H Canal, however, as scores of boatmen, lock tenders, and other canal workers left the area to search for work elsewhere. The D&H Canal Company move 50,000 fewer tons of coal than estimated.

In all, over 80 people died in Rondout alone. 

​1849 was a momentous year for Rondout, and not only due to the cholera epidemic. It was the first meeting for the election of officers for the village (election held May 1, 1849). At their first meeting, a fire company was established for Rondout and taxes were raised to outfit it. They also established a board of health to "adopt suitable precautions against the danger of cholera" and set up the store house of the steamboat Emerald as a hospital. 

Perhaps most interestingly was that the following year, in 1850, the rural cemetery of Montrepose was founded - a direct result of the deaths from the cholera epidemic.
As with many cities in the mid-19th century, urban churchyard cemeteries were becoming overcrowded, and public health officials worried about the spread of disease from miasma. Rural cemeteries were a popular, park-like alternative, and Montrepose was no exception. Many bodies were exhumed and reburied at Montrepose.

The need for the new cemetery became clear decades later. On March 30, 1909 the Kingston Daily Freeman reported that workmen at the site of the Holy Spirit Church found a skeleton where one was not expected. The church yard graves had previously been exhumed and moved to Montrepose. "An old man who stopped to watch the workmen digging said he could remember hearing folks tell that when the cholera epidemic was prevalent in Rondout, scores of bodies were buried at that spot with little ceremony. As soon as people died they were carried on wagons and dumped into holes dug in the ground and the drivers hurried away for more corpses." 

For a town of a little over 500 people to have 80 deaths just a few years after two other epidemics must have been shocking. But it was the beginning of the end for epidemics at Rondout. Although several others broke out over the years, often introduced by steamboat, the losses were never as severe as in 1849. 

Today, as officials in New York City are contemplating turning once again to Hart Island to bury those who have died from coronavirus, and as ships and individuals undergo quarantine, it can be helpful to remember that people in the past weathered such disasters as well. 

Stay tuned next week for a follow-up article on sanitation and water quality projects begun in response to disease outbreaks and epidemics like the cholera epidemic of 1849. 

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