2025 marks the completion of building the Erie Canal, America’s most grandest and influential man-made waterway, first known as Clinton’s Ditch. To kick off honoring this extraordinary event, an epic drama will be performed in the Finger Lakes region in late June, just prior to the first shovel of dirt dug in Rome, NY, on July 4, 1817. It commemorates the 363 miles built through upstate New York’s early wilderness, to celebrate its completion and grand opening only eight years later.
The play chronicles the creation of the canal from the moment it was conceived in the mind of a Jessie Hawley, a Western New York flour merchant who had gone bankrupt after failing to find a timely way to get his flour to market. His influential arguments for constructing the Canal were contained in several essays widely read providing a major impetus leading to undertaking the monumental project. It was championed to its completion by Governor Dewitt Clinton in 1825, and depicts the setbacks through the War of 1812, to the crippling back- breaking struggles along the way from Albany to Buffalo.
The playwrights, Anne Paris and Hugh Pratt from Buffalo, NY, held a strong interest in social justice. Now both deceased, they spent five years researching and writing the play together. The play is being directed by retired Port Byron School drama director and Conquest Town Historian, Joni Lincoln. With over 35 years in local community theater aristry, Lincoln’s passion about the power of theater and her interest in Erie Canal history have been closely tied with those of the Pratts’ vision for the play, The story of building the canal is played through the eyes of its political advocates and opponents, engineers and low-wage diggers. It wasn’t just the workers who suffered. The play shows how the life of Clinton himself and his family were deeply affected. Clinton’s bouts of depression following by political defeat and ridicule had to be overcome as well as the untimely death of his wife, Maria. The play tells the story of the great hope for America’s future, and at the same time represents how the American spirit andingenuity gives a renewed potential to revitalize the very towns and villages that once prospered from it.
Merlyn Fuller, well-known as lead muscian in a popular theatrical group, Merry Mischief, will perform accompanying music. The show, sponsored by the Old Mentz Heritage Center will open on Saturday, June 21 at 2 PM and 7 PM; followed by Friday, June 27, at 7 PM, and Saturday, June 28, 2 PM and 7 PM. It will be performed at the Canal Society of New York State’s Samuel Center for Canal History, 38 Rochester Street in Port Byron, New York.
Tickets will be $10 at the door. Visit: old-mentz.org/events for more information.