The Erie Canal: The Men Nobody Wrote a Book About, Volume I

9,000 Irish laborers dug the Erie Canal by hand. Almost none of them were ever named in a history book.

This is the book they never got.

For Volume One of The Men Nobody Wrote a Book About, I spent months in the New York State Archives, reading the contractor payroll ledgers for the Erie Canal. Faded books of figures, kept between 1817 and 1825 so a contractor knew what he owed. They were never meant as a memorial. But buried in the numbers are names, and where the record held a name, this book uses it.

Patrick Sullivan. Michael Riley. James McCarthy. The diggers, the hoggees, the masons who cut the locks at Lockport by hand. Where the ledger gave only a number, the book says so. Nothing here is invented.

This is not a textbook. It is 14 chapters of the work itself: the handbill that drew 400 men out of a cargo ship at Cork Harbor, the swamp at Montezuma, the deep cut through solid rock, the Flight of Five at Lockport, the cholera year. It closes with The Roll, an appendix that names every worker the records preserved.

What you receive:

The complete digital edition, 14 chapters, 89 pages

"A Note on the Records" and "The Roll" appendix

An instant PDF download. Read it on a computer, tablet, or phone, or print it at home

Typeset in large, clear type, made to be read

A hardcover edition and a numbered Keeper's Edition are in production. If you want a physical copy for your shelf, join the waitlist.

If you watch Global Old History, you already know what this is. It is the men nobody wrote a book about, finally written down.