The Windsor Locks Canal, Yankee Enterprise and Irish Muscle by J. Christopher Kervick.
Kervick’s compelling new book touches all the bases in the making of classic history. It is the story of human enterprise, ambition, invention, raw manpower, and the clash of cultures. This uniquely American accomplishment could not have happened without the unlikely convergence of three social and economic groups, including the wealthy merchants who conceived and promoted the canal, the brilliant young civil engineers who designed it, and the over four hundred Irish immigrant laborers who toiled from dawn to dusk in often lethal conditions to forge a better life in America. The synergy of these distinct forces created the backbone of Connecticut’s first planned, water-powered industrial center, one that remains profitable to this day.
Kervick skillfully reveals the story of Connecticut’s bold actions to retain its social and economic prominence as a leader of the industrial revolution. The ripple from this ambitious economic undertaking permanently expanded Connecticut’s ethnic and religious demographics. The book also demonstrates how the longstanding and fierce rivalry between Hartford and New Haven almost doomed the project from its inception.
The Windsor Locks Canal, Yankee Enterprise and Irish Muscle is about people as much it is about events. Not only does Kervick tell the story of the Windsor Locks Canal in far greater detail than it has been told before, but he humanizes the Irish Canal laborers along the way. In many instances, he introduces the reader to these remarkable men by name, the result of over 20 years of painstaking research to answer the basic question, “Who are these unknown laborers to whom we owe so much?”
J. Christopher Kervick is an instructor of local history at Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut. He recently completed three terms as First Selectman of his hometown of Windsor Locks, Connecticut, and, prior to that, served as a Connecticut Judge of Probate. He has been practicing law for over 36 years. A 1984 graduate of Fordham University, he is a 1987 graduate of Catholic University, Columbus School of Law.
His boyhood home was just three hundred yards west of the Windsor Locks Canal (originally known as the Enfield Falls Canal). In 2001, the State of Connecticut hired him to conduct a title search of the entire canal. The title search sparked his fascination with the story behind the canal, especially the plight of the over four hundred unidentified Irish immigrant laborers who built the canal, some of whom lost their lives in the effort.
