19th century stockholder reports can be numbingly boring. Or you can choose to call them "interesting." I call this report interesting, because the report is printed by Lydia Bailey ...and because canals actually are interesting.
This 1828 report is the first stockholders' report of the company that created the Union Canal, a towpath canal that connected Middletown, on the Susquehanna River, with Reading, on the Schuylkill River.
This canal was the "Golden Link" for shipping lumber and coal to Philadelphia. It followed the Swatara Creek past Lebanon and Myerstown.
Today, the Union Canal Tunnel, in Lebanon County, is the oldest existing American transportation tunnel. It is Here.
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...and Speaking of Canals:
Above: This printed receipt doesn't really belong on this Lydia Bailey page, because she didn't print it. But the printer is anonymous, and I like the towpath cut, so here it is.
This is an 1845 receipt for hauling pig iron from Elizabeth Furnace in Brickerville, Lancaster County, to the canal at Graeff's Landing, in the southern part of Lancaster City.
This canal had been built 20 years earlier by the Conestoga Navigation Company, to connect Lancaster with the Susquehanna River at Safe Harbor.