The completion of the Rochester and Lockport section of the Erie Canal gave Rochester the impetus which made it a city, and the building of the railroad a few years later placed it on the direct route between the Hudson and Lake Erie.
The course of the old Erie Canal lay through the heart of the city. It crossed the Genesee River by means of an aqueduct of seven arches, 850 ft. long, with a channel 45 ft. wide. The aqueduct cost $600,000. The new barge canal passes through the city about three miles south of the old canal, and has a harbor in connection with the Genesee River, which is dammed for that purpose.
Rochester, between 1828 and 1830, was the centre of the anti-Masonic movement and here Thurlow Weed published his Anti-Masonic Enquirer.
The Anti-Masonic party arose after the disappearance in 1826 of William Morgan (1776-1826), a Freemason of Batavia, N.Y., who had become dissatisfied with the order and had planned to publish its secrets. When his purpose became known, Morgan was subjected to frequent annoyances, and finally in September, 1826, he was seized and conveyed by stealth to Ft. Niagara, where he disappeared. His ultimate fate was never known, though it was believed at the time that he had been murdered. The event created great excitement, and furnished the occasion for the formation of a new party in N.Y. This new party was in fact a rehabilitation of the Adams wing of the Democratic-Republican party, a feeble organization, into which shrewd political leaders breathed new life by utilizing the Anti-Masonic feeling. The party spread into other middle states and into New England; in 1827 the N.Y. leaders tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Henry Clay, though a Mason, to renounce the order and become the party's candidate for president. In 1831 the Anti-Masons nominated William Wirt of Maryland, and in the election they secured the seven electoral votes of Vermont. In the following year the organization grew moribund, most of its members joining the Whigs. Its last act in national politics was to nominate William Henry Harrison for president in Nov. 1838.
Subsequently, Rochester became the centre of the Abolitionist movement in New York State and for many years before the Civil War it was a busy station on the "Underground railroad," by which fugitive slaves were assisted in escaping to Canada. The fervor of the movement gave prominence to Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), the mulatto orator and editor, who established a newspaper in Rochester in 1847, and to whom a monument has been erected near the approach of the New York Central Station. The city was a gathering place for suffragists from the time when Susan B. Anthony settled here in 1846.
Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906), born at Adams, Mass., was the daughter of Quaker parents. Her family moved to N.Y. State where, from the time she was 17 until she was 32, she taught school. She took a prominent part in the Anti-slavery and Temperance movements in New York, and after 1854 devoted herself almost exclusively to the agitation for women's rights. She was vice-president-at-large of the National Women's Suffragist Association from 1869-1892, when she became president. She was arrested and fined $100 (which she never paid) for casting a vote at the presidential election in 1872. She contended that the 14th Amendment entitled her to vote, and when she told the court she would not pay her fine, the judge simply let her go. The case created much comment.
In Rochester also lived the famous Fox Sisters, Margaret (1836-1893) and Katharine, whose spiritualistic "demonstrations" became known in 1850 as the "Rochester Rappings." The city has been a centre for American spiritualists ever since.
Kate Fox
(From a daguerreotype)
The demonstrations of the famous Fox sisters began in the following way: in 1847 the Fox family moved to a house near Rochester believed to be haunted, from which tenant after tenant had moved out, alarmed by mysterious rappings. The Foxes did not hear these sounds until 1848, and then Kate, hardly more than a child, began questioning the rappings, and having opened what seemed to be intelligent communication, suggested the use of the alphabet. That was the beginning of what spiritualists call the "science of materialization." The exhibitions consisted of the usual phenomena, table turning, spirit rapping and the moving of large bodies by invisible means. The two young women gave public séances throughout the country, arousing an interest that spread to England. In 1888 Margaret made a confession of imposture which she later retracted. Claiming to be the wife of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, she published a book of his letters under the "Love Life of Dr. Kane." He had met her between voyages of exploration, fallen in love with her, and in one of the published letters addressed her as "my wife," but even she admits that there never was a formal wedding. He died at Havana in 1857.