Michael Oates and The Erie Canal

I recently saw a statistic about the intensive migratory period of the 19^th century. The countries that sent the most people to the United States as a percentage of their populations at the time were Norway and Ireland. In my family this fact has special significance as I’m 75% Norwegian and my wife, Tripp Ryder, is 25% Irish.

I’ve written a couple of times in the past about Tripp’s paternal heritage, beginning with the Riders of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, the first of whom, Samuel Rider, arrived from England in 1636 or 1638. In this post I want to relay a story about the Fitzgerald side of her family.

Her Irish and German ancestors arrived in the 19^th century and made their homes in upstate New York near Buffalo. All of them got to the United States before any of my forebears. Tripp’s maternal grandfather, Daniel Joseph Fitzgerald, married the daughter of a German immigrant family, Hildegarde Julia Domst.

Daniel’s family lived in the city of Lockport, eponomously named because its location on the banks of the Erie Canal was chosen to accommodate a geologic feature known as the Niagra Escarpment. At this point the route of the canal drops 60 feet from east to west and locks had to be constructed to allow the canal barges to traverse the distance safely.

Originally there were five locks in an array known as the “Flight of Five”. These five locks were completed in 1825. Crews of lock tenders were needed each season to open and close the wooden lock doors, fill or drain the basins, and pull the barges through each successive lock. Most of the workers who built the locks were Scottish or Irish immigrants and they stayed in the community of Lockport after the work was completed.

In 1897, Daniel Fitzgerald’s maternal uncle, a stone cutter named Michael Oates, was selected as one of the lock tenders at the Flight of Five for the shipping season. To commemorate the occasion, a local photographer named Frank Clench snapped an iconic picture of the lock tenders sitting on the steps of one of the locks.

Fast forward to 2019 when sculptor Susan Geissler was selected to create the Lockport Lock Tenders Tribute Monument. She created twelve life-sized bronze statues of the lock tenders shown in Mr. Clench’s picture, plus that of a young girl who was the daughter of one of the lock tenders and also, a statue of the photographer at his camera. The figures are positioned in the same locations on the same stairs as shown in the photograph. The project took four years to complete and was installed in three phases.

The monument was completed in the fall of 2023 and was dedicated at a public ceremony with over 70 descendants of the lock tenders on hand. It has quickly become a tourist destination as townsfolk and visitors alike eagerly sit amidst the statues for keepsake snapshots.