In his note to Charlie Pennyfield, Lee Fisher had said the place was “well knowed by Emmert Reed’s albino mule.” Lee was a young man when he wrote the message, and young men didn’t generally tend locks. They worked on canal boats. So if Lee was a boater, he would have passed through Edwards Ferry twice on each circuit between Cumberland and Georgetown. He would have had many opportunities to meet Emmert Reed and his memorable mule.
But Lee’s note implied that Charlie would also know Emmert Reed and his mule, and Charlie stayed put at Pennyfield Lock throughout the boating season… while Emmert was ensconced twelve miles upstream at Edwards Ferry. So when would Charlie encounter Emmert and his mule?
Vieira mentioned that Emmert sold smoked pork and turtle meat to passing boaters. But Vieira also wrote: “Reed’s nickname reportedly derived from his affinity as a younger man for the Georgetown taverns at the terminus of the canal.” As a younger man… M-Street Reed frequenting the saloons in Georgetown. From reading the Hahn and Kytle books last fall, Vin already knew who else visited those saloons: boaters, at the end of their runs to Cumberland and Georgetown, while waiting for their boats to be loaded or unloaded by the Canal Company.
Now it made more sense. The books had mentioned that many locktenders were former boatmen. Maybe, before he’d taken over Lock 25 at Edwards Ferry, Emmert “M-Street” Reed had captained a canal boat. If Reed had boated as a younger man, his albino mule would be known by locktenders and other boatmen. How many albino mules could there be along the canal? Maybe Lee Fisher started boating as a young boy, when Reed’s albino mule was still plying the towpath. Charlie Pennyfield would have seen the mule as well, unlike someone with less experience on the canal. So perhaps Lee was trying to make sure his message could only be understood by a canal veteran like Charlie.
Hopeful that he had unraveled a portion of the knot, Vin felt a flush of accomplishment. But his optimism deflated as he considered the ramifications of his reasoning. If Reed ran a canal boat with a team that included an albino mule, the entire canal would be “well knowed” by the mule! Lee’s message said the joined sycamores were at the edge of a clearing. But that clearing could be anywhere. The canal was 184 miles long!
Wait, he reminded himself. Think through it. Lee’s note said he might be buried along with the others “because of what happened today at Swains Lock.” So the truth was probably no more than a day’s walk away. Swains was at mile 16.7, Georgetown at mile 0, and Edwards Ferry at mile 31. That was the most promising terrain for his search.
Back to Emmert Reed. If I consider him a boatman rather than a locktender, what does that mean? Most boat captains came from the upper regions of the canal – Cumberland, Hancock, Williamsport, Sharpsburg. A few came from nearer towns, like Brunswick or Frederick. So even if Reed ended up tending lock at Edwards Ferry, it wasn’t surprising that Thomas F. Reed in nearby Poolesville told Vin that he had never heard of him. There weren’t that many locks, and old M-Street probably took the first locktending position he was offered. At least Edwards Ferry wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, as some locks were.
If Vin could find out where M-Street was from, maybe he could find a relative who still lived there. Of the books he’d reviewed, only Vieira’s book even mentioned Reed. But there must be some kind of surviving records from the Canal Company. Vin knew that during the last decades of the C&O, the Company owned all the boats and all the coal they carried. The boat captains might own their own mules and some of the boat rigging, but they were essentially hired hands. So maybe there were some employment records gathering dust somewhere that he could review. Something that would tell him where Reed lived during his boating days, or provide some other insight. Something that could steer him toward a particular place.
He set Vieira’s book on the table and headed for the entryway, plucking his car keys from the ceramic bowl on the table. He couldn’t remember the author’s name but was sure he’d recognize the book when he saw it again. He passed his desk and monitor without a glance and left through the door to the garage. Five minutes later he pulled into the Potomac Library lot.
The book was by Walter S. Sanderlin. The Great National Project: A History of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Published in 1946. The other books Vin had found were authored by well-read canal enthusiasts and included insights from interviews and personal observations. But Sanderlin had taught history at the University of Maryland. His book preceded the others by a generation and read like a dissertation. And its bibliography was meticulous. Vin found the lead he’d hoped for on page 298.
The most important sources for the entire history of the canal and its predecessors are the private records of the canal company and the Potomac Company… With a few exceptions the records are complete, and are deposited in the Department of Interior Archives of the National Archives.
He checked the Sanderlin book out and drove home. The National Archives were in D.C., somewhere down on the mall, right? Along with all the museums? He and Nicky had spent a Sunday morning on the mall a few weeks after they moved to Potomac. Everything was free, so they’d popped in and out of the American Museum of Natural History, both wings of the National Gallery, the Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn… They had a tourist’s map of the mall somewhere. He found it tucked into the living room bookcase. The National Archives building was near the center of the map, facing the mall from the north side of Constitution Avenue. The clock in the kitchen read ten minutes to noon. He slipped the map into the Sanderlin book and headed back out to the car.
***
The clerk at the research counter in Room 203 at the National Archives asked for Vin’s last name, examined his temporary ID badge, and turned to a row of wheeled carts behind the counter. The carts held gray document boxes, each of which was tagged with a copy of the document-pull slip, held on by rubber bands. The clerk selected two boxes and brought them back to the counter. After reviewing the indices in the Finding Aids Room, Vin had submitted his request to the Archives staffer less than an hour ago, and now his documents had been pulled and boxed. He signed the check-out sheet and carried the boxes to an empty desk.
From his desk he surveyed the room. The walls were gray brick masonry and a row of oversized windows looked out past Pennsylvania Avenue toward the columned façade of the National Portrait Gallery. Rustic wagon-wheel chandeliers hung from the high coffered ceiling, which had recessed wooden panels painted in a geometric pattern of warm colors.
He opened the hinged top of the first box to find a ledger bound in black leather, its title embossed in gold on the spine: Reports of the Trustees of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. Dates were written in longhand on its title page: March 3, 1890 – December 31, 1904. He leafed through sturdy pages covered in elegant script. Most of the entries were minutes of the meetings of the trustees for the Canal Company, who were appointed when the company went into receivership after the catastrophic flood of 1889 suspended canal operations for over a year. There were summaries of reports provided by various engineers on the cost of restoring different portions of the canal and reports on the status of petitions by assorted canal creditors. He closed the ledger and laid it aside.
From the second gray box came two more ledgers: The Chesapeake and Ohio Transportation Company and Canal Towage Company, Minutes of the Board of Overseers. The first one was dated January 30, 1894. It contained a company charter and a series of agreements between the trustees of the bankrupt Canal Company and the newly-established Transportation Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the B&O Railroad. Vin remembered reading that when the Canal Company went into receivership, the B&O Railroad had been its largest bondholder. The B&O was determined that the canal and its rights of way not be sold to its competitor, the Western Maryland Railway Company. So the B&O created the Transportation Company, which paid the Canal Company to maintain the canal for commercial use. In exchange for the token profit guaranteed by these payments, the Canal Company trustees agreed not to sell the canal.