Judge Oliver Strong, now eighty-five years old, still hale and hearty, in the full possession of all his faculties, and who for nearly half a century held important offices -- among them Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Member of Assembly, and County Treasurer -- and who all his life has commanded the respect of all men, has at various times reminded me of a conversation that occurred early in 1804, immediately after Mr. Geddes had returned from serving in the Legislature of that year, at Onondaga Hill, then the county seat, naming as present Doctor Walter Cotton, General John C. Ellis, Warren Ellis, and others. Mr. Geddes told the gentlemen present of the suggestion that he had received in Albany of a route for a canal across the country direct from Lake Erie, avoiding Lake Ontario entirely, and urged its importance, and the probability of the practicability of such a scheme. Judge Strong has written me a letter saying that he well remembers the election of Judge Forman in 1807; that Forman was well known to be in favor of a canal, saying -- "I know many of the party opposed to him politically voted for him under the belief that he would render essential service in promoting the object which was near the hearts of all at that time; namely the canal." Judge Strong voted at that election, and he verifies the date of the conversation of Mr. Geddes in regard to the information he had brought from Albany, by circumstances that leave no doubt as to the accuracy of his memory. In Mr. Geddes's letter to Dr. Hosack (page 262 of the Memoir) he said: "When Mr. Morris's project of constructing a canal across the country, the whole distance from Lake Erie to the Hudson, was made known and discussed in the interior, the scheme was adopted there, and spread with inconceivable rapidity."

In 1846 Judge Forman, feeble with old age, made a journey from his then home in North Carolina, to visit his friends yet alive in Onondaga. His presence here produced much excitement, which found some expression in a public dinner given him at the Syracuse House. At this dinner speeches were made, and the Judge's services to the State and this locality furnished a fruitful topic. Thomas Wheeler, then a resident of Salina, wrote a letter for publication in the Onondaga Democrat, from which the following extract is taken:

"In April, 1807, Judge Forman called on me at Salina, and wanted me to support him for Member of Assembly, and urged as an inducement that he wanted to make a proposition for a canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson; and also urged the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, and the great increase of the salt trade after it was finished. He alluded to the remark of Thomas Jefferson that there was money in the United States Treasury which might be appropriated to roads and canals; and took the ground that there was no other place where a canal could be made [on account of the Allegheny mountains] in the United States, but through the State of New York, to connect the great lakes with tide-water. He also stated that Gouverneur Morris had written from the banks of Lake Erie that the money that Great Britain had expended in one campaign in war would make a ship canal from where he stood to tide-water; that the canal, if made, must pass near where he then sat; that it should be a State concern and not a Political one; and went into a calculation of the expense, which with wooden locks, we made less than $5,000,000. Thus he urged me for more than an hour; but I refused. He then started to go away, and when near the door turned round and asked me if I ever stood on Caneseraga hills, and observed that the country north, east and west was level as far as the eye could reach. I told him I had; and then I thought if a canal was only made from Rome to Cayuga Lake, it would be of great advantage to this section of the State, and then I agreed to support him, and thought the business closed. But he was not satisfied. He wanted to see William Kirckpatrick, the Superintendent of the Onondaga Salt Springs. The Doctor came, and much the same arguments and calculations were used and gone through with, at the close of which Doctor K. raised both hands and said with much emphasis, 'I will support you.' Soon after, I gave a boy three dollars to attend the election in another town, and see that each elector had a ticket with Joshua Forman's name on it, which I think was the first money ever paid for starting the Erie Canal."

To give further information in regard to the election of Judge Forman in 1807, the statement of Mr. Ira A. Gillchres, who still lives in the town of Salina, is added to this note.

In 1806, coming from Whitesboro, Oneida county, with Capt. William Gillchres, his father, Judge Forman and others, from attending a lawsuit, in which Capt. Gillchres was a party, and Judge Forman was his lawyer, they rested on top of Caneseraga Hill. Judge Forman pointed out the level country north of them and said to Capt. G. -- "Is not that a fine plane? The time is not far distant when you will see vessels sailing along that plane; you will see the waters of the Hudson and Lake Erie mingled together." Explaining his views at length, Capt. G. became convinced of their value, and said to the Judge that he should go to the Legislature and get an appropriation for surveys. To this the reply was, that, being a Federalist, he could not expect to be elected. To this Capt. G. said he thought that his influence in the Democratic party might overcome that difficulty. Mr. Ira A. Gillchres goes on to say, that the political movement thus suggested by his father was made, and that the ticket at the election was headed "Canal Ticket," and that from Capt. Gillchres' tavern in Salina these tickets were sent over the county. The heading of the tickets was designed to give strength to the movement. This same Ira A. Gillchres was one of Mr. Geddes's party in his survey in 1808.

This long note is inserted that there may be no doubt as to the fact that the election in 1807 turned in Onondaga county on the question of a canal across the country (not by Lake Ontario), as this whole matter has been ignored by the claimants to the honor of first proposing the interior route, without having received the suggestion as coming from Gouverneur Morris.

In 1829 appeared Dr. Hosack's memoir of DeWitt Clinton. In the Appendix (page 301, &c.), Mr. Hawley sets up the claim to have been their originator of the overland route; and again, in the Monroe Democrat, in 1835, he pressed his claims on the public. To the Democrat Mr. Geddes wrote under the date of November 16th, 1835, and said: "In a letter written February, 1822, by Simeon DeWitt, Esq., the late Surveyor General, which letter has been published in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, he says -- 'The merit of first starting the idea of a direct communication by water, between Lake Erie and Hudson River, unquestionably belongs to Mr. Gouverneur Morris. The first suggestion I had of it was from him in 1803.' * * Mr. DeWitt further remarks -- 'Mr. Geddes says when in company with Mr. Jesse Hawley it [the canal project] became a subject of conversation, which probably led to enquiries that induced Mr. Hawley to write the essays which afterwards appeared in newspapers on the subject of carrying a canal from Lake Erie to Albany.' The above letter remained some seven years unnoticed, until 1829, when Dr. Hosack's Memoir appeared, containing Mr. Hawley's letter." Mr. Geddes goes on to say: "Bound in the same boards was a letter to Dr. Hosack from me (p. 226), in which I say I have not the least doubt that the ideas of every one on the internal route project are traceable to the conversations in 1803 between DeWitt and Morris. And was it not reasonable that no doubt should remain with me, seven years having passed away, without the appearance of any gainsayer?" * * * "In writing to Dr. Hosack in 1829, through precipitancy, not consulting dates which were at my had, I blundered respecting the year when I saw Mr. Hawley in Geneva and informed him of Mr. Morris's canal project. Mr. Hawley says it was at Geneva, when 'visiting his relatives with whom I boarded.' That this visit was in 1805, and not in 1806, can be proved by several persons now (1835) living, and by written records indisputable. In the Democrat of the 13th October, Mr. Hawley says -- 'The idea occurred to me about the 5th of April, 1805.' This was about two months after his interview with me, and not about ten months before, as he writes to Dr. Hosack." In Mr. Geddes's letter to Dr. Hosack, page 266, he says: "I have the most perfect recollection of circumstances, time and place, when I informed Mr. Jesse Hawley of the project. * * * I had a few days before seen a map of the country west of the Genesee River, from which I had received new ideas as to the probably track of such a canal, and finding in him a taste for such discussions, I conversed at length with him on the subject, and have no doubt but that I then informed him that the idea came from Mr. Morris."

Since the foregoing paper on the "Origin of the Erie Canal" was read before the Buffalo Historical Society, I have been favored by Gouverneur Morris, Esq., son of the projector of the interior route of the canal, with the opportunity of a full examination of such papers as are still preserved, that were left by that extraordinary man. From 1800 to within a few days of his death, in 1816, he kept a diary, but in which is entered only such matters as related to farm operations, the state of the weather, and the journeys he made; nor, except in rare instances, is there to be found any allusions to public events, or to public matters. Yet there were a few things that appeared worth reproducing here, as throwing light on some points discussed in the body of the paper. In 1803 Mr. Morris made a journey by way of Oneida and Ontario Lakes to his lands in St. Lawrence county. At Three River Point (the confluence of the Oneida and Seneca rivers), he appears to have been struck with the fact that the canal must not follow along the line of these rivers and the Oneida Lake, as by so doing it would be lower than the Rome summit; so he writes in his diary that it "should be taken from the head of the Onondaga [Seneca?] river, and carried on the level as far east as it will go, and, if practicable, into the Mohawk river; then, in as direct a course as circumstances will permit, to Hudson's river, making locks as the descent may require. This canal should, I think, be five feet deep, and five and forty feet wide. A branch might easily be carried to Lake Ontario, the fittest harbor would be, I believe at Oswego." This entry is dated Sept. 12th, 1803. On his way up he mentions the fact of having spent a night in Schenectady. This must have been the evening when, as related by Simeon DeWitt, he talked of "tapping Lake Erie, as he expressed himself, and leading its waters, in an artificial river, directly across the country to Hudson's River" (Canal Laws, vol. 1, p. 39.)

At Three River Point, Mr. Morris saw that a branch might connect the grand canal with Lake Ontario at Oswego. But my principal object in introducing this extract was to show, that Mr. Morris was willing to conform to the face of the country, "making locks as the descent may require." This would indicate that he was not so wedded to an inclined plane as to have made it necessary to have left him off a commission that he had been at the head of until 1816.

Among the papers was found the draft of a letter to Henry Latrobe, Esq., dated April 25th, 1810, informing him of the appointment of the commissioners and their proposed examinations. He says: "I hope that the business may be effected in a proper manner, for it is, I believe, the most extensive theater for skill and industry which can be found on this globe. But I fear that our minds are not yet enlarged to the size of so great an object, and I am thoroughly persuaded that the attempt at, and still more the execution of, any little scheme will probably prostrate, and certainly postpone, that which is along worthy of notice."

In July, 1810, while performing his duty in exploring as commissioner, Mr. Morris saw Mr. Ellicott at Batavia, and found him strongly in favor of the route near that place and by Allen's Creek to the Genesee river, and confident that a supply of water could be had for the summit level. Under date of July 21st, 1810, he enters the following in his journal: "We cross the Tonnewanda Creek this morning, and the view of it renders calculation unnecessary. Decidedly there is not water. At Vanderrenters, where we get breakfast, we met the representative of the county, who thinks there will be no difficulty in bringing a canal round the falls so as to use the water of Lake Erie. I am perfectly convinced that unless this can be done, every attempt at any useful navigation must fail."

After Mr. Morris was dead, great efforts were made by certain parties to show that when he wrote to Mr. Parish and talked to various persons in regard to ships sailing from London by the Hudson river to Lake Erie, he meant to have such ships go by Oswego through Lake Ontario and then around the falls of Niagara. His conversation with Mr. DeWitt in 1803, out of which sprang the measures that led to the construction of the canal, appears to be a conclusive answer to such caviling; and I cannot see any reason to doubt the correctness of Governor Seward's declaration in his introduction to the Natural History of the State of New York (p. 86). "To Gouverneur Morris, history will assign the merit of first suggesting a direct and continuous communication from Lake Erie to the Hudson." Cadwallader D. Colden, in his elaborate memoir, giving the history of the canal and of the celebration of its completion, takes ground (in the body of the work) against the claims of Mr. Morris to this credit, but in the errata et corrigenda, at the end of the volume, where few men have ever seen it, he has the following: "It is due to Mr. Morris to mention that since the memoir was written, the author has ascertained that when in the year 1800 Mr. Morris suggested the practicability of enabling ships to sail from London into Lake Erie, and when in 1803, he spoke of "tapping Lake Erie," he undoubtedly contemplated a water communication directly from that lake to the Hudson, and did not as the memoir supposes he might have done, refer to a communication by the Niagara Canal, and Lake Ontario." Much more proof of the position I have taken as to Mr. Morris's claim might be added, but I forbear, offering as an excuse for having given so much that recently groundless claims to this honor have been revived.