Child’s Basin: Center for Commerce and Intellect
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garmin_geek
N 43° 09.283 W 077° 36.676
18T E 287689 N 4781306
Passengers (Erie Canal) brought inventions, entrepreneurship, political ans social ideas to Child's Basin.
Waymark Code: WM9AWF
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 07/24/2010
Views: 14
Child’s Basin: Center for Commerce and Intellect
“Within the city, Child’s Basin was the busiest point on the canal.”
“Passengers boarded and those going farther west sometimes disembarked to take the stage coach, for it was a shorter trip before the canal was straightened and the stage could travel faster…”
“The ‘runner’ is picking up passengers… the ice man goes from boat to boat offering his ‘cold comfort,’…”
“then comes the bread and cracker peddler, the radish or vegetable merchant..the posy girls.”
“the measure is only filled up by the din of horns, the profanity of boatmen and drivers, and the orders of the ‘captains’, whose voices loom, up amid the general confusion.”
Jonathan Child (1795 – 1860)
Owned Child’s Basin and Childs Slip. Married Sophia Rochester, daughter of the city’s founder Nathaniel Rochester. First mayor of the city of Rochester in 1834, resigned after refusing to sign liquor licenses. His residence on Washington Street in Corn Hill overlooks the old Erie Canal and is a historic landmark.
The Underground Railroad
Its proximity to Canada made Rochester one of the most active sites on the Underground Railroad and a center of the abolitionist movement.
Frederick Douglass, former slave, anti-slavery orator and publisher of The North Star, and Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, abolitionist and temperance advocate, made their homes in Rochester.
Many activists, speakers, conference attendants and fugitives from slavery passed through Child’s Basin. Nearby Main Street was an abolitionist hotbed." (sign text)
Group that erected the marker: City of Rochester
Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary:
E. Broad Street & Exchange Street
Rochester, NY USA
URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: Not listed
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