The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-03-22

ten or eleVen years olu, put iehiciiA Der perfectly the appearance ot the poat
 and that it had the look of not being
 in use, but of having been run into the
 creek for storage and to be out of the IWay.
 It was probably fifty years after this
 that I was thinking one day about this
 coat and wondering who made It ana
 what was it's history, and I determined
 to make an effort to find out.
 I wrote to Benjamin Jarvis, an old
 gentleman then living in Cheshire, in-
 telligent and observing, but he knew
 nothing of 1t. I then wrote to Henry
 Farnam of New Haven, who was one of the engineers on the Farmlngton
 canal when it was built and was fla
 miliar with its early history He re piled that he had no recollection Of any boat having been run on the canal by
 steam and he fek sure if there had been he should have known it. However, my
 recollection of the propeller was too
 clear to be discouraged by such nega-
 tive evidence and I pursued my in-
 quiry I was at last rewarded by find ing David R. Williams of Prospect, who perfectly remembered the boat and told
 me the whole story It was invented
 and built by Benjamin Dutton Beecher,
 an ingenious mechanic whose special
 business was working in wood, but who
 could turn his hand to anything in a mechanical way. The boat was built
 at or mean a saw mill on small stream called on the map Mountain Brook"
 and which runs from the line of the old
 plank road near the Prospect line, east
 ward to Mixville
 It Is a picturesque valley and is now
 crossed by the Meriden, Waterbury and Connecticut River railroad not far from
 the site of the old saw mill The boat, when completed, was loaded on run ners and drawn by oxen over the snow
 three or four miles to Beachport Mir. l Williams thought Beecher purchased a
 second hand steam engine for the boat. | MT, Beecher's son says he invented and
 built a special engine for 1t, of which
 he has the drawings, but he may have used second hand engine at first The
 propeller was in the bow of the boat,
 so that as MT. Beecher expressed it, i emphasized by twist of the arm, she should bore her way into the water
 the action of an augur or a gimlet point pSiH6 SNlueIltly III illo llllHu
 MT. Williams told me that he was on
 her as an invited passenger when she' took her first trip on the canal from Beachport, going to Witchcock's basin, about four miles northward, and return
 ing. The voyage was a success; at least they went and returned without acci- dent. I think it was from MT. Williams
 that 1 learned that James Porter of Waterbury, whom I knew we'll, had married a daughter of MT. Beecher, and on applying to him I learned other de- tails and finally got in communication with Henry M. Beecher of Plantsvlle, a son of Benjamin D. Beecher, who gave me various other particulars of his fa- thers life and inventions.
 Benjamin Dutton Beecher was born at Cheshire, Conn. November ?, 1791, and was educated at the academy there, the late Admiral Foote having been school-fellow and lifelong friend. He learned the trade of carpenter and at the age of twenty two, during the war with England, he invented the first fam ming mill for cleaning grain known to the world, which he patented May Is. 1916. In 1928 he was living in Wood bury, Conn.,, where several of his chil- dren were born, In 1880 or 1891, he re- moved to New York city. While living in Woodbury October 20 1880, he re- ceived a patent for a grain threshing machine In New York he bought a steam tugboat, which he commanded i himself, and did a successful business and made improvements on the boat and engine. In 1882 when the cholera broke out in New York he left with his family by packet for New Haven and by canal to Cheshire. His son says { that so great was the fear and the | haste of their flight that they abandoned | everything but the clothes that they wore and that at some point they were quarantined for considerable period | in barn. He then took up his abode | in Cheshire on the Mountain Brook, near where the boat was built and | erected a shop with a water power at tached. He also, when his dam broke away, and he was in a hurry to com plete his boat, invented and built a horsepower which he patented in De- cember, 1883. In one of his trips on the canal Admiral, then Lieutenant, Foote accompanied him. H. M Beecher, then aged five, was with them and remem- bers the trip The propeller was placed at the bow of the boat rather than at the stern with the idea that less injury would be done to the banks of the canal by the wash, which for a long time was a serious obstacle to the use of steam for canal navigation. In 1S40 Beecher built boat which was placed on the Erie canal It was built and set up in Prospect, Conn.,, then taken in pieces and shipped to Troy, N. Y. This was probably done through some arrange nent with some interested capitalists, out no details have been learned nor anything relating to the result of the experiment.. About 1S46 or 1S47 Lieu tenant Foote was in command of the Charlestown, Mass, navy yard, and in he summer of 1S47 he sent for Beecher 70 conduct some experiments with the screw propeller He had apparently | lad his attention turned to the subject | oy seeing Beecher's boat and thought hat something could be made of it. His in Professor HoppiL's memoir contains several alluslons to his propeller, but very little in the way # detail.
 Congress or Ina naval departrneut 1