Huntingdon borough, Mount Union borough

Newton Hamilton on the Canal, and Its Bridges of 1873 and 1881

Newton Hamilton sits on the Juniata in Mifflin County, 21 miles above Lewistown by the count of Rupp's 1847 history, and the state canal ran through it. Ellis's 1886 history says the town was laid out about 1802, and that when Catharine Murfin came to live near it in 1826 there were seven log houses at the place. Rupp says it held only four huts until the spring of 1828, and that the building of the canal then raised it to some 30 or more dwellings, with several stores and taverns. Ellis says lots were sold from then on and that the canal had been surveyed through the place. The river makes a bend there, Rupp wrote, and above the bend the canal crossed on a splendid aqueduct.

The 1991 county engineering inventory says the canal was completed to Huntingdon by 1831. That spring, Africa's 1883 county history says, James K. Moorhead was appointed supervisor from Newton Hamilton to Huntingdon. Africa also reprints the Advocate's list of canal arrivals at Huntingdon for May 26 of that year. The first boat on it, the Emily, out of Philadelphia, had unloaded five and a half tons along the way, most of it at Newton Hamilton and Bell's Mill. The Columbian of Bloomsburg reported in June 1889 that the governor had approved a bill directing the Pennsylvania Canal Company to abandon public use of the canal between the dam west of Huntingdon and the first lock west of Newton Hamilton.

The bridge the town had in the 1870s was built under a court order. In March 1872 the Huntingdon Journal reported an order that left in force a Pennsylvania Supreme Court mandamus commanding the Mifflin County commissioners to build a bridge across the Juniata at Newton Hamilton. That July the Clearfield Republican said the commissioners, having neglected the order, were brought into court by the sheriff and each fined $500, and the Juniata Sentinel said the county court had issued an injunction against building it. In May 1873 the contract went to Jackson Lamberson of Huntingdon, at $17,965 by the figure in the Bloomfield Times.

The new bridge opened on Thursday, December 4, 1873. The Huntingdon Journal, reprinting the Lewistown Gazette, told of a wagon drawn by six horses and packed with nearly one hundred passengers driven across to three cheers, then dinner and speeches in the Town Hall. One speaker drew attention to this being the first free bridge ever put over the Juniata in Mifflin County. The paper gave it four spans, 643 feet long and 14 feet wide, costing $18,000 in round numbers.

On Friday, February 11, 1881, the ice began to move off the Juniata. The New Bloomfield Times reported that the first bridge to give way was the county bridge at Newton Hamilton. The Juniata Sentinel of Mifflintown said the Newton Hamilton river bridge passed that town about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and a dispatch from Huntingdon dated February 13, printed in the Centre Reporter, counted it among the bridges carried away. A week later the Sentinel recalled that it was a county bridge and had cost nineteen thousand dollars a few years before.

Ellis's history tells it differently. It says the bridge was swept away by the flood of October 8, 1880, and rebuilt by G. W. Keiffer of Sunbury, who completed it on February 11, 1881, for $14,895. That is the same day the newspapers say the ice took the bridge, and we have not settled how the two accounts fit. On October 26, 1881, the Juniata Sentinel said the piers of the Newton Hamilton bridge were above water level. In June 1889 one speaker quoted by the Pittsburg Dispatch said all the bridges near Huntingdon had been washed away except two, and that the most valuable bridges were at Mapleton, Mount Union and Newton Hamilton.

Checked against the record. We read Rupp, Africa and Ellis on the page images, and each newspaper item listed here on its page image in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive. The 1991 inventory we read as text. The date February 11, 1881 comes from the calendar, since the papers dated February 15 and 16 say Friday. Ellis is our only source for the October 1880 flood, for Keiffer and for the $14,895. We did not find that flood reported at this bridge in the 1880 papers we searched, which proves little either way. Rupp's four huts and Ellis's seven log houses do not agree, and we give both. The bridge cost differs by source: $17,965 on the contract, $18,000 in round numbers at the opening, and nineteen thousand dollars as recalled in 1881. The Bloomfield Times spells the contractor J. Lamberton, while the Huntingdon Journal, the paper of his home town, has Jackson Lamberson. Still open: the Mifflin County commissioners' minutes and the bridge contract, which would settle the 1880 and 1881 accounts. The 1889 abandonment comes from one newspaper's list of bills, and we did not open the statute. We have not seen the canal commissioners' reports or confirmed any lock, lockkeeper's house or warehouse in the town itself, so the story does not describe them.

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