Historic leaves, volume 2, April, 1903 - January, 1904

Meeting here bars they could neither let down nor remove, they went back to Richardson's Mill on Symms' River, and passed up the valley through the east part of Woburn to Wilmington, and found an easy and very regular ascent until they reached the Concord River, a distance traveled, as the surveyor says, ‘From Medford Bridge to the Billerica Bridge, about twenty-three miles, and the ascent he found to be, from Medford River to the Concord River, sixty-eight and one-half feet.’ The actual elevation, when afterwards surveyed by a practical engineer, was found to be 104 feet. By the original survey from Billerica to Chelmsford, the surveyor says, ‘The water we estimate in the Merrimac River at sixteen and one-half feet above that at Billerica Bridge, and the distance six miles,’ when in fact the water at Billerica Bridge is about twenty-five feet above the Merrimac at Chelmsford. This report shows one of the many difficulties the directors had to contend with for the want of requisite scientific knowledge. It will be seen that the Concord was thus at the summit of the canal, and able to supply water in both directions. It will be seen later how this fact was further utilized in the attempt to form an aqueduct of the canal.

On the first day of March, 1794, the directors passed a vote appointing Loammi Baldwin, Esq., to repair to Philadelphia and endeavor to obtain the services of Mr. Samuel Weston, a distinguished English engineer, then in this country working in the Potomac canals. If he cannot come, then that he endeavor to obtain some other person who shall be recommended by Mr. Weston, and that said agent be authorized to write to Europe for some suitable person for the undertaking, if none can be found elsewhere.

Colonel Baldwin made a lengthy and able report on the twelfth day of May, 1794. Among other things, he says he has engaged Mr. Weston to make the survey of the route in the month of June, and closes his report as follows: ‘I consider the prospects before us in this undertaking much more flattering, in respect to the execution of the work in proportion to the extent, than any I have seen in the Southern states, the Washington canal excepted.’