HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                  41

warehouse, and a commodious hotel, having a large number of rooms
and numerous outlooks, a house of greater proportions and pretensions
than any hotel building now in the county. This building, however, was
never completed and used as originally designed. The town which he
laid out at this point in 1852 was named Bellaire, from the circumstance
that Mr. Baker had lived for a time at Bellaire, Harford county, Mary-
land. He, too, engaged in canalling, and owned and operated the boat
known as the Eight 0’s. The Julia Dean, which was owned and run by
James Mushett, did business regularly at Bellaire, and made occasional
trips to Bowling Green. Mr. Baker was succeeded in business by Lewis
Row, who bought and shipped a great deal of grain. In 1857, Nicholas
Goshorn & Son located at this point, built a second warehouse, did ship-
ping for several years, and continued merchandisihg up to 1865. Though
this town had several stores, a post office, and shops for several years,
there are now no marks remaining on the site to indicate that it ever
existed. At the dam, private investment and improvement began at a
much earlier date. The town of Anguilla, at first known as New
Amsterdam, was laid out in 1838. As early as 1842 or 1843, the Wines
Brothers, Terre Haute, built a large flouring mill and saw mill, and also
engaged in general merchandising. The mill was run for several years,
up to 1850 probably, when the machinery was removed because of the
instability of the foundation from the encroachments of the water. The
frame afterward toppled over into the river and drifted away. The
Wines Brothers were succeeded in the mercantile business by Thomas
Harris, and W. F. T. McKee built a saw mill and a small grist mill near
the site of the former ones, which he operated up to the time of the
abandonment of the canal, shipping lumber to many distant parts of
the country, selling the best quality of poplar and walnut lumber at fifty
cents a hundred. There was, also, a post office at this place for a period
of twelve or fifteen years. This town, too, has been vacated, and the
passer-by does not now see that a manufacturing and business point, nor
a canal feeder, ever existed here. Besides Eel river and Splunge creek,
Birch creek was made to contribute to the, water supplies of the Wabash
& Erie canal by the construction of Birch Creek reservoir, in the central
part of the county, to which a branch or side cut was made from that
connecting the river with the main canal. The levee, or embankment,
confining this body of water, was thrown across the valley from east to
west between elevated grounds on either side, and was a half mile in
length, now the wagon road west from the railroad station. A part of
Saline City, and a section of the track of the Terre Haute & South
Eastern Railroad, are now on the site of this feeder. This reservoir was
built as late as 1853. The total extent of water transportation in the
county, including the side cuts and Eel river slack water was about forty
miles. From the best information which we have been able to command,
the Cross Cut was used for a period of ten years, the first boat having
passed through from Terre Haute to Worthington in the spring of 1851,
loaded with salt, and the last one, from Worthington to Terre Haute, in
the spring of 1861, loaded with flour, belonging to Augustus Stark, and
bound for Lafayette and Toledo.
    The construction of Splunge Creek reservoir was very objectionable
to the people of the vicinity, because of its supposed effects detrimental to
health. All the ague and fever in the neighborhood were attributed to
this cause, and the construction of Eel River Feeder and Birch Creek