1805.062: Petition for a Canal connecting Roanoke to Petersburg.
Published: 1805
Full Title: To the Honorable the General Assembly--the memorial of the subscribers respectfully sheweth: That your memorialists have long viewed with regret and concern, the many difficulties, embarrassments, and very great expence, the agricultural interest in the whole south western district of Virginia labors under, for the want of a water communication with tide water, in order to transport their produce with ease and convenience to a market. ... They therefore pray that your honorable would … pass a law for incorporating a company for cutting a canal from Roanoke to tide water at Petersburg.
Author: Sundry Inhabitants of Appomattox Valley.
Place Issued: Virginia
Issuing Press: Uncertain
Description: 1 sheet [1 pg.]; 35 cm. x 21 cm. (broadside).
Notes
The Assembly was agreeable to this petition, but deferred chartering a company to build the canal until a route was surveyed; so it simply passed an act "appointing commissioners to view the way for a Navigable Canal from Roanoke to Appomattox on February 1, 1806 (Chap. LXXXII of Acts of December 1805 Assembly). Sheet lacks colophon; only known copy of the petition, held by the Library of Virginia, has a manuscript date of December 12, 1805, which was the date it was submitted to the House of Delegates; Shaw & Shoemaker assigned this item to an unnamed Petersburg press; however, an origin in Lynchburg cannot be excluded given that all of the signatories on this petition lived nearer to that town, so the indeterminacy here.