WEEDSPORT - The creation of the Erie Canal played an important role in the development of many areas of New York state, from commerce to the growth of towns and villages along the canal, such as Weedsport.

Organizations such as the Old Brutus Historical Society are dedicated to the preservation of that rich history.

On Monday night, the historical society welcomed Auburn resident Samuel V. Kennedy III, to speak on author Samuel Hopkins Adams, who dedicated a part of the body of his work to the Erie Canal.

Kennedy, who retired in 2001 from Syracuse University, where he taught journalism for 25 years, wrote his dissertation on Adams, a work that was expanded into a biography titled “Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing”.

Kennedy began his talk by giving a little background on Adams, a prolific writer, who Kennedy said wrote 55 books and more than 450 magazine articles and short stories, as well as working as a journalist for the New York Sun, attaining notoriety as one of the “muckrakers,” focusing on patent medicines.

“He is one of the forgotten writers,” Kennedy said. “He is part of the school of populist writers in the first half of the 20th century. I call him a yeoman writer. He always sought the big book, but he was truly a storyteller.”

Adams was born in Dunkirk and grew up in Rochester. Kennedy said Adams spent a great deal of time in his youth on the canal, participating in activities such as ice skating.

But his time near the canal instilled something more in Adams.

As he grew as a writer, perhaps attaining his greatest notoriety for a story called “Night Bus,” which was later adapted into the film “It Happened One Night,” Adams never forgot the canal.

Kennedy said Adams moved to Auburn and lived on Owasco Lake, where he began work on a trilogy of novels focused on the canal.

“He wrote in many different genres,” Kennedy said. “When he was 70, he decided to work in a new genre and he started writing about the canal.”

These works include the books “Canal Town,” “Banner by the Weyside” and “Sunrise to Sunset,” all of which focused on various aspects of life on the canal, from the perspective of characters ranging from soldiers to actors.

Kennedy said these works were fairly successful with “Canal Town” selling around 350,000 copies.

But even after these works, Adams still had more to say about the canal, writing 24 published pieces that were later collected as “Grandfather Stories,” recalling tales of Adams' grandfathers and his own life along the canal.

Kennedy said Adams also went on to write a children's book in the vein of “Huckleberry Finn” about a boy's adventures on the canal, but also reflecting some of the major themes of all of Adams' work.

“It was about the American Dream,” Kennedy said. “And about how important it is to have that dream and that anyone can rise up and have the American Dream.”

Kennedy said Seymour Library has a good collection of Adams' works that are available and the Brutus Historical Society also has several copies of his books that can be read at the historical society building.

Kennedy said he had the pleasure of knowing Adams on Owasco Lake and that it was both the man and his work that inspired him to write his biography.

“When I was writing his biography, I wanted to get as much in there as I could,” Kennedy said. “Behind every great writer there is an interesting man.”