The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Rome, Watertown, and
Ogdensburg RailRoad, by Edward Hungerford
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Title: The Story of the Rome, Watertown, and Ogdensburg RailRoad
Author: Edward Hungerford
Release Date: March 1, 2012 [EBook #39021]
Language: English
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THE STORY OF THE ROME, WATERTOWN AND OGDENSBURGH RAILROAD
[Illustration: THE FLEET LOCOMOTIVE ANTWERP When She Dug Her Red Heels
into the Track the Railroad Men Reached for Their Watches.]
THE STORY
of the
Rome, Watertown and
Ogdensburgh Railroad
_By_
EDWARD HUNGERFORD
AUTHOR OF "THE MODERN RAILROAD," "OUR
RAILROADS--TOMORROW," ETC., ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
EDWARD HUNGERFORD
_Printed in the
United States of America_
Published, 1922
TO THOSE PIONEERS
OF OUR
NORTH COUNTRY
WHO
_Labored Hard and Labored Well In
Order That It Might Enjoy the
Blessings of the Railroad, This
Book Is Dedicated by Its Author_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 1
II LOOKING TOWARD A RAILROAD 5
III THE COMING OF THE WATERTOWN & ROME 24
IV THE POTSDAM & WATERTOWN RAILROAD 59
V THE FORMATION OF THE R. W. & O. 79
VI THE R. W. & O. PROSPERS--AND EXPANDS 102
VII INTO THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND 128
VIII THE UTICA & BLACK RIVER 143
IX THE BRISK PARSONS' REGIME 171
X IN WHICH RAILROADS MULTIPLY 203
XI THE COMING OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL 227
XII THE END OF THE STORY 246
APPENDIX A 263
APPENDIX B 267
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Fleet Locomotive _Antwerp_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Orville Hungerford 31
The Cape Vincent Station 51
Early Railroad Tickets 71
Watertown in 1865 81
The Birth of the U. & B. R. 148
Hiram M. Britton 186
Snow Fighters 231
PREFACE
Some railroads, like some men, experience many of the ups and downs of
life. They have their seasons of high prosperity, as well as those of deep
depression. Such a road was the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. In its
forty years of life it ran a full gamut of railroad existence. Alternately
it was one of the best railroads in creation; and one of the worst.
The author within these pages has endeavored to put plain fact plainly. He
has written without malice--if anything, he still feels within his heart a
burst of warm sentiment for the old R. W. & O.--and with every effort
toward absolute impartiality in setting down these events that now are
History. He bespeaks for his little book, kindness, consideration, even
forbearance. And looks forward to the day when again he may take up his
pen in the scribbling of another narrative such as this. It has been a
task. But it has been a task of real fascination.
E. H.
A LIST OF THOSE WHO HAVE ASSISTED MATERIALLY IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS
BOOK
RICHARD C. ELLSWORTH Canton
HAROLD B. JOHNSON Watertown
CORNELIUS CHRISTIE Syracuse
RICHARD HOLDEN Watertown
J. F. MAYNARD Utica
DR. CHARLES H. LEETE Potsdam
W. D. HANCHETTE Watertown
RICHARD T. STARSMEARE Kane, Pa.
W. D. CARNES Watertown
ARTHUR G. LEONARD Chicago
ROBERT WARD DAVIS Rochester
GEORGE W. KNOWLTON Watertown
L. S. HUNGERFORD Chicago
HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW New York
ELISHA B. POWELL Oswego
P. E. CROWLEY New York
IRA A. PLACE New York
F. E. MCCORMACK Corning
EDGAR VAN ETTEN Los Angeles
D. C. MOON Cleveland
JAMES H. HUSTIS Boston
F. W. THOMPSON San Francisco
HENRY N. ROCKWELL Albany
CHAS. H. HUNGERFORD Arlington, Vt.
CHARLES HOLCOMBE Biloxi, Miss.
CHAPTER I
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
In the late summer of 1836 the locomotive first reached Utica and a new
era in the development of Central and Northern New York was begun.
For forty years before that time, however--in fact ever since the close of
the War of the Revolution--there had been a steady and increasing trek of
settlers into the heart of what was soon destined to become the richest as
well as the most populous state of the Union. But its development was
constantly retarded by the lack of proper transportation facilities. For
while the valley of the Mohawk, the gradual portage just west of Rome and
the way down to Oswego and Lake Ontario through Oneida Lake and its
emptying waterways, formed the one natural passage in the whole United
States of that day from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes and the
little-known country beyond, it was by no means an easy pathway. Not even
after the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company had builded its first
crude masonry locks in the narrow natural _impasse_ at Little Falls, so
that the _bateaux_ of the early settlers, which made the rest of the route
in comparative ease, might pass through its one very difficult
bottle-neck.
It was not until the coming of the Erie Canal, there in the second decade
of the nineteenth century, that the route into the heart of New York from
tidewater at Albany, was rendered a reasonably safe and (for that day)
comfortable affair. With the completion of the Erie Canal, in 1827, there
was immediately inaugurated a fleet of packet-boats; extremely swift in
their day and generation and famed for many a day thereafter for their
comfortable cabins and the excellence of their meals.
But the comfort of these ancient craft should not be overrated. At the
best they were but slow affairs indeed, taking three days to come from
Albany, where they connected with the early steamboats upon the Hudson, up
to Utica. And at the best they might operate but seven or eight months out
of the year. The rest of the twelvemonth, the unlucky wight of a traveler
must needs have recourse to a horse-drawn coach.
These selfsame coaches were not to be scoffed at, however. Across the
central portion of New York; by relays all the way from Albany to Black
Rock or Buffalo, they made a swift passage of it. And up into the great
and little known North Country they sometimes made exceeding speed. That
country had received its first artificial pathways at the time of the
coming of the Second War with England, when it was thrust into a sudden
and great strategic importance. With the direct result that important
permanent highroads were at once constructed; from Utica north to the
Black River country, down the water-shed of that stream, and through
Watertown to Sackett's Harbor; and from Sackett's Harbor through
Brownville--the county seat and for a time the military headquarters of
General Jacob Brown--north to Ogdensburgh, thence east along the Canada
line to Plattsburgh upon Lake Champlain.
These military roads still remain. And beside them traces of their
erstwhile glory. Usually these last in the form of ancient taverns--most
often built of limestone, the stone whitened to a marblelike color by the
passing of a hundred years, save where loving vines and ivy have clambered
over their surfaces. You may see them to-day all the way from Utica to
Sackett's Harbor; and, in turn, from Sackett's Harbor north and east to
Plattsburgh once again. But none more sad nor more melancholy than at
Martinsburgh; once in her pride the shire-town of the county of Lewis,
but now a mere hamlet of a few fine old homes and crumbling warehouses. A
great fire in the early fifties ended the ambitions of Martinsburgh--in a
single short hour destroyed it almost totally. And made its hated rival
Lowville, two miles to its north, the county seat and chief village of the
vicinage.
There was much in this North Road to remind one of its prototype, the
Great North Road, which ran and still runs from London to York, far
overseas. A something in its relative importance that helps to make the
parallel. Whilst even the famous four-in-hands of its English predecessor
might hardly hope to do better than was done on this early road of our own
North Country. It is a matter of record that on February 19, 1829, and
with a level fall of thirty inches of snow upon the road, the mailstage
went from Utica to Sackett's Harbor, ninety-three miles, in nine hours and
forty-five minutes, including thirty-nine minutes for stops, horse relays
and the like. Which would not be bad time with a motor car this day.
CHAPTER II
LOOKING TOWARD A RAILROAD
The locomotive having reached Utica--upon the completion of the Utica &
Schenectady Railroad, August 2, 1836--was not to be long content to make
that his western stopping point. The fever of railroad building was upon
Central New York. Railroads it must have; railroads it would have. But
railroad building was not the quick and comparatively simple thing then
that it is to-day. And it was not until nearly four years after he had
first poked his head into Utica that the iron horse first thrust his nose
into Syracuse, fifty-three miles further west. In fact the railroad from
this last point to Auburn already had been completed more than a
twelvemonth and but fifteen months later trains would be running all the
way from Syracuse to Rochester; with but a single change of cars, at
Auburn.
Upon the heels of this pioneer chain of railroads--a little later to
achieve distinction as the New York Central--came the building of a
railroad to the highly prosperous Lake Ontario port of Oswego--the
earliest of all white settlements upon the Great Lakes.
At first it was planned that this railroad to the shores of Ontario should
deflect from the Utica & Syracuse Railroad--whose completion had followed
so closely upon the heels of the line between Schenectady and Utica--near
Rome, and after crossing Wood Creek and Fish Creek, should follow the
north shore of Oneida Lake and then down the valley of the Oswego River.
Oswego is but 185 miles from Lewiston by water and it was then estimated
that it could be reached in twenty-four or twenty-five hours from New York
by this combined rail and water route.
Eventually however the pioneer line to Oswego was built out of Syracuse,
known at first as the Oswego and Syracuse Railroad; it afterwards became a
part of the Syracuse, Binghamton and New York and as a part of that line
eventually was merged, in 1872, into the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
Railroad, which continues to operate it. This line of road led from the
original Syracuse station, between Salina and Warren Streets straight to
the waterside at Oswego harbor. There it made several boat connections;
the most important of these, the fleet of mail and passenger craft
operated by the one-time Ontario & St. Lawrence Steamboat Company.
The steamers of this once famous line played no small part in the
development of the North Country. They operated through six or seven
months of the year, as a direct service between Lewiston which had at that
time highway and then later rail connection with Niagara Falls and
Buffalo, through Ogdensburgh, toward which, as we shall see in good time,
the Northern Railroad was being builded, close to the Canada line from
Lake Champlain and the Central Vermont Railroad at St. Albans as an outlet
between Northern New England and the water-borne traffic of the Great
Lakes. The steamers of this line, whose names, as well as the names of
their captains, were once household words in the North Country were:
_Northerner_ Captain R. F. Child
_Ontario_ " H. N. Throop
_Bay State_ " J. Van Cleve
_New York_ " --------
_Cataract_ " R. B. Chapman
_British Queen_ " Laflamme
_British Empire_ " Moody
The first four of these steamers, each flying the American flag, were
deservedly the best known of the fleet. The _Ontario_, the _Bay State_ and
the _New York_ were built at French Creek upon the St Lawrence (now
Clayton) by John Oakes; the _Northerner_ was Oswego-built. They burned
wood in the beginning, and averaged about 230 feet in length and about 900
tons burthen. There were in the fleet one or two other less consequential
boats, among them the _Rochester_, which plied between Lewiston and
Hamilton, in the then Canada West, as a connecting steamer with the main
line. The steamer _Niagara_, Captain A. D. Kilby, left Oswego each Monday,
Wednesday and Friday evening at eight, passing Rochester the next morning
and arriving at Toronto at four p. m. Returning she would leave Toronto on
the alternating days at 8:00 p. m., pass Rochester at 5:30 a. m. and
arrive at Oswego at 10:00 a. m., in full time to connect with the Oswego &
Syracuse R. R. train for Syracuse, and by connection, to Albany and the
Hudson River steamers for New York. A little later Captain John S. Warner,
of Henderson Harbor, was the Master of the _Niagara_.
The "line boats," as the larger craft were known, also connected with
these through trains. In the morning they did not depart until after the
arrival of the train from Syracuse. In detail their schedule by 1850 was
as follows:
Lv. Lewiston 4 p.m.
" Rochester 10 p.m.
" Oswego 9 a.m.
" Sackett's Harbor 12 m.
" Ogdensburgh 7 a.m.
Ar. Montreal 6 p.m.
Lv. Montreal 9 a.m.
" Ogdensburgh 8 a.m.
" Kingston 4 p.m.
" Sackett's Harbor 9 p.m.
" Oswego 10 a.m.
" Rochester 6 p.m.
Ar. Lewiston 4 a.m.
Here for many years, before the coming of the railroad, was an agreeable
way of travel into Northern New York. These steamers, even with thirty
foot paddle-wheels, were not fast; on the contrary they were extremely
slow. Neither were they gaudy craft, as one might find in other parts of
the land. But their rates of fare were very low and their meals, which
like the berths, were included in the cost of the passage ticket, had a
wide reputation for excellence. Until the coming of the railroad into
Northern New York, the line prospered exceedingly. Indeed, for a
considerable time thereafter it endeavored to compete against the
railroad--but with a sense of growing hopelessness. And eventually these
once famous steamers having grown both old and obsolete, the line was
abandoned.
A rival line upon the north edge of Lake Ontario, the Richelieu & Ontario,
continued to prosper for many years, however, after the coming of the
railroad. Its steamers--the _Corsican_, the _Caspian_, the _Algerian_,
the _Spartan_, the _Corinthian_ and the _Passport_ best known, perhaps,
amongst them--ran from Hamilton, touching at Toronto, Kingston, Clayton,
Alexandria Bay, Prescott and Cornwall, through to Montreal, where
connections were made in turn for lower river ports. The last of these
boats continued in operation upon the St. Lawrence until within twenty
years or thereabouts ago.
It is worthy of note that the completion in 1829 of the first Welland
Canal began to turn a really huge tide of traffic from Lake Erie into Lake
Ontario, and for two decades this steadily increased. In 1850 Ontario bore
some 400,000 tons of freight upon its bosom, yet in the following year
this had increased to nearly 700,000 tons, valued at more than thirty
millions of dollars. In 1853 a tonnage mark of more than a million was
passed and the Lake then achieved an activity that it has not known since.
In that year the Watertown & Rome Railroad began its really active
operations and the traffic of Ontario to dwindle in consequence. Whilst
the cross-St. Lawrence ferry at Cape Vincent, the first northern terminal
of the Rome road, began to assume an importance that it was not to lose
for nearly forty years.
* * * * *
Steamboat travel was hardly to be relied upon in a country which suffers
so rigorous a winter climate as that of Northern New York. And highway
travel in the bitter months between November and April was hardly better.
A railroad was the thing; and a railroad the North Country must have. The
agitation grew for a direct line at least between Watertown, already
coming into importance as a manufacturing center of much diversity of
product, to the Erie Canal and the chain of separate growing railroads,
that by the end of 1844, stretched as a continuous line of rails all the
way from Albany--and by way of the Western and the Boston & Worcester
Railroads (to-day the Boston and Albany) all the way from Boston
itself--to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Prosperity already was upon the
North Country. It was laying the foundations of its future wealth. It was
ordained that a railroad should be given it. The problem was just how and
where that railroad should be built. After a brief but bitter fight
between Rome and Utica for the honor of being the chief terminal of this
railroad up into the North Country, Rome was chosen; as far back as 1832.
Yet it was not until sixteen years later that the construction of the
Watertown & Rome Railroad, the pioneer road of Northern New York, was
actually begun. And had been preceded by a mighty and almost continuous
legislative battle in the old Capitol at Albany ... of which more in
another chapter.
In the meantime other railroads had been projected into the North Country.
The real pioneer among all of these was the Northern Railroad, which was
projected to run due west from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburgh, just above
the head of the highest of the rapids of the St. Lawrence and so at that
time at the foot of the easy navigation of Ontario, and, by way of the
Welland Canal, of the entire chain of Great Lakes.
The preliminary discussions which finally led to the construction of this
important early line also went as far back as 1829. Finally a meeting was
called (at Montpelier, Vt., on February 17, 1830) to seriously consider
the building of a railroad across the Northern Tier of New York counties,
from Rouse's Point, upon Lake Champlain, to Ogdensburgh, upon the St.
Lawrence. The promoters of the plan averred that trains might be operated
over the proposed line at fifteen miles an hour, that the entire journey
from Boston to Ogdensburgh might be accomplished in thirty-five hours.
There were, of course, many wise men who shook their heads at the rashness
of such prediction. But the idea fascinated them none the less; and
twenty-eight days later a similar meeting to that at Montpelier was held
at Ogdensburgh, to be followed a year later by one at Malone.
So was the idea born. It grew, although very slowly. Communication itself
in the North Country was slow in those days, even though the fine military
road from Sackett's Harbor through Ogdensburgh to Plattsburgh was a
tolerable artery of travel most of the year. Money also was slow. And men,
over enterprises so extremely new and so untried as railroads, most
diffident. For it must be remembered that when the promoters of the
Northern Railroad first made that outrageous promise of going from Boston
to Ogdensburgh in thirty-five hours, at fifteen miles an hour, the
railroad in the United States was barely born. The first locomotive--the
_Stourbridge Lion_, at Honesdale, Penn.--had been operated less than a
twelvemonth before. In the entire United States there were less than
twenty-three miles of railroad in operation. So wonder it not that the
plan for the Northern Railroad grew very slowly indeed; that it did not
reach incorporation until fourteen long years afterward, when the
Legislature of New York authorized David C. Judson and Joseph Barnes, of
St. Lawrence County, S. C. Wead, of Franklin County and others as
commissioners to receive and distribute stock of the Northern Railroad;
$2,000,000 all told, divided into shares of $50 each. The date of the
formal incorporation of the road was May 14, 1845. Its organization was
not accomplished, however, until June, 1845, when the first meeting was
held in the then village of Ogdensburgh, and the following officers
elected:
_President_, GEORGE PARISH, Ogdensburgh
_Treasurer_, S. S. WALLEY
_Secretary_, JAMES G. HOPKINS
_Chief Engineer_, COL. CHARLES L. SCHLATTER
_Directors_
J. Leslie Russell, Canton
Charles Paine, Northfield, Vt.
Hiram Horton, Malone
S. F. Belknap, Windsor, Vt.
J. Wiley Edmonds, Boston
Benjamin Reed, Boston
Anthony C. Brown, Ogdensburgh
Isaac Spalding, Nashua, N. H.
Lawrence Myers, Plattsburgh
Abbot Lawrence, Boston
T. P. Chandler, Boston
S. S. Lewis, Boston
Soon after the organization of the company, T. P. Chandler succeeded Mr.
Parish (who was for many years easily the most prominent citizen of
Ogdensburgh) as President, and steps were taken toward the immediate
construction of the line. After the inevitable preliminary contentions as
to the exact route to be followed, James Hayward made the complete surveys
of the line as it exists at present, while Colonel Schlatter, its chief
engineer and for a number of years its superintendent as well, prepared to
build it. Actual construction was begun in March, 1848, in the deep
cutting just east of Ogdensburgh. At the same time grading and the laying
of rail began at the east end of the road--at Rouse's Point at the foot of
Lake Champlain--with the result that in the fall of 1848 trains were in
regular operation between Rouse's Point and Centreville. A year later the
road had been extended to Ellenburgh; in June, 1850, to Chateaugay. On
October 1, 1850, trains ran into Malone. A month later it was finished and
open for its entire length of 117 miles. Its cost, including its equipment
and fixtures, was then placed at $5,022,121.31.
* * * * *
It is not within the province of this little book to set down in detail
the somewhat checkered career of the Northern Railroad. It started with
large ambitions--even before its incorporation, James G. Hopkins, who
afterwards became its Secretary, traveled through the Northern Tier and
expatiated upon its future possibilities in a widely circulated little
pamphlet. It was a road builded for a large traffic. So sure were its
promoters of this forthcoming business that they placed its track upon the
side of the right-of-way, rather than in the middle of it, in order that
it would not have to be moved when it came time to double-track the road.
The road was never double-tracked. For some years it prospered--very well.
It made a direct connection between the large lake steamers at the foot of
navigation at Ogdensburgh--it will be remembered that Ogdensburgh is just
above the swift-running and always dangerous rapids of the St.
Lawrence--and the important port of Boston. The completion of the line was
followed almost immediately by the construction of a long bridge across
the foot of Lake Champlain which brought it into direct connection with
the rails of the Central Vermont at St. Albans--and so in active touch
with all of the New England lines.
The ambitious hopes of the promoters of the Northern took shape not only
in the construction of the stone shops and the large covered depot at
Malone (built in 1850 by W. A. Wheeler--afterwards not only President of
the property, but Vice-President of the United States--it still stands in
active service) but in the building of 4000 feet of wharfage and elaborate
warehouses and other terminal structures upon the river bank at
Ogdensburgh. The most of these also still stand--memorials of the large
scale upon which the road originally was designed.
Gradually, however, its strength faded. Other rail routes, more direct and
otherwise more advantageous, came to combat it. Fewer and still fewer
steamers came to its Ogdensburgh docks--at the best it was a seasonal
business; the St. Lawrence is thoroughly frozen and out of use for about
five months out of each year. The steamers of the upper Lakes outgrew in
size the locks of the Welland Canal and so made for Buffalo--in increasing
numbers. The Northern Railroad entered upon difficulties, to put it
mildly. It was reorganized and reorganized; it became the Ogdensburgh
Railroad, then the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain, then a branch of the
Central Vermont and then upon the partial dismemberment of that historic
property, a branch of the Rutland Railroad. As such it still continues
with a moderate degree of success. In any narrative of the development of
transport in the North Country it must be forever regarded, however, as a
genuine pioneer among its railroads.
* * * * *
One other route was seriously projected from the eastern end of the state
into the North Country--the Sackett's Harbor and Saratoga Railroad Co.
which was chartered April 10, 1848. After desperate efforts to build a
railroad through the vast fastnesses of the North Woods--then a _terra
incognito_, almost impenetrable--and the expenditure of very considerable
sums of money, both in surveys and in actual construction, this
enterprise was finally abandoned. Yet one to-day can still see traces of
it across the forest. In the neighborhood of Beaver Falls, they become
most definite; a long cutting and an embankment reaching from it, a
melancholy reminder of a mighty human endeavor of just seventy years ago.
If this route had ever been completed, Watertown to-day would enjoy direct
rail communication with Boston, although not reaching within a dozen miles
of Albany. The Fitchburg, which always sought, but vainly, to make itself
an effective competitor of the powerful Boston & Albany, built itself
through to Saratoga Springs, largely in hopes that some day the line
through the forest to Sackett's Harbor would be completed. It was a vain
hope. The faintest chance of that line ever being built was quite gone. A
quarter of a century later the Fitchburg thrust another branch off from
its Saratoga line to reach the ambitious new West Shore at Rotterdam
Junction. That hope also faded. And the Fitchburg, now an important
division of the Boston & Maine, despite its direct route and short mileage
through the Hoosac Tunnel, became forever a secondary route across the
state of Massachusetts.
* * * * *
The reports of the prospecting parties of the Sackett's Harbor & Saratoga
form a pleasing picture of the Northern New York at the beginning of the
fifties. The company had been definitely formed with its chief offices at
80 Wall Street, New York, and the following officers and directors:
_President_, WILLIAM COVENTRY H. WADDELL, New York
_Supt. of Operations_, GEN. S. P. LYMAN, New York
_Treasurer_, HENRY STANTON, New York
_Secretary_, SAMUEL ELLIS, Boston
_Counsel_, SAMUEL BEARDSLEY, Utica
_Consulting Engineer_, JOHN B. MILLS, New York
_Directors_
Charles E. Clarke, Great Bend
Lyman R. Lyon, Lyons Falls
Robert Speir, West Milton
John R. Thurman, Chester
Zadock Pratt, Prattsville
Wm. Coventry H. Waddell, New York
P. Somerville Stewart, Carthage
E. G. Merrick, French Creek
James M. Marvin, Saratoga
Anson Thomas, Utica
Otis Clapp, Boston
Gen. S. P. Lyman, Utica
Henry Stanton, New York
Mr. A. F. Edwards received his appointment as Chief Engineer of the
company on March 10, 1852, and soon afterwards entered upon a detailed
reconnoissance of the territory embraced within its charter. He examined
closely into its mineral and timber resources and gave great attention to
its future agricultural and industrial possibilities. In the early part of
his report he says:
"In the latter part of September, 1852, I left Saratoga for the Racket
(Racquette) Lake, via Utica. On my way I noticed on the Mohawk that there
had been frost, and as I rode along in the stage from Utica to Boonville,
I saw that the frost had bitten quite sharply the squash vines and the
potatoes, the leaves having become quite black; but judge my surprise,
when three days later on visiting the settlement of the Racket, I found
the beans, cucumber vines, potatoes, &c., as fresh as in midsummer."
His examination of the territory completed, Mr. Edwards began the rough
location of the line of the new railroad. From Saratoga it passed westerly
to the valley of the Kayaderosseras, in the town of Greenfield, thence
north through Greenfield Center, South Corinth and through the "Antonio
Notch" in the town of Corinth to the Sacondaga valley, up which it
proceeded to the village of Conklingville, easterly through Huntsville and
Northville, through the town of Hope to "the Forks." From there it went up
the east branch of the Sacondaga, through Wells and Gilman to the isolated
town of Lake Pleasant. Spruce Lake and the headwaters of the Canada Creek
were threaded to the summit of the line at the Canada Lakes. The middle
and the western branches of the Moose River were passed near Old Forge and
the line descended the Otter Creek valley, crossing the Independence River
and down the Crystal Creek through and near Dayansville and Beaver Falls
to Carthage where for the first time it would touch the Black River.
From Carthage to Watertown it was planned that it would closely follow the
Black River valley, crossing the river three times, and leaving it at
Watertown for a straight run across the flats to Sackett's Harbor; along
the route of the already abandoned canal which Elisha Camp and a group of
associates had builded in 1822 and had left to its fate in 1832; in fact
almost precisely upon the line of the present Sackett's Harbor branch of
the New York Central. At the Harbor great terminal developments were
planned; an inner harbor in the village and an outer one of considerable
magnitude at Horse Island.
From Carthage a branch line was projected to French Creek, now the busy
summer village of Clayton. The route was to diverge from the main line
about one mile west of Great Bend thence running in a tangent to the
Indian River, about a mile and one-half east of Evan's Mills, where after
crossing that stream upon a bridge of two spans and at a height of sixty
feet would recross it two miles further on and then run in an almost
straight line to Clayton. Here a very elaborate harbor improvement was
planned, with a loop track and almost continuous docks to encircle the
compact peninsula upon which the village is built.
"At French Creek on a clear day," says Mr. Edwards, "the roofs of the
buildings at Kingston, across the St. Lawrence, can be seen with the naked
eye. All the steamers and sail vessels, up and down the river and lake,
pass this place and when the Grand Trunk Railroad is completed, it will be
as convenient a point as can be found to connect with the same."
All the while he waxes most enthusiastic about the future possibilities of
Northern New York, particularly the westerly counties of it. He calls
attention to the thriving villages of Turin, Martinsburgh, Lowville,
Denmark, Lyonsdale (I am leaving the older names as he gives them in his
report) and Dayansville, in the Black River valley.
"In the wealthy county of Jefferson," he adds, "are the towns of Carthage,
Great Bend, Felt's Mills, Lockport (now Black River), Brownville and
Dexter, with Watertown, its county seat, well located for a manufacturing
city, having ample water power, at the same time surrounded by a country
rich in its soil and highly cultivated to meet the wants of the
operatives. Watertown contains about 10,000 inhabitants and is the most
modern, city-like built, inland town in the Union, containing about 100
stores, five banks, cotton and woolen factories, six large flouring
mills, machine shops, furnaces, paper mills, and innumerable other
branches of business, with many first class hotels, among which the
'Woodruff House' may be justly called the Metropolitan of Western New
York."
In that early day, more than $795,000 had been invested in manufacturing
enterprises along the Black River, at Watertown and below. The territory
was a fine traffic plum for any railroad project. It seems a pity that
after all the ambitious dreams of the Sackett's Harbor & Saratoga and the
very considerable expenditures that were made upon its right-of-way, that
it was to be doomed to die without ever having operated a single through
train. The nineteen or twenty miles of its line that were put down, north
and west from Saratoga Springs, long since lost their separate identity as
a branch of the Delaware & Hudson system.
CHAPTER III
THE COMING OF THE WATERTOWN & ROME
The first successful transportation venture of the North Country was still
ahead of it. The efforts of these patient souls, who struggled so hard to
establish the Northern Railroad as an entrance to the six counties from
the east, were being echoed by those who strove to gain a rail entrance
into it from the south. Long ago in this narrative we saw how as far back
as 1836 the locomotive first entered Utica. Six or seven years later there
was a continuous chain of railroads from Albany to Buffalo--precursors of
the present New York Central--and ambitious plans for building feeder
lines to them from surrounding territory, both to the north and to the
south. The early Oswego & Syracuse Railroad was typical of these.
Of all these plans none was more ambitious, however, than that which
sought to build a line from Rome into the heart of the rich county of
Jefferson, the lower valley of the Black River and the St. Lawrence River
at almost the very point where Lake Ontario debouches into it. The scheme
for this road, in actuality, antedated the coming of the locomotive into
Utica by four years, for it was in 1832--upon the 17th day of April in
that year--that the Watertown & Rome Railroad was first incorporated and
Henry H. Coffeen, Edmund Kirby, Orville Hungerford and William Smith of
Jefferson County, Hiram Hubbell, Caleb Carr, Benjamin H. Wright and Elisha
Hart, of Oswego, and Jesse Armstrong, Alvah Sheldon, Artemas Trowbridge
and Seth D. Roberts, of Oneida, named by the Legislature as commissioners
to promote the enterprise. Later George C. Sherman, of Watertown, was
added to these commissioners. The act provided that the road should be
begun within three years and completed within five. Its capital stock was
fixed at $1,000,000, divided into shares of $100 each.
The commercial audacity, the business daring of these men of the North
Country in even seeking to establish so huge an enterprise in those early
days of its settlement is hard to realize in this day, when our transport
has come to be so facile and easily understood a thing. Their courage was
the courage of mental giants. The railroad was less than three years
established in the United States; in the entire world less than five. Yet
they sought to bring into Northern New York, there at the beginning of the
third decade of the nineteenth century, hardly emerged from primeval
forest, the highway of iron rail, that even so highly a developed
civilization as that of England was receiving with great caution and
uncertainty.
These men of the North Country had not alone courage, but vision; not
alone vision, but perseverance. Their railroad once born, even though as a
trembling thing that for years existed upon paper only, was not permitted
to die. It could not die. And that it should live the pioneers of
Jefferson and Oswego rode long miles over unspeakably bad roads with
determination in their hearts.
* * * * *
The act that established the Watertown & Rome Railroad was never permitted
to expire. It was revived; again and again and again--in 1837, in 1845,
and again in 1847. It is related how night after night William Smith and
Clarke Rice used to sit in an upper room of a house on Factory Street in
Watertown--then as now, the shire-town of Jefferson--and exhibit to
callers a model of a tiny train running upon a little track. Factory
Street was then one of the most attractive residence streets of Watertown.
The irony of fate was yet to transfer it into a rather grimy artery of
commerce--by the single process of the building of the main line of the
Potsdam & Watertown Railroad throughout its entire length.
These men, and others, kept the project alive. William Dewey was one of
its most enthusiastic proponents. As the result of a meeting held at
Pulaski on June 27, 1836, he had been chosen to survey a line from
Watertown to Rome--through Pulaski. With the aid of Robert F. Livingston
and James Roberts, this was accomplished in the fall of 1836. Soon after
Dewey issued two thousand copies of a small thirty-two page pamphlet,
entitled _Suggestions Urging the Construction of a Railroad from Rome to
Watertown_. It was a potent factor in advocating the new enterprise; so
potent, in fact, that Cape Vincent, alarmed at not being included in all
of these plans, held a mass-meeting which was followed by the
incorporation of the Watertown & Cape Vincent Railroad, with a modest
capitalization of but $50,000. Surveys followed, and the immediate result
of this step was to include the present Cape Vincent branch in all the
plans for the construction of the original Watertown & Rome Railroad.
These plans, as we have just seen, did not move rapidly. It is possible
that the handicap of the great distances of the North Country might have
been overcome had it not been that 1837 was destined as the year of the
first great financial crash that the United States had ever known. The
northern counties of New York were by no means immune from the severe
effects of that disaster. Money was tight. The future looked dark. But the
two gentlemen of Watertown kept their little train going there in the
small room on Factory Street. Faith in any time or place is a superb
thing. In business it is a very real asset indeed. And the faith of Clarke
Rice and William Smith was reflected in the courage of Dewey, who would
not let the new road die. To keep it alive he rode up and down the
proposed route on horseback, summer and winter, urging its great
necessity.
* * * * *
Out of that faith came large action once again. Railroad meetings began to
multiply in the North Country; the success of similar enterprises, not
only in New York State, but elsewhere within the Union, was related to
them. Finally there came one big meeting, on a very cold 10th of February
in 1847, in the old Universalist Church at Watertown. All Watertown came
to it; out of it grew a definite railroad.
Yet it grew very slowly. In the files of the old _Northern State Journal_,
of Watertown, and under the date of March 29, 1848, I find an irritated
editorial reference to the continual delays in the building of the road.
Under the heading "Our Railroad," the _Journal_ describes a railroad
meeting held in the Jefferson County Court House a few days before and
goes on to say:
"... Seldom has any meeting been held in this county where more unanimity
and enthusiastic devotion to a great public object have been displayed,
than was evidenced in the character and conduct of the assemblage that
filled the Court House.... _Go ahead_, and that _immediately_, was the
ruling motto in the speeches and resolutions and the whole meeting
sympathized in the sentiment. And indeed, it is time to go _ahead_. It is
now about sixteen years since a charter was first obtained and yet the
first blow is not struck. No excuse for further delay will be received.
None will be needed. We understand that measures have already been taken
to expend in season the amount necessary to secure the charter--to call in
the first installment of five per cent--to organize and put upon the line
the requisite number of engineers and surveyors--and to hold an election
for a new Board of Directors.
"We trust that none but efficient men, firm friends of the Railroad, will
be put in the Direction. The Stockholders should look to this and vote for
no man that they do not know to be warmly in favor of an active
prosecution of the work to an early completion. This subject has been so
long before the community that every man's sentiments are known, and it
would be folly to expose the road to defeat now by not being careful in
the selection. With a Board of Directors such as can be found, the autumn
of 1849 should be signalized by the opening of the entire road from the
Cape to Rome. It can be done and it should be done. The road being a great
good the sooner we enjoy it the better."
So it was that upon the sixth day of the following April the actual
organization of the Watertown & Rome Railroad was accomplished at the
American Hotel, in Watertown, and an emissary despatched to Albany, who
succeeded on April 28th in having the original Act for the construction of
the line extended, for a final time. It also provided for the increase of
the capitalization from $1,000,000 to $1,500,000--in order that the new
road, once built, could be properly equipped with iron rail, weighing at
least fifty-six pounds to the yard. It was not difficult by that time to
sell the additional stock in the company. The missionary work--to-day we
would call it propaganda--of its first promoters really had been a most
thorough job.
[Illustration: ORVILLE HUNGERFORD First President of the Watertown & Rome
Railroad.]
The original officers of the Watertown & Rome Railroad were:
_President_, ORVILLE HUNGERFORD, Watertown
_Secretary_, CLARKE RICE, Watertown
_Treasurer_, O. V. BRAINARD, Watertown
_Superintendent_, R. B. DOXTATER, Watertown
_Directors_
S. N. Dexter, New York
William C. Pierrepont, Brooklyn
John H. Whipple, New York
Norris M. Woodruff, Watertown
Samuel Buckley, Watertown
Jerre Carrier, Cape Vincent
Clarke Rice, Watertown
Robert B. Doxtater, New York
Orville Hungerford, Watertown
William Smith, Watertown
Edmund Kirby, Brownville
Theophilus Peugnet, Cape Vincent
The summer of 1847 was spent chiefly in perfecting the organization and
financial plans of the new road, in eliminating a certain opposition to it
within its own ranks and in strengthening its morale. At the initial
meeting of the Board of Directors, William Smith had been allowed two
dollars a day for soliciting subscriptions while Messrs. Hungerford,
Pierrepont, Doxtater and Dexter were appointed a committee to go to New
York and Boston for the same purpose. A campaign fund of $500 was allotted
for this entire purpose.
The question of finances was always a delicate and a difficult one. In the
minutes of the Board for May 10, 1848, I find that the question of where
the road should bank its funds had been a vexed one, indeed. It was then
settled by dividing the amount into twentieths, of which the Jefferson
County Bank should have eight, the Black River, four, Hungerford's, three,
the Bank of Watertown, three, and Wooster Sherman's two.
Gradually these funds accumulated. The subscriptions had been solicited
upon a partial payment basis and these initial payments of five and ten
percent were providing the money for the expenses of organization and
careful survey. This last was accomplished in the summer of 1848, by Isaac
W. Crane, who had been engaged as Chief Engineer of the property at $2500
a year. Mr. Crane made careful resurveys of the route--omitting Pulaski
this time; to the very great distress of that village--and estimated the
complete cost of the road at about $1,250,000. It is interesting to note
that its actual cost, when completed, was $1,957,992.
* * * * *
In that same summer, Mr. Brainard retired as Treasurer of the company and
was succeeded by Daniel Lee, of Watertown, whose annual compensation was
fixed at $800. Later, Mr. Lee increased this, by taking upon his shoulders
the similar post of the Potsdam & Watertown. The infant Watertown & Rome
found need of offices for itself. It engaged quarters over Tubbs' Hat
Store, which modestly it named The Railroad Rooms and there it was burned
out in the great fire of Watertown, May 13, 1849.
All of these were indeed busy months of preparation. There were
locomotives to be ordered. Four second-hand engines, as we shall see in a
moment, were bought at once in New England, but the old engine _Cayuga_,
which the Schenectady & Utica had offered the Rome road at a
bargain-counter price of $2500 finally was refused. Negotiations were then
begun with the Taunton Locomotive Works for the construction of engines
which would be quite the equal of any turned out in the land up to that
time; and which were to be delivered to the company, at its terminal at
Rome--at a cost of $7150 apiece. Horace W. Woodruff, of Watertown, was
given the contract for building the cars for the new line; he was to be
paid for them, one-third in the stock of the company and two-thirds in
cash. His car-works were upon the north bank of the Black River, upon the
site now occupied by the Wise Machine Company and it was necessary to haul
the cars by oxen to the rails of the new road, then in the vicinity of
Watertown Junction. Yet despite the fact that his works in Watertown never
had a railroad siding Woodruff later attained quite a fame as a builder
of sleeping-cars. His cars at one time were used almost universally upon
the railroads of the Southwest.
* * * * *
Construction began upon the new line at Rome, obviously chosen because of
the facility with which materials could be brought to that point, either
by rail or by canal--although no small part of the iron for the road was
finally brought across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence to Cape
Vincent. Nat Hazeltine is credited with having turned the first bit of sod
for the line. The gentle nature of the country to be traversed by the new
railroad--the greater part of it upon the easy slopes at the easterly end
of Lake Ontario--presented no large obstacles, either to the engineers or
the contractors, these last, Messrs. Phelps, Matoon and Barnes, of
Springfield, Massachusetts. The rails, as provided in the extension of the
road's charter, were fifty-six pounds to the yard (to-day they are for the
greater part in excess of 100) and came from the rolling-mills of Guest &
Company, in Wales. The excellence of their material and their workmanship
is evidenced by the fact that they continued in service for many years,
without a single instance of breakage. When they finally were removed it
was because they were worn out and quite unfit for further service.
* * * * *
Construction once begun, went ahead very slowly, but unceasingly. By the
fall of 1850 track was laid for about twenty-four miles north of Rome and
upon September 10th of that year, a passenger service was installed
between Rome and Camden. Fares were fixed at three cents a mile--later a
so-called second-class, at one and one-half cents a mile was added--and a
brisk business started at once.
It was not until May of the following year that the iron horse first poked
his nose into the county of Jefferson. The (Watertown) _Reformer_
announced in its issue of May 1 that year that the six miles of track
already laid that spring would come into use that very week, bringing the
completed line into the now forgotten hamlet of Washingtonville in the
north part of Oswego county. Two weeks later, it predicted it would be in
Jefferson.
Its prediction was accurately fulfilled. On the twenty-eighth day of the
month, at Pierrepont Manor, this important event formally came to pass and
was attended by a good-sized conclave of prominent citizens, who
afterwards repaired to the home of Mr. William C. Pierrepont, not far
from the depot, where refreshments were served. The rest your historian
leaves to your imagination.
At that day and hour it seemed as if Pierrepont Manor was destined to
become an important town. The land office of its great squire was still
doing a thriving business. For Pierrepont Manor then, and for ten years
afterwards, was a railroad junction, with a famous eating-house as one of
its appendages. It seems that Sackett's Harbor had decided that it was not
going to permit itself to be outdone in this railroad business by Cape
Vincent. If the Harbor could not realize its dream of a railroad to
Saratoga it might at least build one to the new Watertown & Rome road
there at Pierrepont Manor, and so gain for itself a direct route to both
New York and Boston. And as a fairly immediate extension, a line on to
Pulaski, which might eventually reach Syracuse, was suggested.
At any rate, on May 23, 1850, the Sackett's Harbor & Ellisburgh Railroad
was incorporated. Funds were quickly raised for its construction, and it
was builded almost coincidently with the Watertown & Rome. Thomas Stetson,
of Boston, had the contract for building the line; being paid $150,000;
two-thirds in cash and one-third in its capital stock. It was completed
and opened for business by the first day of January, 1853. It was not
destined, however, for a long existence. From the beginning it failed to
bring adequate returns--the Watertown & Rome management quite naturally
favoring its own water terminal at Cape Vincent. By 1860 it was in a
fearful quagmire. In November of that year, W. T. Searle, of Belleville,
its President and Superintendent, wrote to the State Engineer and Surveyor
at Albany, saying that the road had reorganized itself as the Sackett's
Harbor, Rome & New York, and that it was going to take a new try at life.
But it was a hard outlook.
"The engine used by the company," Mr. Searle wrote, "belongs to persons,
who purchased it for the purpose of the operation of the road when it was
known by the corporate name of the Sackett's Harbor & Ellisburgh, and has
cost the corporation nothing up to the end of this year for its use. All
the cars used on the road (there were only four) except the passenger-car,
are in litigation, but in the possession of individuals, principally
stockholders in this road, who have allowed the corporation the use of
them free of expense...."
Yet despite this gloom, the little road was keeping up at least the
pretense of its service. It had two trains a day; leaving Pierrepont Manor
at 9:40 a. m. and 5:00 p. m. and after intermediate stops at Belleville,
Henderson and Smithville reaching Sackett's Harbor at 10:45 a. m. (a
connection with the down boat for Kingston and for Ogdensburgh) and at
6:30 p. m. The trains returned from the Harbor at 11:00 a. m. and 7:00 p.
m.
Reorganization, the grace of a new name, failed to save this line. The
Civil War broke upon the country, with it times of surpassing hardness and
in 1862 it was abandoned; the following year its rails torn up forever.
Yet to this day one who is even fairly acquainted with the topography of
Jefferson County may trace its path quite clearly.
Here ended then, rather ignominiously to be sure, a fairly ambitious
little railroad project. And while Sackett's Harbor was eventually to have
rail transport service restored to it, Belleville was henceforth to be
left nearly stranded--until the coming of the improved highway and the
motor-propelled vehicle upon it. Yet it was Belleville that had furnished
most of the inspiration and the capital for the Sackett's Harbor &
Ellisburgh. And even though in its old records I find Mr. M. Loomis, of
the Harbor, listed as its Treasurer, Secretary, General Freight Agent and
General Ticket Agent--a regular Pooh Bah sort of a job--W. T. Searle, of
Belleville, was its President and Superintendent; and A. Dickinson, of
the same village, its Vice-President; George Clarke and A. J. Barney among
the Directors. These men had dared much to bring the railroad to their
village and failing eventually must finally have conceded much to the
impotence of human endeavor.
* * * * *
In the summer of 1851 work upon the Watertown & Rome steadily went forward
and at a swifter pace than ever before. All the way through to Cape
Vincent the contractors were at work upon the new line. They were racing
against time itself almost to complete the road. There were valuable mail
contracts to be obtained and upon these hung much of the immediate
financial success of the road.
In the spring of 1922, by a rare stroke of good fortune, the author of
this book was enabled to obtain firsthand the story of the construction of
the northern section of the line. At Kane, Pa., he found a venerable
gentleman, Mr. Richard T. Starsmeare, who at the extremely advanced age of
ninety-five years was able to tell with a marvelous clearness of the part
that he, himself, had played in the construction of the line between
Chaumont and Cape Vincent. With a single wave of his hand he rolled back
seventy long years and told in simple fashion the story of his connection
with the Watertown & Rome:
Young Starsmeare, a native of London, at the age of twenty had run away to
sea. He crossed on a lumber-ship to Quebec and slowly made his way up the
valley of the St. Lawrence. The year, 1850, had scarce been born, before
he found himself in the stout, gray old city of Kingston in what was then
called Upper Canada. It was an extremely hard winter and the St. Lawrence
was solidly frozen. So that Starsmeare had no difficulty whatsoever in
crossing on the ice to Cape Vincent. That was on the sixteenth day of
January. Sleighing in the North Country was good. The English lad had
little difficulty in picking up a ride here and a ride there until he was
come to Henderson Harbor to the farm of a man named Leffingwell. Here he
found employment.
But Starsmeare had not come to America to be a farmer. And so, a year
later, when the spring was well advanced, he borrowed a half-dollar from
his employer and rode in the stage to Sackett's Harbor. That ancient port
was a gay place there at the beginning of the fifties. Its piers were so
crowded that vessels lay in the offing, their white sails clearly outlined
against the blue of the harbor and the sky, awaiting an opportunity to
berth against them. But the vessels had no more than a passing interest
for the young Englishman who saw them in all the rush and bustle of the
Sackett's Harbor of 1850. For men in the lakeside village were whispering
of the coming of the railroad, of the magic presence of the locomotive
that so soon was to be visited upon them.
At these rumors the pulse of young Richard Starsmeare quickened. He had
seen the railroad already--back home. He had seen it in his home city of
London, had seen it cutting in great slits through Camden Town and Somers
Town, riding across Lambeth upon seemingly unending brick viaducts. His
desire formed itself. He would go to work upon this railroad.... The
master of a small coasting ship sailing out from Sackett's Harbor that
very afternoon offered him a lift as far as Three Mile Bay. At Three Mile
Bay they were to have the railroad. Yet when he arrived there were no
signs whatsoever of the iron horse or his special pathway.
"At Chaumont you will find it," they told him there. Off toward Chaumont
he trudged. And presently was awarded by the sight of bright yellow stakes
set in the fields. He followed these for a little way and found teams and
wagons at work. Here was the railroad. The railroad needed men.
Specifically it needed young Starsmeare. He found the boss contractor; and
went to work for him. He helped get stone out of a nearby quarry for
Chaumont bridge. That winter he assisted in the building of Chaumont
bridge; a rather pretentious enterprise for those days.
* * * * *
Steadily the Watertown & Rome went ahead. On the Fourth of July, 1851, it
was completed to Adams, which was made the occasion of a mighty
Independence Day celebration in that brisk village. Upon the arrival of
the first train at its depot, a huge parade was formed which marched up
into the center of the town, where Levi H. Brown, of Watertown, read the
Declaration of Independence, and William Dewey, who had made the building
of the Watertown & Rome his life work, delivered a smashing address.
Afterwards the procession reformed and returned to the depot where a big
dinner was served and the drinking of toasts was in order. There were
fireworks in the evening and the Adams Guards honored the occasion with a
torchlight parade.
For some weeks the line halted there at Adams. A citizen of Watertown
wrote in his diary in August of that year that he had had a fearful time
getting home from New York "... The cars only ran to Adams, and I had to
have my horse sent down there from Watertown. I had a hard time for a
young man...." he complains naïvely.
The railroad was, however, opened to Watertown, its headquarters, its
chief town, and the inspiration that had brought it into being, on the
evening of September 5, 1851. At eleven o'clock that evening, up to the
front of the passenger station, then located near the foot of Stone
Street, the first locomotive came into Watertown. I am not at all sure
which one of the road's small fleet it was. It had started building
operations with four tiny second-hand locomotives which it had garnered
chiefly from New England--the _Lion_, the _Roxbury_, the _Commodore_ and
the _Chicopee_. Of these the _Lion_ was probably the oldest, certainly the
smallest. It had been builded by none other than the redoubtable George
Stephenson, himself, in England, some ten or fifteen years before it first
came into Northern New York. It was an eight-wheeled engine, of but
fourteen tons in weight. So very small was it in fact that it was of very
little practical use, that Louis L. Grant, of Rome, who was one of the
road's first repair-shop foreman, finally took off the light side-rods
between the drivers--the _Lion_ was inside connected, after the inevitable
British fashion, and had a V-hook gear and a variable cut-off--and gained
an appreciable tractive power for the little engine.
But, at the best, she was hardly a practical locomotive, even for 1851.
And soon after the completion of the road to Cape Vincent she was
relegated to the round-house there and stored against an emergency. That
emergency came three or four years after the opening of the line. A
horseman had ridden in great haste to the Cape from Rosiere--then known as
LaBranche's Crossing--with news of possible disaster.
"The wood-pile's all afire at the Crossing," he shouted. "Ef the road is a
goin' to have any fuel this winter you'd better be hustling down there."
Richard Starsmeare was on duty at the round-house. He hurriedly summoned
the renowned Casey Eldredge, then and for many years afterwards a famed
engineer of the Rome road and Peter Runk, the extra fireman there.
Together they got out the little _Lion_ and made her fast to a flat-car
upon which had been put four or five barrels filled with water to
extinguish the conflagration. It would have been a serious matter indeed
to the road to have had that wood-pile destroyed. It was one of the chief
sources of fuel supply of the new railroad. The _Lion_, with its tiny
fire-fighting crew, went post-haste to LaBranche's. But when it had
arrived the farmers roundabout already had managed to extinguish the
flames.... Casey Eldredge reached for his watch.
"Gee," said he, "we shall have to be getting out of this. The Steamboat
Express will be upon our heels. Peter, get the fire up again."
Peter got the fire up. He opened the old fire-box door and thrust an
armful of pine into it. The blaze started up with a roar. And then the men
who were on the engine found themselves lying on their backs on the grass
beside the railroad....
They plowed the _Lion_ out of the fields around LaBranche's for the next
two years. Her safety-valve was turned out of the ground by a farmer's boy
a good two miles from the railroad. Starsmeare got it and carried it in
his tool-box for years thereafter--he quickly rose to the post of engineer
and in the days of the Civil War ran a locomotive upon the United States
Military Railroad from Washington south through Alexandria to Orange Court
House.
So perished the _Lion_. The little _Roxbury's_ fate was more prosaic. With
the flanges upon her driving-wheels ground down and her frame set upon
brick piers she became the first powerhouse of the Rome shops. The
_Commodore_ and the _Chicopee_ were larger engines. With their names
changed they entered the road's permanent engine fleet.
* * * * *
In the meantime the Watertown & Rome was having its own new locomotives
builded for it in a shop in the United States. Four of the new engines
were completed and ready for service about the time that the road was
opened into Watertown. The fifth engine, the _Orville Hungerford_, built
like its four immediate predecessors, by William Fairbanks, at Taunton,
Mass., was not delivered until the 19th day of that same September, 1851.
The _Hungerford_ was quite the best bit of the road's motive-power, then
and for a number of years thereafter. She was inside connected--her
cylinders and driving-rods being placed inside of the wheels; always the
fashion of British locomotives--and it was not until a long time
afterwards that she was rebuilt in the Rome shops and the cylinders and
rods placed outside, after the present-day American fashion. She was but
twenty-one and a half tons in weight all-told, while her four
predecessors, the _Watertown_, the _Rome_, the _Adams_ and the _Kingston_,
each twenty-two tons and a half.
* * * * *
I have digressed. It still is the evening of the fifth of September, 1851.
A great crowd had congregated that evening in the neighborhood of that
first, small temporary station at Watertown. The iron horse was greeted
with many salvos of applause, the waving of a thousand torches and, it is
to be presumed, with the presence of a band. Yet the real celebration over
the arrival of the railroad was delayed for nineteen days, when there was
a genuine _fête_. It was first announced by the _Reformer_ on the 4th of
September, saying:
"... We are informed by R. B. Doxtater, Esq., the gentlemanly and
efficient Superintendent of the Watertown & Rome Railroad, that the public
celebration in connection with the opening of this road will take place on
Wednesday, the 24th September. This will be a proud day for Jefferson
County and we trust that she may wear the honor conferred upon her in a
becoming manner. The known liberality of our citizens induces the belief
that nothing will be left undone on their part to contribute to the
general festivities and interest of the occasion...."
Nothing was left undone. The morning of the 24th of September was ushered
in by a salute of guns; thirteen in all, one for each member of the Board
of Directors. At 10 o'clock a parade formed in the Public Square, under
the direction of General Abner Baker, Grand Marshal of the day, and in the
following formation:
Music
Watertown Citizens' Corps
Order of The Sons of Temperance
Fire Companies of Watertown and Rome
Order of Odd Fellows
Committee of Arrangements
Corporate Authorities of Watertown, Kingston, Rome and Utica
Clergy and the Press
Officers, Directors, Engineers and Contractors
of the
Watertown & Rome Railroad
Specially Invited Guests
Strangers from Abroad and the Stockholders
Citizens
The procession marched down Stone Street to the passenger depot of the new
railroad where the special train from Rome arrived at a little after
eleven o'clock and was greeted by a salvo of seventy-two guns--one for
each mile of completed line. There it reformed, with its accessions from
the train and returned to the Public Square where there was unbridled
oratory for nearly an hour. After which a return to the depot in which a
large collation was served, before the return to the special train for
Rome.
So came the railroad to Watertown. By an odd coincidence, the Hudson River
Railroad from New York to Albany was finished in almost that same month.
It was with a good deal of pride that the resident of Watertown
contemplated the fact that he might leave his village by the morning
train at five o'clock and be in the metropolis of the New World by six
o'clock that same evening. Such speed! Such progress!
* * * * *
In the meantime the Watertown & Rome Railroad had sustained a real loss;
in the death, on the morning of Sunday, April 6, 1851, of its first
President, the Hon. Orville Hungerford. As the son of one of the earliest
pioneers of Watertown, Mr. Hungerford had played no small part in its
development. Merchant, banker, Congressman, he had been to it. And to the
struggling Watertown & Rome Railroad he was not merely its President, but
its financial adviser and friend. It was due to his personal endorsement
of the project, as well as that of his bank, that hope in it was finally
revived. Then it was that foreign capitalists had their doubts as to its
final success dispelled and gave evidence of their faith in the new road
by substantial purchases of its securities.
Mr. Hungerford was succeeded as President of the Watertown & Rome by Mr.
W. C. Pierrepont, of Brooklyn, who, while in one sense an alien to
Jefferson County, was in another and far larger one, not only one of her
chief residents but one of her most loyal sons. He, too, had been a
powerful friend and advocate of the new road, had worked tirelessly in
its behalf. It was his rare opportunity to stand as its President when the
locomotive first arrived at Pierrepont Manor, the center of his land
holdings, and a very few months later in the same enviable post at
Watertown. It was his patient habit to go down to the depot at the Manor
evening after evening and with a spy-glass in hand watch the track toward
Mannsville for the coming of the evening train. There was no telegraph in
those days, of course, and the locomotive's smoke was the only signal of
its pending arrival. Neither was there any standard time. Finally it was
Pierrepont, himself, who fixed the official time for the road,
ascertaining by a skillful use of his chronometer that the suntime at
Watertown was just seven minutes and forty-eight seconds slower than that
of the City Hall in New York. And so it was officially fixed for the
railroad.
Under Mr. Pierrepont's oversight the Watertown & Rome Railroad was
finished; through to the village of Chaumont in the fall of 1851, and then
in April of the following year to Cape Vincent, its original northern
terminal. At this last point elaborate plans were made for a water
terminal. Even though the harbor there was not to be protected by a
breakwater for many, many years to come, the town was recognized as an
international gateway of a very considerable importance. A ferry steamer,
_The Lady of the Lake_, which had attained a distinction from the fact
that it was the first upon these northern waters to have staterooms upon
its upper decks, was engaged for service between the Cape and the city of
Kingston, in Upper Canada. Extensive piers and an elevator were builded
there upon the bank of the St. Lawrence, and the large covered passenger
station that was so long a familiar landmark of that port.
[Illustration: THE CAPE VINCENT STATION A Real Landmark of the Old Rome
Road, Built in 1852 and Destroyed by a Great Storm in 1895.]
For forty years this station stood, even though the span of life of the
large hotel that adjoined it was ended a decade earlier by a most
devastating fire. But, upon the evening of September 11, 1895, when
Conductor W. D. Carnes--best known as "Billy" Carnes--brought his train
into the shed to connect with the Kingston boat, a violent storm thrust
itself down upon the Cape. In the rainburst that accompanied it, the folk
upon the dock sought shelter in the trainshed, and there they were
trapped. The wind swept through the open end of that ancient structure and
lifted it clear from the ground, dropping it a moment later in a thousand
different pieces. It was a real catastrophe. Two persons were killed
outright and a number were seriously injured. The event went into the
annals of a quiet North Country village, along with the fearful disaster
of the steamer _Wisconsin_, off nearby Grenadier Island, many years
before.
* * * * *
With the Cape Vincent terminal completed, the regular operation of trains
upon the Watertown & Rome began; formally upon the first day of May, 1852.
Six days later the road suffered its first accident, a distressing affair
in the neighborhood of Pierrepont Manor. A party of young men in that
village had taken upon themselves to "borrow" a hand-car, left by the
contractor beside the track and were whirling a group of young women of
their acquaintance upon it when around the curve from Adams came a "light"
locomotive at high-speed, which crashed into them head-on and killed three
of the women almost instantly; and seriously wounded a fourth.
The first employe to lose his life in the service was brakeman George
Post, who, on October 13th, of that year, was going forward to lighten the
brakes on the northbound freight, as it reached the long down-grade, north
of Adams Centre, when he was struck by an overhead bridge and died before
aid could reach him.
These men of the North Country were learning that railroading is not all
prunes and preserves. They had their own troubles with their new
property. For one thing, the engines kept running off the track. There
were three locomotive derailments in a single day in 1853 and the
Directors asked the Superintendent if he could not be a little more
careful in the operation of the line. They also officially chided, quite
mildly, one of their number who had contributed twenty-five dollars to the
Fourth-of-July celebration in Watertown that summer without asking the
consent of the full Board. On the other hand, they quite genially voted
annual passes for an indefinite number of years to the widows of Orville
Hungerford and of Edmund Kirby as well as their daughters.
It was only two years later than this that there was a change in the
Superintendent's office, Job Collamer, who had succeeded its original
holder Robert B. Doxtater, being succeeded by Carlos Dutton who was paid
the rather astonishing salary, for those days, of $4000 a year. A year
later R. E. Hungerford, of Watertown, succeeded Daniel Lee, who was
compelled to retire by serious illness as the company's Treasurer and was
paid $1500 a year, with an occasional five-hundred-dollar bond from the
sinking fund as special compensation at Christmas time. It was about this
time also, that John S. Coons, now of Watertown, became station-agent at
Brownville, a post which he held for four or five years.
These events were, perhaps, to be reckoned as fairly casual things in the
life of a railroad which, to almost any community is life itself. From the
beginning the Watertown & Rome played a most important part in the life of
the steadily growing territory that it served. Northern New York was
finally beginning to come into its own. More than a hundred thousand folk
already were residing in Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Lewis counties. No
longer was it regarded as a vast wilderness somewhere north of the Erie
Canal. Horace Greeley had visited it in the fifties, had lectured in what
was afterwards Washington Hall, Watertown, and had been tremendously
impressed by Mr. Bradford's portable steam engine. And in 1859 the eyes of
the entire land were focused upon Watertown and its immediate
surroundings.
That was the year of the big ballooning. John Wise, of Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, a well-famed aeronaut, together with three companions--John
La Mountain, of Troy, and William Hyde and O. A. Geager, both of
Bennington, Vermont--had set forth from St. Louis in the evening in the
mammoth balloon, _Atlantic_, with the expressed intention of sailing to
New York City in it. All night long they traveled and sometime before
dawn La Mountain fancied that they were over one of the Great
Lakes--probably Erie. He awakened his sleeping companions and pointing far
over the basket-edge told them that they were passing over the surface of
a large body of water.
"You can see the stars below you now," he explained.
And so they were, over Erie. They continued to sail between the stars
until dawn, and sometime just before noon they crossed the Niagara River,
well in sight of the Falls. Winging their flight at a rate that man had
never before made and would not make again for many and many a year to
come, the _Atlantic_ traveled the whole length of Ontario before four
o'clock in the afternoon and finally made a forced landing not far from
the village of Henderson.
The fame that arose from so vast an exploit literally swept around the
world. Hyde and Geager had had enough of ballooning and returned to their
Vermont home. Wise went back to Lancaster, but La Mountain found an
intrepid and a fearless companion in John A. Haddock, at that time editor
of the _Watertown Reformer_, who once had been into the wilds of Labrador
and had returned safely from them. Together these men rescued the
_Atlantic_ from the tangle of tree-tops into which it had fallen. On
August 11th of that same year they announced an ascension from the Fair
Grounds in Watertown, accompanied by La Mountain's young cousin, Miss
Ellen Moss. And on the twenty-second of the following September the two
men made what was destined to be the final ascent of the great _Atlantic_.
The balloon rose high--from the Public Square, this time--and floated off
toward the north in a strong wind. In a little less than three hours it
traversed some four hundred miles. Then a quick landing was made, in the
vast and untrodden Canadian forest, some 150 miles due north of Ottawa, a
region even more desolate then than to-day.
For four days the men were lost, hopelessly. Their airship was abandoned
in the trees and they made their way afoot as best they might until they
came into the path of a party of lumbermen bound for Ottawa. It was
another seven days before they had reached the Canadian capital and the
outposts of the telegraph--in all eleven endless days before Watertown
knew the final result of the foolhardy ascension, and prepared a mighty
welcome for them, whom they had given up as dead.
* * * * *
To these really tremendous events in the history of the North Country the
Watertown & Rome and the Potsdam & Watertown railroads--of this last,
much more in a moment--ran excursions from all Northern New York. Vast
throngs of people came upon them. The effect upon the passenger revenues
of the two railroads was appreciable upon the occasion of the balloon
ascension, just as it had been three summers before, when the first State
Fair had been held in Watertown--in a pleasant grove very close to the
site of the present Jefferson County Orphans Home. At that time the Rome
road had taken in nearly $11,000 in excursion receipts and the Potsdam
road, although at that time only completed from Watertown to Gouverneur,
more than $5,000. This was used as an argument by the promoters of the
second State Fair at Watertown--held on the present county fair grounds in
the fall of 1860, for a subscription of a thousand dollars from each of
the roads--which was promptly granted.
Yet the Watertown & Rome Railroad needed no excursions for its prosperity.
It had prospered greatly; from the beginning. Its four passenger trains a
day--two up and two down--were well filled always. Its freight train which
ran over the entire length of the line from Rome to Cape Vincent each day
did an equally good business. Already it had the third largest freight-car
equipment of any railroad in the state. Its success was a tremendous
incentive to all other railroad projects in the North Country. From it
they all took hope. We have seen long ago the serious efforts that were
being made to build a road direct from Sackett's Harbor up the valley of
the Black River to Watertown and Carthage and thence across the
all-but-impenetrable North Woods to Saratoga. Yet nowhere was it more
obvious that a railroad should be builded than between Watertown and some
convenient point upon the Northern Railroad, which already was in complete
operation between Lake Champlain and Ogdensburgh. Such a railroad
presently was builded; taking upon itself the appellation of the Potsdam &
Watertown Railroad. And to the consideration of the beginnings of that
railroad, a most vital part of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, that was
as yet unborn, we are now fairly come.
CHAPTER IV
THE POTSDAM & WATERTOWN RAILROAD
A very early survey of the Northern Railroad which, as we have already
seen, was the pioneer line of the North Country, projected the road
between Malone and Ogdensburgh through the prosperous villages of Canton
and Potsdam. This survey was rejected. The sponsors of the
Northern--almost all of them Boston and New England men and having little
personal knowledge of Northern New York and certainly none at all of its
possibilities--thrust this preliminary survey away from them. They decided
that the road should run between its terminals with as small a deviation
from a straight line as possible. So, from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburgh,
through Malone, the Northern Railroad ran with long tangents and few
curves and both Canton and Potsdam were left aside. Through traffic from
the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River was all that the early
directors of the line could see. Their vision was indeed limited.
Canton and Potsdam began to feel their isolation from these earliest
railroad enterprises. They were cut off apparently from railroad
communication, either with the East or with the West. The Watertown & Rome
Railroad, as planned from Cape Vincent to Rome, would, of course, pass
through Watertown, but no one seemed to think of building it east from
that village.
So, practically all of St. Lawrence County and the northern end of
Jefferson was left without railroad hopes. Dissatisfaction arose, even
before the completion of the Watertown & Rome, that so large a territory
had been so completely slighted. Potsdam, in particular, felt the
indignity that had been heaped upon it. And so it was, that, as far back
as 1850, fifty-eight of the public-spirited citizens of that village
organized themselves into the Potsdam Railroad Company and proceeded to
name as their directors: Joseph H. Sanford, William W. Goulding, Samuel
Partridge, Henry L. Knowles, Augustus Fling, Theodore Clark, Charles T.
Boswell, Willard M. Hitchcock, William A. Dart, Hiram E. Peck, Aaron T.
Hopkins, Charles Cox and Nathan Parmeter. Among the stockholders of this
early railroad company were Horace Allen and Liberty Knowles, whose
advanced age debarred them from active participation in its work, but who
responded liberally to frequent calls for aid in its construction.
Soon after the incorporation of the Potsdam Railroad, it was built,
primarily as a branch of some five and one-half miles connecting Potsdam
with the Northern Railroad at a point, which, for lack of an immediate
better name, was called Potsdam Junction. Afterwards it was renamed
Norwood. An attractive village sprang up about the junction, which finally
boasted one of the best of the small hotels of the whole North Country;
the famed Whitney House, with which the name and fame of the late "Sid"
Phelps was so closely connected for so many years.
* * * * *
The success of Potsdam with her railroad and the consequent prosperity
that it brought to her stirred the interest and the envy of the
neighboring village of Canton; the shire-town of St. Lawrence. Gouverneur
spruced up also. The St. Lawrence towns began to coöperate. To them came a
great community of interest from the northerly townships and villages of
Jefferson as well--Antwerp, Philadelphia and Evan's Mills in particular.
The demand for a railroad between Watertown and Potsdam began to take a
definite form.
It was not an easy task to which the towns and men of St. Lawrence and of
Jefferson had set themselves. Its financial aspects were portentous, to
put it mildly. The money for the Northern Railroad had come from New
England. That for the Watertown & Rome also had come with a comparative
ease. Watertown even then was a rich and promising industrial center and
there seemed to be genuine financial opportunities for a railroad that
would connect it with the outer world. But St. Lawrence County, there at
the beginning of the fifties, was poor and undeveloped. Necessarily, the
money for its railroad would have to come from its own territory.
Nevertheless, undaunted by difficulties, these men of that territory set
about to build a railroad from Potsdam to Watertown. They dared much.
Theirs was the spirit of the true pioneer, the same spirit that was
building a college at Canton and had built academies at Gouverneur and at
Potsdam, and that was planning in every way for the future development of
the North Country.
These men knew more than a little of the resources of their townships.
They whispered among themselves of the wealth of their minerals. Along the
county-line between St. Lawrence and Jefferson, in the neighborhood of
Keene's Station, there stand to-day unused iron mines of a considerable
magnitude. Flooded and for the moment deserted, these mines house some of
the greatest of the untouched treasures of Northern New York; vast
deposits of red hematite, exceeding in percentage value even the famous
fields of the Mesaba district of Lake Superior. In the course of this
narrative I shall refer again to these Keene mines. For the moment
consider them as a monument--a somewhat neglected monument to be sure--to
the vision and persistence of James Sterling.
It was largely due to the enterprise of this pioneer of Jefferson County
that mines and blast furnaces sprang up, not only at Keene's but at
Sterlingville and Lewisburgh as well. He built many of the highways and
bridges both of Antwerp and of Rossie. Yet, in the closing days of the
fifties, he was doomed to bitter disappointments. The great panic of 1857
and the inrush of cheap iron that followed in its wake were quite too much
for him, and the man who had been known through the entire state as the
"Iron King of Northern New York" died in 1863, from a general physical and
mental breakdown, due in no small part to the collapse of his fortunes.
* * * * *
I anticipate, we were talking of railroads, not of men. Yet, somehow, men
must forever weave themselves into the web of a narrative such as this.
And no fair understanding can ever be had of the difficulties under which
the railroads of the North Country were born without an understanding of
the difficulties under which the men who helped give them birth labored.
To return once again to the main thread of our story, the agitation for
the building of a railroad between Watertown and Potsdam followed closely
upon the heels of the completion of the Northern Railroad and the branch
Potsdam Railroad, from it to the fine village of that name. Stock in the
Northern Railroad had been sold both there and in Canton, even though the
road when completed had passed each by. The men who held that stock wanted
to come to the aid of the newer project. With their money tied up in the
elder of the two, they were quite helpless. Eventually their release was
brought about, and the money that came to them from the sale of their
securities of the Northern was reinvested in those of the Potsdam &
Watertown Railroad, just coming into being.
A meeting was held in Watertown in July, 1851 (the year of the completion
of the Watertown & Rome Railroad) and E. N. Brodhead employed to make a
preliminary survey of the proposed line; which would be followed
immediately with maps and estimates. He went to his task without delay,
and rendered a full report on the possibilities of the road at a meeting
held at Gouverneur on January 9, 1852. There were no dissenting voices in
regard to the proposed line. So it was, that then and there, the Potsdam
& Watertown Railroad was organized permanently, with the following
directors:
Edwin Dodge, Gouverneur
Zenas Clark, Potsdam
Samuel Partridge, Potsdam
E. Miner, Canton
A. M. Adsit, Colton
O. V. Brainard, Watertown
W. E. Sterling, Gouverneur
Joseph H. Sanford, Potsdam
William W. Goulding, Potsdam
Barzillai Hodskin, Canton
H. B. Keene, Antwerp
Howell Cooper, Watertown
Hiram Holcomb, Watertown
* * * * *
The old minute-book of the Directors of this early railroad has been
carefully preserved in the village of Potsdam. It is a narrative of a
really stupendous effort, of struggles against adversity, of undaunted
courage, of optimism and of faith. It relates unemotionally what the
Directors did, but between the lines one also reads of the grave
situations that confronted them; not once, but again and again. And there
lies the real drama of the founding of the Potsdam & Watertown.
The first meeting of the Directors was held, as we have just seen, on
January 9, 1852. Most of the men, who were that day elected as Directors,
had gone on that day to Gouverneur--many others too. Watertown,
Gouverneur, Canton and Potsdam were present in their citizens, men of
worth and distinction in their home communities. Their families are yet
represented in Northern New York, and succeeding generations owe to them a
debt of gratitude for their unselfish work in that early day. For what
could there be of selfishness in a task which promised so much of worry
and responsibility, and so little of any immediate financial return?
It was planned, that January day in Gouverneur, that work should be begun
at both ends of the line and carried forward simultaneously, until the
construction crews should meet; somewhere between Potsdam and Watertown.
At an adjourned meeting, held ten days later at the American Hotel in
Watertown, it was formally resolved that; "all persons who have subscribed
toward the expenses of the survey of the Potsdam & Watertown Railroad
Company ... shall be entitled to a credit on the stock account for the
amount so subscribed and paid." At the same meeting it was decided that a
committee consisting of Messrs. Farwell, Holcomb and Dodge be appointed to
confer with the officers of the Watertown & Rome in regard to the
construction of a branch into the village of Watertown. It will be
remembered that in that early day the railroad did not approach the
village nearer than what is now known as the junction, at the foot of
Stone Street.
* * * * *
Progress was beginning, in real earnest. A third meeting was held on
February 26--again at Gouverneur, at Van Buren's Hotel--and the following
officers chosen:
_President_, EDWIN DODGE, Gouverneur
_Vice-President_, ZENAS CLARK, Potsdam
_Secretary_, HENRY L. KNOWLES, Potsdam
_Treasurer_, DANIEL LEE, Watertown
Mr. Lee was also Treasurer of the Watertown & Rome. His Potsdam &
Watertown compensation was fixed a little later at $600 annually. Four
years later he was succeeded as Treasurer by William W. Goulding, of
Potsdam, who was engaged at a salary of a thousand dollars a year.
At that same Gouverneur meeting a memorial was prepared for the Trustees
of the Village of Watertown. It asked, as an important link of the pathway
for the new railroad, the use of Factory Street for its entire length.
Factory Street, as we have already seen, was one of the most aristocratic,
as well as one of the prettiest streets of the town. So great was
Watertown's appreciation of the advantages that were to accrue to it by
the completion of the line steel highway to the north that the permission
was finally granted by the Trustees, not, however, without a considerable
opposition.
* * * * *
So was our Potsdam & Watertown fairly started upon its important career. A
fund of something over $750,000 having been raised for its construction,
offices were opened at 6 Washington Street, Watertown, and definite
preparations made toward the actual building of the road. The breaking of
ground was bound to be preceded by a stout financial campaign. Money was
tight. And remember all the while, if you will, the real paucity of it in
the North Country of those days. And yet early in 1853, it was found
necessary to increase the capital stock to $2,000,000, in itself, an act
requiring some courage; yet after all, it might have required more courage
not to take the step. For, of a truth, the company needed the money.
Gradually committees were appointed, not only to look after this and other
vexing financial questions, but also to supervise the location of the line
as well as to provide suitable station grounds and buildings. There were
many meetings of the Board before the road was definitely located; there
must have been much bitterness of spirit and of discussion. Hermon wanted
the road, and so an alternative route between Canton and Gouverneur was
surveyed to include it. In 1853 the Chief Engineer was directed "to cause
the middle route (so designated in Mr. Brodhead's report) in the towns of
Canton and DeKalb to be sufficiently surveyed for location as soon as
practicable, unless upon examination, the Engineer shall believe the
railroad can be constructed upon the Hermon route, so called, as cheaply
and with as much advantage to the company, and that in such case he cause
that route to be surveyed, instead of the middle route." But stock
subscriptions were light in Hermon and engineering difficult on its route,
and finally the "middle" and present route by the way of DeKalb and
Richville was selected. Similarly local discouragements turned the line
sharply toward the North, after crossing the Racket River at Potsdam,
instead of toward the South, and, a more direct route originally surveyed,
toward Canton.
The location of the station grounds was another source of fruitful
discussion. In this regard, Gouverneur seems to have given the greatest
concern. Many committees wrestled with the problem of its depot site. In
the old minute-book, rival locations appear and, upon one occasion, the
matter having simmered down to a choice between the present station
grounds and prospective ones on the other side of the river, the Chief
Engineer was directed to survey out both locations and set stakes, so that
the whole Board could visit the village and see the thing for itself.
* * * * *
By 1854 distinct progress had been made. At a meeting held on February 4th
of that year, Messrs. Cooper, Brainard and Holcomb, of the Directorate,
were authorized as a committee to enter into negotiations for the purchase
of iron rails for the road, and to complete the purchase of 2500 tons of
these, by sale of the bonds of the company, "or otherwise." The financial
end of the transaction was apt always to be the most difficult part of it.
Yet somehow these were almost always solved. The Watertown & Rome road
guaranteed some of the bonds of the Potsdam & Watertown and Erastus
Corning, of Albany, and John H. Wolfe, of New York, loaned it considerable
sums of money. Construction proceeded, and on May 4, 1854, the Directors
decided to send 650 tons of the new iron to the easterly terminus of the
road; the remainder to the westerly building forces.
In the fall of that year, a considerable amount of track having been laid
down, the Directors looked toward the purchase of rolling stock. At
their November meeting they decided to buy the engine _Montreal_, and
its tender, from the Watertown & Rome, at a cost of $4,500; also two
baggage and "post-office" cars, at $750 each. Which provided for the
beginning of operation at the west end of the road.
[Illustration: EARLY RAILROAD TICKETS Including an Annual Pass Issued by
President Marcellus Massey, of the R. W. & O.]
But the east end needed rolling-stock as well--a considerable gap still
intervened between the rail-heads of each incomplete section. So toward
the East, the Directors of the Potsdam & Watertown turned their attention.
They found some rolling stock in the hands of a man in Plattsburgh;
"Vilas, of Plattsburgh" is his sole designation in their minutes. This
Vilas, it would appear, was a hard-headed Clinton County business man who
seemed to have but little confidence in the financial soundness of the
Potsdam & Watertown. Nothing of the gambler appears in Vilas. He did not
believe in taking chances. He had a locomotive and two cars that he would
sell--for cash. Eventually, he sold them--for cash. Some of the Directors
of the P. & W. bought them, themselves, paying out their own hard-earned
cash for them; and recouping themselves by accepting pay in installments
from the company.
Yet the possible danger in a continuance of such practices was recognized
even in that early day, and in order to avoid similar situations arising
at some later time, I find in the old tome a resolution reading: "Whereas
in raising money and carrying on the operations of our company for the
completion of the road, the unanimous coöperation of its Directors is
necessary, particularly in matters involving personal pecuniary liability,
therefore: Resolved; That each Director now present pledge himself to
endorse and guaranty all notes and bills of exchange required by the
committee on finance to be used in accordance with the preceding
resolution ... and that we hold it to be the duty of all Directors of this
company to do the same."
* * * * *
From time to time a note of pathos creeps into these old minutes and one
catches a glimpse of the trials and struggles of the little company. For
instance: "Resolved: That in our struggles for the construction of the
road of this company, we have not failed to appreciate the liberal spirit
with which we have been met and the encouragement and aid often freely
afforded us by Hon. George V. Hoyle, Superintendent of the Northern
Railroad, and we avail ourselves of this occasion to express to him,
individually and as Superintendent, and through him to those associated
with him the management of that road, our sense of obligation, indulging
the hope that we shall yet be able in the same spirit to reciprocate all
his kindness, and that the interest of Mr. Hoyle and his road may be
abundantly promoted by our success."
* * * * *
And then, finally, success! In the faded minutes Secretary Knowles
triumphantly records that "On the morning of the fifth of February, 1857,
a passenger train left Watertown at about nine o'clock a. m., with many of
the officers of the company and invited friends, passed leisurely over the
entire road to its junction with the Northern Railroad, thence with the
Superintendent of that road to Ogdensburgh, arriving at Ogdensburgh at
about four o'clock and returned the next day to Watertown."
This is not to be interpreted, however, as meaning that the Potsdam &
Watertown was immediately ready for business. There remained much work to
be done in completing the track and the roadbed, station buildings,
equipment, and the other appurtenances necessary for a going railroad. The
contractors, Phelps, Mattoon and Barnes, who also had builded the
Watertown & Rome, had unpaid balances still remaining. There had been
numerous and one or two rather serious disagreements between the company
and its contractors. Finally these were all settled by a final cash
payment of $100,000, in addition, of course, to what had been paid before.
In order to make this large payment--for that day, at least--it became
necessary to bond the property still again; this time by a second
mortgage--which was made around $200,000, so that the road might be made
completely ready for business.
Details which indicate the rapidly approaching time of such completion
soon begin to appear in the minutes. A committee is appointed to procure a
Superintendent--George B. Phelps, of Watertown, was appointed to this
post. Freight agents are directed to turn over their receipts to the
Treasurer weekly, ticket agents daily. The Board took its business
seriously and several meetings about this time were called for seven, half
past seven and eight o'clock in the morning, although, of course, this
might mean that the railroad business was gotten out of the way early,
leaving the day free for regular occupations. The vexed question of the
station grounds at Gouverneur was settled definitely early in 1857, and
the executive committee was instructed to erect on the "station grounds at
Gouverneur a building similar to the one at Antwerp in the speediest and
most economical manner." To this day the Antwerp building survives, but
Gouverneur, like Potsdam, for more than a decade past has rejoiced in the
possession of a new and ornate passenger station.
It was not until June, 1857, that a definite passenger service was
established upon the line from Watertown, where it connected with the
trains of the W. & R., and thus to the present village of Norwood,
seventy-five miles distant. It is worth noting here that a few years after
this was accomplished a branch line was constructed from a point two miles
distant from the old village of DeKalb, and destined to be known to future
fame as DeKalb Junction, straight through to Ogdensburgh, but eighteen
miles distant. DeKalb Junction also had a famous hotel which for many
years "fed" the trains and "fed" them well. In its earlier days this
tavern was known as the Goulding House; in more recent years, however, it
has been the Hurley House, so named from the late Daniel Hurley, one of
the most popular and successful hotelmen in all the North Country.
* * * * *
The passenger trains of the Potsdam road were operated out of the new
station in Watertown, just back of the Woodruff House--which we shall see
in another chapter. For a time there was no train service for travelers
between its station and that of the Rome road at the foot of Stone Street,
the transfer between them being made by stages. But soon this was
rectified and the one o'clock train, north from Watertown, allowed
considerably more than an hour for connection after the arrival of the
train from Rome, which gave abundant time for the consumption of one of
Proprietor Dorsey's fine meals at the Woodruff. It was a good meal and not
high-priced. The charge per day for three of them and a night's lodging
thrown in was fixed at but $1.50.
The early train which left Watertown at sharp six o'clock in the
morning--afterwards it was fixed at a slightly later hour--made connection
at Potsdam Junction with the through train on the Northern for Rouse's
Point and, going by that roundabout way, a traveler might hope to reach
Montreal in the evening of the day that he had left Watertown--if he
enjoyed good fortune. Whilst upon the completion of the short line a few
years later between DeKalb Junction and Ogdensburgh, one could reach the
Canadian metropolis in an even more direct fashion, by the ferry steamer
_Transit_ to Prescott, and then over the Grand Trunk Railway, just coming
into the heyday of its fame. Watertown no longer was cut off from rail
communication with the North.
* * * * *
The Potsdam & Watertown though now fairly launched, operating trains, and,
from all external evidences at least, doing a fair business, nevertheless
was grievously burdened with its grave financial difficulties. On May 16,
1857, a special finance committee, consisting of Messrs. Phelps, Cooper
and Goulding, was appointed with power to carry along the company's
growing floating debt, and in October of that selfsame year the President
joined with them in their appeals to the creditors to have a little more
patience. In the following spring the Directors discussed the propriety of
asking the Legislature for an act exempting from taxation all railroads in
the state that were not paying their dividends.
The Potsdam road certainly was not paying _its_ dividends. Not only this,
but, on May 26, 1859, interest on the second mortgage, being unpaid for
six months, the trustees under the mortgage took possession of the
property and the Directors in meeting approved of the action. Such a step
quite naturally agitated the first mortgage holders, who began to protest.
In August, 1859, the P. & W. Board disclaimed any purpose whatsoever to
repudiate the payment of principal or interest upon its first mortgage
bonds, or its contingent obligation to the Watertown & Rome Railroad. It
invited the Directors of that larger and more prosperous road to attend a
joint meeting wherein the earnings of the Potsdam & Watertown might be
applied to the payment of the coupons upon its first mortgage bonds. There
was a growing community of interest between the two roads, anyway. The one
was the natural complement to the other. Such a community of interest led,
quite naturally, to a merger of the properties. In June, 1860, it was
announced that the Watertown & Rome had gained financial control of the
Potsdam & Watertown. Soon after the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh was
officially born and a new chapter in the development of Northern New York
was begun.
CHAPTER V
THE FORMATION OF THE R. W. & O.
That the Watertown & Rome and the Potsdam & Watertown Railroads would have
merged in any event was, from the first, almost a foregone conclusion.
Their interests were too common to escape such inevitable consolidation.
The actual union of the two properties was accomplished in the very early
sixties (July 4, 1861) and for the merged properties--the new trunk-line
of the North Country, if you please--the rather euphonious and embracing
title of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh Railroad was chosen. It was at
that time that the branch was built from DeKalb to Ogdensburgh. A combined
directorate was chosen from the governing bodies of the two merged
roads--I shall not take the trouble to set it down here and now--and Mr.
Pierrepont was chosen as the President of the new property, with Marcellus
Massey, of Brooklyn, as its Vice-President, R. E. Hungerford as Secretary
and Treasurer, H. T. Frary as General Ticket Agent, C. C. Case as General
Freight Agent and Addison Day as General Superintendent. Whilst the
general offices of the company were in Watertown, its shops and general
operating offices, at that time, were in Rome. It was in this latter city
that Addison Day was first located. Day was a resident of Rochester. He
refused to remove his home from that city, but spent each week-end with
his family there.
He was a conspicuous figure upon the property, coming as the successor to
a number of superintendents, each of whom had served a comparatively short
time in office--Robert B. Doxtater, Job Collamer and Carlos Dutton, were
Addison Day's predecessors as Superintendents upon the property. These men
had been local in their opportunity. To Day was given a real job; that of
successfully operating 189 miles of a pretty well-built and essential
railroad. Yet his annual salary was fixed at but $2500, as compared with
the $4000 paid to Dutton. Later however Day was raised to $3000 a year.
The main shops of the company, as I have just said, were then situated in
Rome. They were well equipped for that day and employed about one hundred
men, under William H. Griggs, the road's first Master Mechanic. A smaller
shop, of approximately one-half the capacity and used chiefly for
engine repairs and freight-car construction, was located at Watertown,
just back of the old engine house on Coffeen Street.
[Illustration: WATERTOWN IN 1865 Showing the First Passenger Station of
the Potsdam & Watertown. Taken from the Woodruff House Tower.]
But Watertown's chief comfort was in its passenger station, which stood in
the rear of the well-famed Woodruff House. Norris M. Woodruff had
completed his hotel at about the same time that the railroad first reached
Watertown. It was a huge structure--reputed to be at that time the largest
hotel in the United States west of New York City; and even the far-famed
Astor House of that metropolis, had no dining-salon which in height and
beauty quite equalled the dining-room of the Woodruff House. Mr. Woodruff
had given the railroad the site for its passenger station in the rear of
his hotel, on condition that the chief passenger terminal of the company
should forever be maintained there, which has been done ever since. Yet
the chief passenger station of the R. W. & O. of 1861 was a simple affair
indeed. Builded in brick it afterwards became the wing of the larger
station that was torn down to be replaced by the present station a decade
ago. It was not until 1870 that the three story "addition" to the original
station was built and the first station restaurant at Watertown opened, in
charge of Col. A. T. Dunton, from Bellows Falls, Vt. After the fashion of
the time, its opening was signalized by a banquet.
* * * * *
In front of me there lies a very early time-table of the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh Railroad. It bears the date, April 20, 1863, and apparently is
the twelfth to be issued in the history of the road. It is signed by
Addison Day, as Superintendent.
On this sheet, the chief northbound train, No. 7, Express and Mail, left
Rome at four o'clock each afternoon, reaching Watertown at 7:05 p. m., and
leaving there twenty minutes later, arrived at Ogdensburgh at 10:30 p. m.
The return movement of this train, was as No. 2, leaving Ogdensburgh at
4:25 o'clock in the morning, passing Watertown at 7:10 o'clock and
reaching Rome at 10:35 a. m. In addition to this double movement each day,
there was a similar one of accommodation trains; No. 1, leaving Rome at
2:35 o'clock each morning, arriving and leaving Watertown at 6:20 and 6:40
a. m., respectively, and reaching Ogdensburgh at 10:10 a. m. As No. 8, the
accommodation returned, leaving Ogdensburgh at 4:30 p. m., passing
Watertown at 8:20 p. m., and arriving at Rome at 12:20 a. m. Apparently
folk who traveled in those days cared little about inconvenient hours of
arrival or departure.
There were connecting trains upon both the Cape Vincent and the Potsdam
Junction branches--the branch from Richland to Oswego was just under
construction--and a scheduled freight train over the entire line each day.
Yet there, still, was an almost entire absence of mid-day passenger
service.
Gradually this condition of things must have improved; for in Hamilton
Child's _Jefferson County Gazetteer and Business Directory_, for 1866, I
find the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh advertising three fast passenger
trains a day in each direction over the entire main line, in addition to
connections, not only for Cape Vincent and for Potsdam Junction, but also
over the new branch from Richland through Pulaski to Oswego. Pulaski,
humiliated in the beginning by the refusal of the Watertown & Rome to lay
its rails within four miles of that county-seat village, finally had
received the direct rail connection, that she had so long coveted.
In that same advertisement there first appears announcement of through
sleeping-cars, between Watertown and New York, an arrangement which
continued for a number of years thereafter, then was abandoned for many
years, but, under the bitter protests of the citizens of Watertown and
other Northern New York communities, was finally restored in 1891 as an
all-the-year service.
Upon the ancient time table of 1863 there appear the names of the old
stations, the most of which have come down unchanged until to-day. One of
them has disappeared both in name and existence, Centreville, two miles
south of Richland, while the adjacent station of Albion long since became
Altmar. Potsdam Junction we have already seen as Norwood, while nice
dignified old Sanford's Corners long since suffered the unspeakable insult
of being renamed, by some latter-day railroad official, Calcium. A similar
indignity at that time was heaped upon Adams Centre, being known
officially for a time as Edison!
The Centre rebelled. It had no quarrel with Mr. Edison. On the contrary,
it held the highest esteem for that distinguished inventor. But for the
life of it, it could not see why the name of a nice old-fashioned
Seventh-Day-Baptist town should be sacrificed for the mere convenience of
a telegrapher's code. It was quite bad enough when Union Square, over on
the Syracuse line, was forced, willy-nilly, to become Maple View, and
Holmesville, Fernwood. Neither were the marvels of the lexicographers of
the Postoffice Department, under which all manner of strange changes were
made in the spelling of old North Country names (think of Sackett's
Harbor, time-honored government military and naval station, reduced to a
miserable "Sacket!") germane to Adams Centre's problem. Adams Centre it
was christened in the beginning, and Adams Centre it proposed to remain.
And after a brief but brisk fight with railroad and postoffice officials,
it succeeded in regaining its birthright.
* * * * *
Early in June, 1872, William C. Pierrepont retired as President of the
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh and was succeeded by Marcellus Massey, the
third holder of that important post of honor in the North Country. Mr.
Massey, although for the greater part of his life also a resident of
Brooklyn, was of Jefferson County stock, a brother of Hart and of Solon
Massey. He gave his whole time and interest to the steady upbuilding of
the road. Gradually it was coming to a point where it was considered,
without exception, the best operated railroad in the State of New York, if
not in the entire land. Sometimes it was called the Nickel Plate, although
that name nowadays is generally reserved for the brisk trunk
line--officially the New York, Chicago & St. Louis--that operates from
Buffalo, through Cleveland to Chicago.
The R. W. & O. was in fact at that time an extremely high-grade railroad
property; it was the pride of Watertown, of the entire North Country as
well. Mr. Massey used to say that as a dividend payer--its annual ten per
cent came as steadily as clock-striking--his road could not be beat;
particularly in a day when many railroad investments were regarded as very
shaky things indeed. The crash of the Oswego Midland, which was to come a
few years later, was to add nothing to the confidence of investors in this
form of investment.
Steadily Mr. Massey and his co-workers sought to perfect the property. The
service was a very especial consideration in their minds. A moment ago we
saw the time table of 1863 in brief, now consider how it had steadily been
improved, in the course of another eight years.
In 1871 the passenger service of the R. W. & O. consisted of two trains
through from Rome to Ogdensburgh without change. The first left Rome at
4:30 a. m., passed through Watertown at 7:38 a. m., and arrived at
Ogdensburgh at 11:15 a. m. The second left Rome at 1:00 p. m., passed
through Watertown at 4:17 p. m., and arrived at Ogdensburgh at 7:10 p. m.
Returning the first of these trains left Ogdensburgh at 6:08 a. m., passed
through Watertown at 9:20 a. m., and arrived at Rome at 12:10 p. m.: the
second left Ogdensburgh at 3:00 p. m., passed through Watertown at 6:35
p. m., and reached Rome and the New York Central at 9:05 p. m. The
similarity between these trains and those upon the present time-card, the
long established Seven and One and Four and Eight, is astonishing. Put an
important train but once upon a time card, and seemingly it is hard to get
it off again.
In addition to these four important through trains there were others: The
Watertown Express, leaving Rome at 5:30 p. m. and "dying" at Watertown at
9:05 p. m., was the precursor of the present Number Three. The return
movement of this train was as the New York Express, leaving Watertown at
8:10 a. m. and reaching Rome at 11:35 a. m. There were also three trains a
day in each direction on the Cape Vincent, and Oswego branches and two on
the one between DeKalb and Potsdam Junctions.
* * * * *
For a railroad to render real service it must have, not alone good
track--in those early days the Rome road, as it was known colloquially,
gave great and constant attention to its right of way--but good engines.
Up to about 1870 these were exclusively wood-burners, many of them
weighing not more than from twenty to twenty-five tons each. They were of
a fairly wide variety of type. While the output of the Rome Locomotive
Works was always favored, there were numbers of engines from the Rhode
Island, the Taunton and the Schenectady Works.
Thirty-eight of these wood-burning engines formed the motive-power
equipment of the Rome road in the spring of 1869. Their names--locomotives
in those days invariably were named--were as follows:
1. _Watertown_
2. _Rome_
3. _Adams_
4. _Kingston_
5. _O. Hungerford_
6. _Col. Edwin Kirby_
7. _Norris Woodruff_
8. _Camden_
9. _J. L. Grant_
10. _Job Collamer_
11. _Jefferson_
12. _R. B. Doxtater_
13. _O. V. Brainard_
14. _North Star_
15. _T. H. Camp_
16. _Silas Wright_
17. _Antwerp_
18. _Wm. C. Pierrepont_
19. _St. Lawrence_
20. _Potsdam_
21. _Ontario_
22. _Montreal_
23. _New York_
24. _Ogdensburgh_
25. _Oswego_
26. _D. DeWitt_
27. _D. Utley_
28. _M. Massey_
29. _H. Moore_
30. _C. Comstock_
31. _S. F. Phelps_
32. _Col. Wm. Lord_
33. _H. Alexander, Jr._
34. _Roxbury_
35. _Com. Perry_
36. _C. E. Bill_
37. _Gen. S. D. Hungerford_
38. _Gardner Colby_
Of this considerable fleet the _Antwerp_ was perhaps the best known. Oddly
enough she was the engine that the directors of the Potsdam & Watertown
had purchased from "Vilas, of Plattsburgh." She was then called the
_Plattsburgh_, but upon her coming to the R. W. & O. she was already
renamed _Antwerp_. Inside connected, like the _O. Hungerford_, she also
was a product of the old Taunton works down in Eastern Massachusetts. Her
bright red driving wheels made her a conspicuous figure on the line.
The _Camden_ was also an inside connected engine. The _Ontario_ and the
_Potsdam_ and the _Montreal_ were other acquisitions from the Potsdam &
Watertown. The _Potsdam_ had a picture of a lion painted upon her front
boiler door, the work of some gifted local artist, unknown to present
fame. She came to the North Country as the _Chicopee_ from the Springfield
Locomotive Works, and with her came, as engineer and fireman,
respectively, the famous Haynes brothers, Orville and Rhett. Henry
Batchelder, a brother of the renowned Ben, who comes later into this
narrative, and who is now a resident of Potsdam, well recalls the first
train that made the trip between that village and Canton. Made up of
flat-cars with temporary plank seats atop of them, and hauled by the
_Potsdam_, it brought excursionists into Canton to enjoy the St. Lawrence
County Fair. That was in the year of 1855, and the railroad was only
completed to a point some two miles east of Canton. From that point the
travelers walked into town.
Mr. Batchelder also remembers that the engineers and firemen of that early
day invariably wore white shirts upon their locomotives. The old
wood-burners were never so hard as the coal-burners on the apparel of
their crews. They were wonderful little engines and, as we shall see in a
moment, had a remarkable ability for speed with their trains. The
_Antwerp_ in particular had rare speed. Those red drivers of hers were the
largest upon the line. And when Jeff Wells was at her throttle and those
red heels of hers were digging into the iron, men reached for their
watches.
* * * * *
No true history of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh might ever be written
without mention of Jefferson B. Wells. In truth he was the commodore of
the old locomotive fleet. For skill and daring and precision in the
handling of an engine he was never excelled. Although bearing a certain
uncanny reputation for being in accidents, he was blamed for none of them.
Whether at the lever of his two favorites, the _T. H. Camp_ and the
_Antwerp_, or in later years as captain of the "44" he was in his element
in the engine-cab. The "44" spent most of the later years of her life,
and of Wells', in service upon the Cape Vincent branch. I can remember it
standing at Watertown Junction, sending an occasional soft ring of grayish
smoke off into the blue skies above. And distinctly can I recall Jeff
Wells himself, a large-eyed, tallish man, fond of a good joke, or a good
story, a man with a keen zest in life itself. He was a good poker player.
It is related of him, that one night, while engaged in a pleasant game at
Cape Vincent, word came from Watertown ordering him to his engine for a
special run down to the county-seat and back.
For a moment old Jeff hesitated. He liked poker. But then the trained soul
of the railroader triumphed. He threw his hand down upon the table--it was
a good hand, too--and turning toward the call-boy said:
"Son, I'll be at the round house within ten minutes."
* * * * *
That was Wells; best at home in the engine-cab, and, I think no engine-cab
was ever quite the same to him as that of the speedy _Antwerp_, with John
Leasure on the fireman's side of the cab--Leasure was pretty sure to have
previously bedecked the _Antwerp_ with a vast variety of cedar boughs,
flags and the like--and the President's car on behind. This, in later
years, was sure to be the old parlor-car, _Watertown_, gayly furbished for
the occasion. This special was sure to be given the right-of-way over all
other trains on the line that day; all the switch-points being ordered
spiked, in order to avoid the possibility of accidents. Yet, on at least
one occasion--at DeKalb Junction--this practice nearly led to a serious
mishap. Mr. Massey's train had swept past the little depot there and
around the curve onto the Ogdensburgh branch at seventy miles an hour. For
once there had been a miscalculation. The little train veered terribly as
it struck the branch-line rails; the directors were thrown from their
comfortable seats in the parlor-car, and poor Billy Lanfear, of Cape
Vincent, the fireman, was nearly carromed from his place in the cab. At
the last fractional part of a second he succeeded in catching hold of the
engineer's window as he started to shoot out.
The wood-burners were not supposed to be fast engines--a great many of
them in the early days of the R. W. & O. had small drivers and this was an
added handicap to their speed. But sixty miles an hour was not out of the
question for them. Mr. Richard Holden, of Watertown, who started his
railroad career in the eating-house of the old station in that city, still
recalls several trips that he made in the cab of the engines on the Cape
branch. It had a fairly close schedule at the best, connecting at
Watertown Junction with Number Three up from Rome in the afternoon, and
turning and coming back in time to make connections with Number Six down
the line. It frequently would happen that Three would be fifteen or twenty
minutes late, which would mean a good deal of hustling on the part of the
Cape train to make her fifty mile run and turn-around and still avoid
delaying Number Six. But both Casey Eldredge and Chris Delaney, the
engineers on the branch at that time, could do it: Jeff Wells was still on
the main line and unwilling then to accept the easier Cape branch run,
which afterwards he was very glad to take.
"The air-brake was unknown at that time," says Mr. Holden, "all trains
being stopped by the brakeman, assisted by the fireman, a brake being upon
the tender of all the engines. When some of these fast trains were
running, I used to take a great delight in riding on the engine, and
remember the running-time of the trip was thirty-five minutes, which
included stops at Brownville, Limerick, Chaumont and Three Mile Bay, my
recollection being that the station at Rosiere was not open at that time.
Deducting the time used for stops the actual running time would average
sixty miles an hour. All engines used on passenger trains had small
driving-wheels and it will be remembered that all passenger trains, except
One and Six, consisted of but a baggage-car and two coaches, consequently
an engine could get a train under good headway much faster than engines
with the heavy equipment in use at the present time."
* * * * *
In all these statements in regard to the speed of the trains upon the
early R. W. & O. it should not be forgotten that for the first twelve or
thirteen years of the road's existence, it had to worry along without
telegraphic or any other form of rapid interstation communication. It was
not until 1863 or 1864 that its trains were despatched upon telegraphic
orders; and even these were of the crudest possible form. The "Nineteen"
had not yet been evolved. A slip of paper torn from the handiest writing
block and scribbled in fairly indecipherable hieroglyphics was the train
order of those beginnings of modern railroading. The telegraph order,
instead of being a real help to the locomotive engineer, was apt to be one
of the puzzles and the banes of his existence.
It was in 1866 that a railroad telegraph office was first established at
Watertown Junction and D. N. Bosworth engaged as despatcher there.
According to the recollections of Mr. W. D. Hanchette, of that city, who
is the nestor of all things telegraphic in Northern New York, Bosworth was
soon followed by a Mr. Warner, who was not, himself, a telegraphic
operator, but who had to be assisted by one. A Canadian, named Monk, was
one of the first of these. Warner was finally succeeded as despatcher at
Watertown Junction by N. B. Hine, a brother of Omar A. Hine and of A. C.
Hine--all of them much identified with the history of the Rome road. N. B.
Hine remained with the road for a long season of years as its train
despatcher, eventually moving his office from the Junction to the enlarged
passenger station back of the Woodruff House in Watertown.
He learned his trade in the summer before Fort Sumter was fired upon;
using a small, home-made, wooden key at his father's farm, somewhere back
of DeKalb. A year after he had obtained his railroad job, Omar Hine was
appointed operator at Richland, opening the first telegraph office at that
place, and becoming its station agent as well. From Richland he was
promoted to the more important, similar post at Norwood. When he left
Norwood, Mr. Hine became a conductor upon the main line. In that service
he remained until the comparatively recent year of 1887.
About the time that he was assigned to Richland, his brother, A. C. Hine,
was appointed operator and helper at the neighboring station of Sandy
Creek. So from a single North Country farm sprang three expert
telegraphers and railroaders. When they began their career, but a single
wire stretched all the way from Watertown to Ogdensburgh; and the movement
of trains by telegraph was occasional, not regular nor standardized. A
second wire was strung the entire length of the line in the fall of 1866
and in the following spring, Mr. Bosworth began the difficult task of
trying to work a systematic method of telegraphic despatching, and
gradually brought the engineers of the road into a real coöperation with
his plan, a thing much more difficult to accomplish than might be at first
imagined. Those old-time engineers of the road were good men; but some of
them were a trifle "sot" in their ways. Their habits were not things
easily changed.
* * * * *
The full list of these old-time engineers of the R. W. & O. would run to a
considerable length. Remember again Orve Haynes--something of an
engine-runner was he--who afterwards went down to St. Louis to become
Master Mechanic upon the Iron Mountain road. The _J. L. Grant_ was named
after a Master Mechanic of the R. W. & O., who eventually became an
assistant superintendent. The _Grant_ was in steady use upon the Cape
branch prior to the coming of the "44." A good engineer in those days was
a good mechanic--invariably. Repair facilities were few and far between.
The ingenuity and quick wit of the man in the engine-cab more than once
was called into play. Engine failures were no less frequent then than now.
Ben. F. Batchelder first came to fame as a well-known engineer of that
early decade; John Skinner was another. There was D. L. Van Allen and
Louis Bouran and John Mortimer and Casey Eldredge and Asa Rowell and old
"Parse" Hines, and George Schell and Jim Cheney--that list does indeed run
to lengths. In a later generation came Nathaniel R. Peterson ("Than") and
Conrad Shaler and Frank W. Smith and George H. Hazleton, and Frank Taylor,
and Charles Vogel--but again I must desist. This is a history, not a
necrology. It is hardly fair to pick but a few names, out of so many
deserving ones.
The most of the engineers of that day have gone. A very few remain. One of
these is Frank W. Smith, of Watertown, who to-day (1922) has retired from
his engine-cab, but remains one of the expert billiard players in the
Lincoln League of that city.
Mr. Smith entered upon his railroad career on November 9, 1866, at the
rather tender age of seventeen, as a wiper in the old round house in
Coffeen Street, Watertown. In those days all the engines upon the line
still were wood-burners. The most conspicuous thing about DeKalb Junction
in those days, aside from the red brick Goulding House, was the huge
wood-shed and wood-pile beyond the small depot, which still stands there.
It was customary for an engine to "wood up" at Watertown--in those days as
in these again, all trains changed engines at Watertown--and again at
DeKalb Junction before finishing her run into Ogdensburgh. Similarly upon
the return trip, she would stop again at DeKalb to fill her tender; which,
in turn, would carry her back to Watertown once again. Wood went all too
quickly. I remember, sometime in the mid-eighties, riding from Prescott to
Ottawa, upon the old Ottawa and St. Lawrence Railroad, and the wood-burner
stopping somewhere between those towns to appease its seemingly insatiable
appetite.
The wood-burners upon the R. W. & O. began to disappear sometime about the
beginnings of the seventies. Apparently the first engine to have her
fire-boxes changed to permit of the use of soft coal was the _C.
Comstock_, which was rapidly followed by the _Phelps_, the _Lord_ and the
_Alexander_. They then had the extension boilers and the straight
"diamond" stacks. A red band ran around the under flare of the diamond.
About that time the road began adding to its motive power; new engines,
among them the _Theodore Irwin_ and the _C. Zabriskie_, were being
purchased, and these were all coal burners, bituminous, of course. When,
as we shall see, in a following chapter, the Syracuse Northern was merged
into the R. W. & O., eight new locomotives were added to the growing fleet
of the parent road; four Hinckleys and four Bloods.
Even at that time the road was beginning, although in a modest and
somewhat hesitant way, the construction of its own locomotives in its own
shops. William Jackson, the Master Mechanic there in 1873, built the _J.
W. Moak_ and the _J. S. Farlow_, both of them coal-burners for passenger
service. He was succeeded by Abraham Close who built the _Cataract_ and
the _Lewiston_, and the _Moses Taylor_, too, in 1877. The following year
the late George H. Hazleton was to become the road's Master Mechanic and
so to remain as long as it retained its corporate existence.
In later years there were to come those famous Mogul twins, the _Samson_
and the _Goliath_. There were, as I recall it, still two others of these
Moguls, the _Energy_ and the _Efficiency_. In a still later time the road,
robbed of its pleasant personal way of locomotive nomenclature and
adopting a strictly impersonal method of denoting its engines by serial
numbers alone, was to take another forward step and bring in still larger
Moguls; the "1," "2," "3," and "4."
But I anticipate. I cannot close this chapter without one more reference
to my good friend, Frank W. Smith. He was an energetic little fellow; and
after some twenty months of engine wiping there at Coffeen Street, and all
the abuse and cuffing and chaffing that went with it, he won an honest
promotion to the job of a locomotive fireman. It was a real job, real
responsibility and real pay, thirty-nine dollars a month. Yet this job
faded when he became an engineer. Job envied of all other jobs. How the
boys would crowd around the _Norris Woodruff_ at Adams depot, at
Gouverneur, and all the rest of the way along the line and feast their
eyes upon Frank Smith up there in the neat cab, that so quickly came to
look like home to him! Fifty dollars a month pay! Overtime? Of course not.
Agreements? Once more, no. This was nearly fifteen years ahead of that day
when the engineers upon the Central Railroad of New Jersey were to
formulate the first of these perplexing things.
But a good engine, a good job and good pay. They had the pleasant habit of
assigning a crew to a definite engine in those days, and that piece of
motive power invariably became their pet and pride. A good job was not
only an honest one, but one of a considerable distinction. And fifty
dollars a month was not bad pay, when cheese was eight cents a pound and
butter seven, and a kind friend apt to give you all the eggs that you
could take home in the top of your hat. Remuneration, in its last analysis
is forever a comparative thing--and nothing more.
CHAPTER VI
THE R. W. & O. PROSPERS--AND EXPANDS
In the mid-seventies the young city of Watertown was entering upon a rare
era in which culture and great prosperity were to be blended. The men who
walked its pleasant maple-shaded streets were real men, indeed: the Flower
brothers--George W., Anson R. and Roswell P.--George B. Phelps, Norris
Winslow, the Knowlton brothers--John C. and George W.--Talcott H. Camp,
George A. Bagley, these were the men who were the town's captains of
industry of that day. An earlier generation had passed away; Norris
Woodruff, O. V. Brainard, Orville Hungerford; these men had played their
large parts in the upbuilding of Watertown and were gone or else living in
advanced years. A new generation of equal energy and ability had come to
replace them. Roswell P. Flower was upon the threshold of that remarkable
career in Wall Street that was to make him for a time its leader and give
him the large political honor of becoming Governor of the State of New
York. His brother, George W., first Mayor of Watertown, was tremendously
interested in each of the city's undertakings. George B. Phelps had risen
from the post of Superintendent of the old Potsdam & Watertown to be one
of the town's richest men. He had a city house in New York--a handsome
"brownstone front" in one of the "forties"--and in his huge house in Stone
Street, Watertown, the luxury of a negro valet, John Fletcher, for many
years a familiar figure upon the streets of the town.
From the pulpit of the dignified First Presbyterian Church in Washington
Street, the venerable Dr. Isaac Brayton had now retired; his place was
being filled by Dr. Porter, long to be remembered in the annals of that
society. Dr. Olin was about entering old Trinity, still in Court Street.
Into the ancient structure of the Watertown High School, in State Street,
the genial and accomplished William Kerr Wickes was coming as principal.
The Musical Union was preparing for its record run of _Pinafore_ in
Washington Hall. And in the old stone cotton factory on Beebee's Island,
Fred Eames was tinkering with his vacuum air brake, little dreaming of the
tragic fate that was to await him but a few years later; more likely,
perhaps, of the great air brake industry to which he was giving birth and
which, three decades later, was to take its proper place among the town's
chief industries. Paper manufacturing, as it is known to-day in the North
Country, was then a comparatively small thing; there were few important
mills outside of those of the Knowltons or the Taggarts--the clans of
Remington, of Herring, of Sherman and of Anderson were yet to make their
deep impress upon the community.
Carriage making was then a more important business than that of paper
making. The very thought of the motor-car was as yet unborn and
Watertonians reckoned the completion of a new carriage in the town in
minutes rather than in hours. It made steam engines and sewing machines.
All in all it created a very considerable traffic for its railroad--in
reality for its railroads, for in 1872 a rival line had come to contest
the monopoly of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh; of which more in good
time.
* * * * *
As went Watertown, so went the rest of the North Country. It was a brisk,
prosperous land, where industry and culture shared their forces. There was
a plenitude of manufacturing even outside of Watertown, whilst the mines
at Keene and Rossie had reopened and were shipping a modest five or six
cars a day of really splendid red ore. People worked well, people thought
well. The excellent seminaries at Belleville, at Adams, at Antwerp and at
Gouverneur reflected a general demand for an education better than the
public schools of that day might offer. The young St. Lawrence University
up at Canton, after a hard beginning fight, was at last on its way to its
present day strength and influence.
Northern New Yorkers traveled. They traveled both far and near. Even
distant Europe was no sealed book to them. There were dozens of fine
homes, even well outside of the towns and villages, which boasted their
Steinway pianos and whose young folk, graduated from Yale or Mount
Holyoke, spoke intelligently with their elders of Napoleon III or of the
charms of the boulevards of Paris.
* * * * *
In the upbuilding of this prosperous era the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
had played its own large part. By 1875 it was nearly a quarter of a
century old. It was indeed an extremely high grade and prosperous
property, the pride, not only of Watertown, which had been so largely
responsible for its construction, but indeed of the entire North Country.
It had, as we have already seen, as far back as 1866, succeeded in
thrusting a line into Oswego, thirty miles west of Richland. After which
it felt that it needed an entrance into Syracuse, then as now, a most
important railroad center. To accomplish this entrance it leased, in 1875,
the Syracuse Northern Railroad, and then gained at last a firm two-footed
stand upon the tremendous main line of the New York Central & Hudson River
Railroad. It continued to maintain, of course, its original connection at
Rome--its long stone depot there still stands to-day, although far removed
from the railroad tracks. Yet one, in memory at least, may see it as the
brisk business place of yore, with the four tracks of the Vanderbilt trail
curving upon the one side of it and the brightly painted yellow cars of
the R. W. & O. waiting upon the other. The Rome connection gave the road
direct access to Boston, New York, and to the East generally; that at
Syracuse made the journey from Northern New York to western points much
easier and more direct, than it had been through the Rome gateway. It was
logical and it was strategic. And it is possible that had the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh been content to remain satisfied with its system
as it then existed, a good deal of railroad history that followed after,
would have remained unwritten.
* * * * *
The railroad scheme that finally led to the building of the Syracuse
Northern had been under discussion since 1851, the year of the completion
of the Watertown & Rome Railroad. Yet, largely because of the paucity of
good sized intermediate towns upon the lines of the proposed route, the
plan for a long time had languished. In the late sixties it was
successfully revived, however, and the Syracuse Northern Railroad
incorporated, early in 1870, with a capital stock of $1,250,000 and the
following officers:
_President_, ALLEN MUNROE
_Secretary_, PATRICK H. AGAN
_Treasurer_, E. B. JUDSON
_Engineer_, A. C. POWELL
_Directors_
Allen Munroe, Syracuse
E. W. Leavenworth, Syracuse
E. B. Judson, Syracuse
Patrick Lynch, Syracuse
Frank H. Hiscock, Syracuse
John A. Green, Syracuse
Jacob S. Smith, Syracuse
Horace K. White, Syracuse
Elizur Clark, Syracuse
Garret Doyle, Syracuse
William H. Canter, Brewerton
James A. Clark, Pulaski
Orin R. Earl, Sandy Creek
The road once organized found a lively demand for its shares. Its largest
investor was the city of Syracuse, which subscribed for $250,000 worth of
its bonds. The first depot of the new line in the city that gave it its
birth was in Saxon Street, up in the old town of Salina. From there it was
that Denison, Belden & Company began the construction of the railroad. It
was not a difficult road to build, easy grades and but three bridges--a
small one at Parish and two fairly sizable ones at Brewerton and at
Pulaski--to go up, so it was finished and opened for traffic in the fall
of 1871--which was precisely the same year that the New York Central
opened its wonderful Grand Central Depot down on Forty-second Street, New
York. The line ran through from Syracuse to Sandy Creek, now Lacona. It
started off in good style, operating two passenger express trains, an
accommodation and two freights each day in each direction. At the
beginning it made a brave showing for itself, and soon after it was open
it built for itself a one-storied brick passenger station across from the
New York Central's, then new, depot in Syracuse, and at right angles to
it. That station still stands but is now used as the Syracuse freight
station of the American Railway Express.
E. H. Bancroft was the first superintendent of the Syracuse Northern, C.
C. Morse, the second, and J. W. Brown, the third. J. Dewitt Mann was the
accounting officer and paymaster. The road never attained to a long
official roster of its own, however. Within a twelvemonth after its
opening the prosperous Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, having already seen
the advantages of a two-footed connection with the New York Central,
planned its purchase. The Syracuse road, having failed to become the
financial success of which its promoters had hoped, this act was easily
accomplished. The Sheriff of Onondaga County assisted. In 1875 there was a
foreclosure sale and the Syracuse Northern ceased to live thereafter, save
as a branch to Pulaski. A few years later the six miles of track between
that town and Sandy Creek were torn up and abandoned. The old road-bed is
still in plain sight, however, for a considerable distance along the line
of the state highway to Watertown as it leads out of Pulaski, while the
abutments of the former high railroad bridge over the Salmon River still
show conspicuously in that village.
* * * * *
With its system fairly well rounded out, the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
began the intensive perfection of its service. It built, in 1874, the
first section of the long stone freight-house opposite the passenger
station--so long a landmark of Watertown--from stone furnished by Lawrence
Gage, of Chaumont. Mr. Moak, the Superintendent of the road at that time,
was criticized for this expenditure. As a matter of fact it was necessary
not only to twice enlarge it quite radically, but to build a relief
transfer station at the Junction before the stone freight-house was
finally torn down to make room for the present passenger station at
Watertown.
Between the old freight-shed and the old passenger station there ran for
many years but a single passenger track, curving all the way, and beside
it the long platform, which was protected from the elements by a canopy,
which in turn, had a canopied connection with the waiting-room; at that
time still in the wing or original portion of the station; the main or
newer portion, being occupied by the restaurant, which had passed from the
hands of Col. Dunton into those of Silas Snell, Watertown's most famous
cornet player of that generation.
At Watertown the Cape Vincent train would lay in at the end of the
freight-house siding, and, because the Coffeen Street crossover had not
then been constructed, would back in and out between the passenger station
and the Watertown Junction, a little over a mile distant. Watertown
Junction was still a point of considerable passenger importance. Long
platforms were placed between the tracks there and passengers destined
through to the St. Lawrence never went up into the main passenger station
at all, but changed at that point to the Cape train.
The Thousand Islands were beginning to be known as a summer resort of
surpassing excellence. The famous Crossmon House at Alexandria Bay was
already more than two decades old. O. G. Staples had just finished that
nine-days-wonder, the Thousand Island House, and plans were in the making
for the building of the Round Island Hotel (afterwards the Frontenac) and
other huge hostelries that were to make social history at the St.
Lawrence, even before the coming of the cottage and club-house era.
* * * * *
It will be recalled that from the first the R. W. & O. developed excellent
docking facilities at Cape Vincent. At the outset it had builded the large
covered passenger station upon the wharf there, whose tragic destruction
we have already witnessed. Beyond this were the freight-sheds and the
grain elevator. For Cape Vincent's importance in those days was by no
means limited to the passenger travel, which there debouched from the
trains to take the steamers to the lower river points, or even that which
all the year around made its tedious way across the broad river to
Kingston, twenty-two miles away.
The _Lady of the Lake_ passed out of existence some six or seven years
after the inauguration of the Kingston ferry in connection with the trains
into the Cape. She was replaced by the steamer _Pierrepont_--the first of
this name--which was built on Wolfe Island in the summer of 1856 and went
into service in the following spring. In that same summer of 1857 the
canal was dug through the waistline girth of Wolfe Island, and a short and
convenient route established through it, between Cape Vincent and
Kingston--some twelve or thirteen miles all told, as against nearly twice
that distance around either the head or the foot of the island.
It was a pleasant ride through the old Wolfe Island canal. I can easily
remember it, myself, the slow and steady progress of the steamboat through
the rich farmlands and truck-gardens, the neatly whitewashed highway
bridges, swinging leisurely open from time to time to permit of our
progress. It is a great pity that the ditch was ever abandoned.
The first _Pierrepont_ was not a particularly successful craft and it was
supplemented in 1864 by the _Watertown_, which gradually took the brunt of
the steadily increasing traffic across the St. Lawrence at this point. The
ferry grew steadily to huge proportions and for many years a great volume
of both passengers and freight was handled upon it. It is a fact worth
noting here, perhaps, that the first through shipment of silk from the
Orient over the newly completed transcontinental route of the Canadian
Pacific Railway was made into New York, by way of the Cape Vincent ferry
and the R. W. & O. in the late fall of 1883.
* * * * *
With the business of this international crossing steadily increasing, it
became necessary to keep two efficient steamers upon the route and so the
second _Pierrepont_ was builded, going into service in 1874. At about that
time the _Watertown_ ceased her active days upon the river and the lake
and was succeeded by the staunch steamer _Maud_. Here was a staunch craft
indeed, built upon the Clyde somewhere in the late fifties or the early
sixties, and shipped in sections from Glasgow to Montreal, where she was
set up for St. Lawrence service, in which she still is engaged, under the
name of the _America_. Her engines for many years were of a peculiar
Scotch pattern, by no means usual in this part of the world, and
apparently understood by no one other than Billy Derry, for many years her
engineer. Occasionally Derry would quarrel with the owners of the _Maud_
and quit his job. They always sent their apologies after him, however. No
one else could run the boat, and they were faced with the alternative of
bowing to his whims or laying up the steamer.
Yet, as I have already intimated, the passenger traffic was but a small
part of Cape Vincent's importance through three or four great decades. The
ferry carried mail, freight and express as well--the place was ever an
important ferry crossing, a seat of a custom house of the first rank. In
summer the steamer acted as ferry, for many years crossing the Wolfe
Island barrier four times daily, through three or four miles of canal,
which some time along in the early nineties was suffered to fill up and
was abandoned in 1892. In midwinter mail and freight and passengers alike
crossed in speed and a real degree of fine comfort in great four-horse
sleighs upon a hard roadway of thick, thick ice. It was between seasons,
when the ice was either forming or breaking and sleighs as utter an
impossibility as steamboats that the real problem arose. In those times of
the year a strange craft, which was neither sled nor boat, but a
combination of both, was used. It went through the water and over the ice.
Yet the result was not as easy as it sounds. More than one passenger paid
his dollar to go from Cape Vincent to Kingston, for the privilege of
pushing the heavy hand sled-boat over the ice, getting his feet wet in the
bargain.
* * * * *
Into the many vagaries of North Country weather, I shall not enter at this
time. In a later chapter we shall give some brief attention to them. It
is enough here to say that a man who could fight a blizzard, coming in
from off Ontario, and keep the line open could run a railroad anywhere
else in the world. In after years I was to see, myself, some of these rare
old fights; Russell plows getting into the drifts over their necks
around-about Pulaski and Richland and Sandy Creek, seemingly half the
motive power off the track. Yet these were no more than the road has had
since almost the very day of its inception.
Once, in the midwinter of 1873, we had a noble old wind--the North Country
has a way of having noble old winds, even to-day--and the huge spire of
the First Presbyterian Church in Washington Street, Watertown, came
tumbling down into the road, smashed into a thousand bits, and seemingly
with no more noise than the sharp slamming of a blind.
That night--it was the evening of the fifteenth of January--the railroad
in and about Watertown nearly collapsed. Trains were hugely delayed and
many of them abandoned. The _Watertown Times_ of the next day, naÏvely
announced:
"Conductor Sandiforth didn't come home last night and missed a good deal
by not coming. He spent the evening with a party of shovelers working his
way from Richland to Pierrepont Manor. Conductor Aiken followed him up
with the night train but he couldn't pass him, and so both trains arrived
here at 9:30 this (Thursday) morning."
Here Conductor Lew Sandiforth first comes into our picture and for a
moment I shall interrupt my narrative to give a bit of attention to him.
He is well worth the interruption of any narrative. We had many pretty
well-known conductors on the old R. W. & O.--but none half so well-known
as Lew Sandiforth. He was the wit of the old line, and its pet beau. It
was said of him, that if there was a good looking woman on the afternoon
train up to Watertown, Lew would quit taking tickets somewhere north of
Sandy Creek. The train then could go to the Old Harry for all he cared. He
had his social duties to perform. He was not one to shirk such
responsibilities.
In those days a railroad conductor was something of an uncrowned king,
anyway. His pay was meager, but ofttimes his profits were large. One of
these famous old ticket punchers upon the Rome road lived at the Woodruff
House, in Watertown, throughout the seventies. His wage was seventy-five
dollars a month, but he paid ninety dollars a month board for his wife and
himself and kept a driver and a carriage in addition. No questions were
asked. The road, on the whole, was glad to get its freight and its ticket
office revenues. Even these last were nothing to brag about. It was a poor
sort of a public man in those days who could not have his wallet lined
with railroad annual passes. A large proportion of the passengers upon the
average train rode free of any charge. Sometimes this attained a
scandalous volume. Away back in 1858, I find the Directors of the Potsdam
& Watertown resolving that no officer of their company "shall give a free
pass for _more_ than one trip over the road to any one person, except
officers of other railroad companies; and that an account of all free
passes taken up shall be entered by the conductors in their daily returns
with the name of the person passed and the name of the person who gave the
pass, and the Superintendent shall submit statement thereof to each
meeting of the Board." Moreover, he was requested to notify the conductors
not to pass any persons without a pass except the Directors and Secretary
of the company, and their families, the roadmaster, paymaster, station
agents, and "persons who the conductors think are entitled to charity."
* * * * *
Despite obstacles to its full earning power such as this, the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh prospered ... and progressed. Forever it was
planning new frills to add to its operation. In 1865 it had placed a
through Wagner sleeping-car in service between Watertown and New York. In
1875 this was an established function, leaving Watertown on the 6:30 train
each evening and arriving in New York at 7:55 the next morning; returning
it left New York each evening at six, and Albany at 11:40, and was in
Watertown at 9:05 the next morning. A later management of the R. W. & O.
in a fit of economy discontinued this service, and for more than twenty
years the North Country stood in line for sleeping-car berths at Utica
station, while it fought for the restoration of its sleeping-cars. These
cars eventually came back, but not regularly until 1891, when the New York
Central took over the property and put its up-to-date traffic methods upon
it once again.
The local management of the mid-seventies--composed almost entirely of
Watertown men--was not content to stop with the through sleeping cars
between their chief town and New York. They finally instructed H. H.
Sessions, their Master Mechanic, down in the old shops at Rome, to build
two wonderful new cars for their line, "the likes of which had never been
seen before." Mr. Sessions approached his new task with avidity. He was a
born car-builder, in after years destined to take charge of the motive
power department of the International & Great Northern Railway, at
Palestine, Texas, and then, in January, 1887, to become Manager of the
great Pullman car works at Pullman, Ill., just outside of Chicago. For six
years he held this position, afterwards resigning it to enter into
business for himself. The first vestibuled trains in which the platforms
were enclosed, were built under his supervision under what are known
to-day as the "Sessions Patents." He was indeed an inventive genius, and
also designed the first steel platforms and other very modern devices in
progressive car construction.
Sessions produced two sleeping-cars for the old Rome road. The "likes of
them" had never been seen before, and never will be seen again. They were
named the _St. Lawrence_ and the _Ontario_, and, despite the fact that
they depended upon candle-light as their sole means of illumination, they
were wonderfully finished in the rarest of hard-woods. Alternately they
were sleeping-cars and parlor-cars. At the first they were distinguished
by the fact that they possessed no upper-berths, their mattresses, pillows
and linen being carried in closets at either end of the car.
* * * * *
These cars at one time were placed in service between Syracuse, Watertown
and Fabyan's, N. H., passing enroute through Norwood, Rouse's Point and
Montpelier. One of them was in charge of Ed. Frary, the son of the
General Ticket Agent of the R. W. & O. at that time, and the other in
charge of L. S. Hungerford, who originally came from Evan's Mills. This
was the Hungerford, who to-day is Vice-President and General Manager of
the Pullman Company, at Chicago. A third or "spare" car was afterwards
purchased from the Pullman Company and renamed the _DeKalb_.
Because of the limited carrying capacity of these R. W. & O. sleeping-cars
they were never profitable. They did a little better when they were in day
service as parlor-cars. One of Mr. Richard Holden's most vivid memories is
of one of these cars coming into Watertown from the south on the afternoon
train, which would halt somewhere near the Pine Street cutting to slip it
off, preparatory to placing it on the Cape train at the Junction.
"I remember," he says, "how proud the late Frank Cornish was in riding
down the straight on the first drawing-room car, with his hands on the
brakewheel. He was a brakeman at that time. Afterwards he was promoted to
baggageman and then to conductor, having the run on Number One and Number
Seven for many years, afterwards conducting a cigar-stand in the Yates
Hotel at Syracuse until he died."
When hard times came upon the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh these cars
were laid up. Once in later years, under the Parsons management, they were
renamed the _Cataract_ and the _Niagara_, and operated in the Niagara
Falls night trains. But again, they proved too much of a financial drag,
and they were finally converted into day-coaches. There was another
parlor-car, the _Watertown_. Eventually this became the private-car of Mr.
H. M. Britton, General Manager of the R. W. & O., while the others
remained day coaches; still retaining, however, their wide plate-glass
windows and their general appearance of comfortable ease.
* * * * *
Here indeed was the golden age of the Rome road. Its bright, neat, yellow
cars, its smartly painted and trimmed engines all bespoke the existence of
a prosperous little rail carrier, that might have left well enough alone.
But, seemingly it could not. There is a man living in the western part of
this state, who recalls one fine day there in the mid-seventies, when Mr.
Massey--the President of the road, came walking out of the Watertown
station, talking all the time to Mr. Moak, its General
Superintendent--came over to him:
"We're going to be a real railroad at last, John," said he. "We're going
through to Niagara Falls upon our own rails and get into the trunk-line
class."
He was giving expression to a dream of years. A moment ago and we were
speaking of the operation through two or three summers of sleeping-cars
between Watertown and the White Mountains over the R. W. & O., the
Northern (at that time, already become the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain),
the Central Vermont, the Montpelier and Wells River, and the Portland and
Ogdensburgh. The officers of the Rome road felt that, if they could bridge
the gap existing between the terminals of their line at Oswego, and go
through to Suspension Bridge or Buffalo, where there were plenty of
competing lines through to Chicago and the West, that they could both
enter upon the competitive business of carrying western freight to the
Atlantic seaboard, and at the same time stand independent of the New York
Central. Eventually their idea was to take a concrete form, but again I
anticipate.
* * * * *
In that brisk day there was, in the slow and laborious process of building
a railroad, leading due west from Oswego. It was called the Lake Ontario
Shore Railroad, and its construction was indeed a laborious process. For
many years it came to an end just eighteen miles beyond Oswego. Finally it
reached the little village of Ontario, fifty-one miles beyond. And there
stopped dead. If it had forever been halted there, it would have been a
good thing. Its promoters were both industrious and persistent, however.
They chose to overlook the fact that the narrow territory, that they
sought to thread, promised small local traffic returns for many years to
come; a thin strip it was between the main line of the New York Central
and the south shore of Lake Ontario, and although nearly 150 miles in
length, never more than twelve or fifteen in width, and without any
sizable communities. The prospect of a profitable traffic, originating in
so thin a strip, was small indeed.
The prospectors of the Lake Ontario Shore Railroad did not see it that
way. They stressed the fact that at Sterling they would intersect the
Southern Central (now the Lehigh Valley), at Sodus the Northern Central
(now the Pennsylvania), at Charlotte; the port of Rochester, the Rochester
& State Line (now the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh) all in addition to
the many valuable connections to be made at the Niagara River. Yet for a
considerable time after the road had been pushed through Western New
York, it came to a dead stop at Lewiston. Its original terminal can still
be seen in that small village.
It was then thought possible and feasible to build a railroad bridge
across the Niagara and the international boundary between Lewiston and
Queenstown, in competition with the Suspension Bridge, which from the very
moment of its opening in 1849 had been an overwhelming success. The
energetic group of Oswego men who had promoted the building of the Lake
Ontario Shore, hoped to duplicate the success of the Suspension Bridge
there at Lewiston. They saw that small frontier New York town transformed
into a real railroad metropolis.
"And what a line we shall have, running right up to it!" they argued.
"Seventy-three out of our seventy-six miles, west of the Genesee River, as
straight as the proverbial ruler-edge; and a maximum gradient of but
twenty-six feet to the mile! What opportunities for fast--and efficient
operation!"
They had capitalized their line at $4,000,000 and in October, 1870, when I
first find official mention of it, they had expended $54,300 upon it. Its
officers at that time were:
_President_, GILBERT MOLLISON, Oswego
_Treasurer_, LUTHER WRIGHT, Oswego
_Secretary_, HENRY L. DAVIS, Oswego
_Engineer_, ISAAC S. DOANE, Oswego
_Directors_
Luther Wright, Oswego
Alanson S. Page, Oswego
Fred'k T. Carrington, Oswego
Gilbert Mollison, Oswego
Reuben F. Wilson, Wilson
Joseph L. Fowler, Ransonville
Oliver P. Scovell, Lewiston
George I. Post, Fairhaven
William O. Wood, Red Creek
Burt Van Horne, Lockport
James Brackett, Rochester
D. F. Worcester, Rochester
* * * * *
It is needless to say that the railroad bridge was never thrust across the
Niagara at Lewiston. That project died "a'borning." And so, almost, did
the Lake Ontario Shore Railroad. As I have just said, the building of the
road finally was halted at Ontario, fifty-one miles west of Oswego.
Finally, by tremendous effort and the injection of some capital from the
wealthy city of Rochester into the project it was brought through in 1875
as far as Kendall, a miserable little railroad, wretched and woe-begone
with its sole rolling stock consisting of two second-hand locomotives, two
passenger-cars and some fifty or sixty freight-cars.
In the long run, just as most folk had anticipated from the beginning, it
was the wealthy and prosperous Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh that took
over the Lake Ontario Shore and completed it; in 1876 as far as Lewiston,
and a year or two later up the face of the Niagara escarpment to
Suspension Bridge and the immensely valuable connections there. The
merger, itself, was consummated in the midsummer of 1875. To reach the
tracks of the new connecting link, from those of the old road, it was
necessary not only to build an exceedingly difficult little tunnel under
the hill, upon which the Oswego Court House stands, but to bridge the wide
expanse of the river just beyond, a tedious and expensive process, which
occupied considerably more than a twelvemonth.
All of this was not done until 1876 and by that time disaster threatened.
The Rome road had gone quite too far. Times were growing very hard once
again. A tight money market threatened; the storm of '73 had been passed
but that of '77 was still ahead. It began to be a question whether the R.
W. & O. could weather the large obligations that it had assumed when it
had absorbed the Lake Ontario Shore. Traffic did not come off the new
line; not, at least, in any considerable or profitable quantities. It
defaulted on the interest payments of its bonds.
There was the beginning of disaster. The Rome road management realized
this. They cut their dividends a little, and then to nothing. Watertown
was staggered. For a long term of years up to 1870 the road had paid its
ten per cent annual dividend with astonishing regularity. In that year it
dropped a little--to eight per cent--the next year, to seven, and then in
the panic year of 1873 to but three and one-half. The following year it
had returned, with increasing good times, to seven. In the fiscal year of
1874-75 the Directors of the property had voted six and one-half. That was
the end. The cancer of the Lake Ontario Shore was upon the parent
property. The strong old R. W. & O. had permitted the default of the
interest payments upon the bonds of their leased property. Confusion ruled
among the men in the depot at Watertown. They were dazed with impending
disaster.
CHAPTER VII
INTO THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND
The enthusiasm which Mr. Marcellus Massey showed over the extension of his
railroad into Suspension Bridge was surface enthusiasm, indeed. In his
heart he felt that it had taken a very dangerous step. His mind was full
of forebodings. Some of these he confessed to his intimates in Watertown.
He felt that a mistake--if you please, an irrevocable mistake--had been
made. And there was no turning back.
These forebodings were realized. As we have just seen, the Lake Ontario
Shore defaulted upon its bonds in 1876 and again in 1877. The reflection
of this disastrous step came directly upon the R. W. & O. It ceased paying
dividends. The North Country folk, who had come to regard its securities
as something hardly inferior to government bonds, were depressed and then
alarmed. Yet worse was to come. On August 1, 1878, the R. W. & O.
defaulted in its interest on its great mass of consolidated bonds.
The blow had fallen! Failure impended! And receivership! Yet, in the long
run, both were avoided. Into the directorate of the railroad, up to that
time a fairly close Northern New York affair, a new man had come. He was a
smallish man, with a reputation for keenness and sagacity in railroad
affairs, second only to that of Jay Gould or Daniel Drew. There were more
ways than one in which Samuel Sloan, known far and wide as plain "Sam
Sloan," resembled both of these men.
His touch with the R. W. & O. came physically, by way of the contact of
the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western with it at three points; at Oswego,
at Syracuse, and at Rome--this last, at that time through its leased
operation of the Rome & Clinton Railroad, which ceased July 1, 1883. He
had looked upon the development and the despair of the Rome road with
increasing interest. His careful and conservative mind must have stood
aghast at the foolhardiness of the Lake Ontario Shore venture. Sam Sloan
would have done nothing of that sort. The railroad that he dominated so
forcefully for many years--Lackawanna--would have taken no step of that
sort. Trust Sam Sloan for that.
And yet, despite his evident dislike for the property, the R. W. & O. had
its fascinations for him. He must have seen certain opportunities in it.
The fact that it touched his own road at so many points, and, therefore,
was capable of becoming so large a potential feeder for it--despite the
malign influence of those Vanderbilts with their important New York
Central--must have appealed to the old man's heart. At any rate he took
direct steps to gain control of the Rome road.
* * * * *
The precise motives that impelled Samuel Sloan to gain a control of the R.
W. & O., and having once gained a control of it, to conduct it in the
remarkable manner that he did, in all probability, never will be known.
One may only indulge in surmises. But just why he should seek, apparently
with deliberateness and carefully preconceived plan, to wreck what had
been so recently the finest of all railroads in the state of New York is
not clearly apparent even to-day.
Sloan was a man of many moods. Receptive and interested to-day, he was
cold and bitter to-morrow. One might never count upon him. He flattered
Marcellus Massey, raised his salary as the President of the Rome road from
$7500 to $10,000 a year, and then induced him to purchase large holdings
of Lackawanna stock, putting up as collateral his large holdings of the
shares of the R. W. & O., just beginning their long drop towards a
pitifully low figure--all the time holding the bait to the old President
of the amazing property that he was about to upbuild in Northern New York.
So, eventually Sloan ruined Massey, financially and physically, and a
broken hearted man went out from the old President's office of the R. W. &
O. in Watertown.
In 1877, the year before the Rome road all but created financial disaster
in Northern New York, Sloan had bought enough of its bargain-sale stock to
have himself elected as its President. The official roster of the road
then became:
_President_, SAMUEL SLOAN, New York
_Vice-President_, MARCELLUS MASSEY, Watertown
_Treasurer_, J. A. LAWYER, Watertown
_General Freight Agent_, E. M. MOORE, Watertown
_General Ticket Agent_, H. T. FRARY, Watertown
_Supt. R. W. & O. Division_, J. W. MOAK, Watertown
_Supt. L. O. & S. N. Division_, E. A. VAN HORNE, Oswego
_Directors_
Marcellus Massey, Watertown
Samuel Sloan, New York
William E. Dodge, New York
John S. Farlow, Boston
Percy R. Pyne, New York
Talcott H. Camp, Watertown
Moses Taylor, Scranton
C. Zabriskie, New York
John S. Barnes, New York
S. D. Hungerford, Adams
Gardner R. Colby, New York
William M. White, Utica
Theodore Irwin, Oswego
The North Country complexion of the directorate had all but disappeared.
As far back as 1871, Addison Day had ceased to be Superintendent of the
road, and had become Superintendent of the Utica & Black River. He had
been succeeded by J. W. Moak, a former roadmaster of the Rome road. Moak
was not only equally as efficient as Day, but he was much more popular,
both with the road's employees and its patrons. Yet one of Sloan's first
acts was to relieve him of a portion of his territory and responsibility.
He made the point, and it was not without force, that it was all but
impossible for an operating officer at Watertown to supervise properly the
western end of the now far-flung system. So, he took the former Syracuse
Northern, the Lake Ontario Shore and the branch from Richland to
Oswego--all the lines west of Richland, in fact--and made them into a new
division, with headquarters at Oswego. For this division he brought one of
his few favored officers from the Lackawanna, E. A. Van Horne, who had
been a Superintendent upon that property. Van Horne was a forceful man,
who, as he went upward, made a distinct impress upon the railroad history
of the North Country. He was quick tempered, decisive, yet possessing
certain very likable qualities that were of tremendous help to him there.
Another of Sloan's early acts--more easily understood than some
others--was to tear out the soft-coal grates of the fire boxes of the R.
W. & O. locomotives, and substitute for them hard-coal grates. Anthracite
then, as now, was a great specialty of the Lackawanna. And in the road to
the north of him Sloan possessed a customer of no mean dimensions.
* * * * *
For the next four or five years the R. W. & O. grubbed along--and barely
dodged receivership. Its service steadily went from bad to worse. It now
took the best passenger trains upon the line four hours to go from
Watertown to Rome, seventy-two miles (in the very beginnings of the road,
they had done it in an even three hours). No one knew when a freight car
would reach New York from Watertown. Confusion reigned. Chaos was at hand.
And when Watertown merchants and manufacturers would go to Oswego to
protest to Mr. Van Horne (Mr. Moak finally had been demoted, and Watertown
suffered the humiliation of having the operating headquarters of the
system moved away from it) they would hear from the General Superintendent
of the property his utter helplessness in the matter; the threats from
Sloan were that he might close down the road altogether, and Van Horne was
beside himself for explanations:
"Gentlemen, I cannot do better," he said, over and over again, "our track
is in deplorable condition. I dare not send a train over the road without
sending a man afoot, station to station, ahead of it to make sure that the
rails will hold."
So it was. The track inspectors' jobs were cut out for them these days.
They made some long-distance walking records. Yet, despite their
vigilance, train wrecks came with increasing frequency. Morale was gone.
The fine old R. W. & O. was at the bottom of the Slough of Despond. Added
to all this were the rigors of a North Country winter, which we are to see
in some detail in another chapter. According to the veracious diary of
Moses Eames, on January 2nd, 1879, the first train came into Watertown
since Christmas Day. The following day it snowed again, and fiercely and
the R. W. & O. went out of business for another ten days. That storm was
almost a record-breaker: more than a fortnight of continuous snow and
extreme low temperature.
* * * * *
In those days Samuel Sloan was busy occupying himself with an extension of
his beloved Lackawanna into Buffalo. That, in itself, was a real job. For
years the D. L. & W. had terminated at Great Bend, a few miles east of
Binghamton, and had used trackage rights upon the Erie from there West,
not only into the Buffalo gateway, but also to reach its branch-line
properties into Utica, Rome, Syracuse and Ithaca. Sloan finally had
quarreled with the Erie--it was a way he ofttimes had. And, for once at
least, had made a bold strategic move through to the far end of the Empire
State.
To build so many miles of railroad one must have rail. And rail costs much
money, unless one may borrow it from a friendly property. So Sloan went up
into the North Country and "borrowed" rail. He "borrowed" so much that
travel upon the R. W. & O. became fraught with many real dangers--and the
life of his General Superintendent at Oswego, Van Horne, a nightmare. Some
of the rails were, in his own words, not more than six feet long. Finally
in desperation he appealed to his chief competitor in the North Country,
the Utica & Black River, which rapidly was substituting steel for iron
upon its main line. In sheer pity, J. F. Maynard, General Superintendent
of the Utica & Black River, sent his discarded iron to his paralyzed
competitor.
There was little steel upon the Rome road in 1883--less than sixty miles
of its 417 miles of main line track was so equipped. Neither were there
sufficient locomotives; but fifty-two of them all-told, in addition to two
or three that the Lackawanna had had the extreme kindness to "loan" the
property--upon a perfectly adequate rental basis. Long since it had ceased
to operate such frills as sleeping-cars or parlor-cars. It had only
fifty-four passenger-coaches; not nearly enough to meet the needs of so
far-flung a line. And many of these were in extreme disrepair. An elderly
citizen of Ogdensburgh says that it was a nightly occasion for the R. W. &
O. train to come in from DeKalb with more than half of its journals
ablaze.
* * * * *
Yet, despite these bitter years, the road had managed to avoid
receivership and in 1882 it succeeded in effecting a reorganization; under
which it dropped the interest on its bonds to five per cent and assessed
its stockholders ten dollars a share for a cash working fund to keep it
alive. They were given income bonds for the amount so contributed by them.
There were a few grumbles at this arrangement, but not many. The huge
potential possibilities of the property--or rather of the rich and still
undeveloped territory that it served--were too generally recognized.
It began to be rumored that new outside interests were buying into the
stock in Wall Street. These rumors were brought to Sloan's attention.
"Look out," he was warned, "some one will get that old heap of junk away
from you yet."
He laughed. At the best you could tell Samuel Sloan but little. Gradually,
he proceeded with his reorganization, and in 1883 we find the official
roster of the reorganized R. W. & O. reading in this fashion:
_President_, SAMUEL SLOAN, New York
_Secretary and Treasurer_, J. A. LAWYER, Watertown
_General Superintendent_, E. A. VAN HORNE, Oswego
_Master Mechanic_, G. H. HASELTON, Oswego
_General Ticket Agent_, H. T. FRARY, Watertown
_General Freight Agent_, E. M. MOORE, Oswego
_Directors_
Talcott H. Camp, Watertown
S. D. Hungerford, Adams
William M. White, Utica
Theodore Irwin, Oswego
William E. Dodge, New York
Roswell G. Ralston, New York
Charles Parsons, New York
Clarence S. Day, New York
Percy R. Pyne, New York
John S. Barnes, New York
John S. Farlow, Boston
Gardner R. Colby, New York
The rumor-mongers were not without fact to support them, for a new name
will be noticed upon this list; that of Charles Parsons, of New York, who
had been carefully garnering in R. W. & O. stock, at from ten to fifteen
cents on the dollar. Two names had disappeared, those of Marcellus Massey
and of J. W. Moak. But we focus our attention upon the name of Parsons,
and then step forward in our narrative until the sixth day of June, 1883,
when the Directors of the R. W. & O. held a meeting in the back room of
the Jefferson County Bank in Watertown.
There was an unusually full attendance of the Board. Mr. Sloan, as was his
prerogative through his office as President of the road, sat at the head
of the long table. Near its foot sat Mr. Parsons, a cadaverous man, with
prematurely white hair, given to much thought but little speech. The
business of the meeting, the election of officers for the ensuing year,
was perfunctory and quickly accomplished. The Secretary arose and
announced that Mr. Parsons had been elected President of the R. W. & O.
Sloan flushed, and then prepared to spring a _coup d'etat_. He brought a
packet of papers from out of an inside pocket.
"What do you propose to do with these?" he snarled.
"What are they?" asked Parsons.
"Notes of the road for $300,000 that I've advanced it, to keep it out of
bankruptcy," was the reply.
"Let me see them," said its new President.... He glanced at the papers for
a moment, then reached for his check-book and wrote his check to Sloan for
a clean $300,000. He handed it across the table. The retiring President
scrutinized it sharply, placed it within his wallet and left the room.
His connection with the road was terminated. At the best it was a sinister
connection. There were few to regret his going.
* * * * *
With his hand firmly fixed upon its wheel, Parsons began the complete
reorganization of his newly acquired property. He had his long-time
associate, Clarence S. Day, elected as its Vice-President, and within a
very few weeks had brought to the operating headquarters in Oswego a fine
upstanding man, the late H. M. Britton, as General Manager of the road, a
newly created title and office. Mr. Britton at once chose two operating
lieutenants for himself; W. H. Chauncey, as Assistant Superintendent of
the Western Division (west of Richland) at Oswego, and the famous "Jud"
Remington, as Assistant Superintendent of the Eastern Division, at
Watertown.
Watertown had hoped that with the new management of the road--that
railroad which it had been prone to call "its road"--would reëstablish the
operating headquarters of the property there, also new and enlarged shops.
In these hopes it was to be doomed to great disappointment. For not only
was a Sloan policy to consolidate shop facilities at Oswego continued and
enlarged--the shops both at Rome and at Watertown were reduced to
facilities for emergency repairs only--but the corporate executive
offices were removed from it to New York City, while the chief operating
headquarters of the company remained at Oswego.
Yet Watertown might easily enough take hope. The service upon the road was
improved--at once. In front of me I have a copy of the shortlived _Daily
Republican_, which once was printed there. It is dated, July 24, 1885, and
its rules are turned to black borders of mourning in tribute to General
Grant, who died upon the preceding day. In the lower corner of one of its
pages is an advertisement of the summer service upon the R. W. & O. It was
a real service, indeed--five trains a day over the main line in each
direction, and adequate schedules upon the branches. In that season of the
year there was through sleeping-car service between Watertown and New
York, upon the sleeping-cars that were operated in and out of Cape Vincent
to serve the steadily, increasing, tourist trade upon the St. Lawrence.
The Parsons' management, however, like the Sloan, steadfastly refused to
operate this sleeping-car service through the autumn, winter and spring
months of the year. There was a through sleeping-car service, also, to the
White Mountains, the car coming through from Niagara Falls, passing
Watertown at four o'clock in the morning and reaching Fabyan's, N. H., at
twenty-eight minutes after four in the afternoon; Portland, Me., by direct
connection, at 8:25 p. m. This advertisement is signed by W. F. Parsons,
as General Passenger Agent, and by Mr. Britton, as General Manager of the
line.
* * * * *
Britton was alert to suggestion and to complaint. To favored persons he
was apt to make an occasional suggestion upon the company's stock.
"Buy it now," he urged. "Buy it--and hold it."
Most folk shook their heads negatively at that suggestion. Watertown had
been burned once in a railroad experience. It now emulated the traditional
wise child. "Buy the stock," whispered Britton to a Watertown
manufacturer. It then was at twenty-five. The Watertownian demurred. A
year later it was forty. "Buy it now," Britton still whispered to him. And
still our cautious soul of the North Country hesitated. It touched fifty.
Britton still urged. Of course, the Watertown man would not buy it _then_.
He prided himself that he never bought anything at the top of the market.
Sixty, seventy, then R. W. & O. in the great market of Wall Street touched
seventy-five.
"How about it now?" said Britton over the wire.
The Watertown man laughed. He had made a mistake--one of the few financial
errors that he ever made--and he could afford to laugh at this one. Buy R.
W. & O. at seventy-five? Not he. Let the other man do it. Afterwards he
did not laugh as hard. He lived long enough to see R. W. & O. reach par
once again--and then cross it and keep upwards all the while. He saw it
reach 105, then 110 and then on a certain memorable March day in 1891,
123.
But this anticipates. We are riding too rapidly with our narrative. If old
"Jud" Remington were traveling with us upon this special he would do, as
sometimes was his wont, reach up and pull the bell-cord to slow the train.
He took no risks, did "Jud"--bless his fine, old heart.
We have anticipated--and perhaps we have neglected. All these years, of
which we have been writing, the R. W. & O. had a competitor--a very live
competitor, we must have you understand. So live, that to gain a permanent
position for itself, that competitor must needs be completely eliminated.
To that competitor--the Utica & Black River Railroad--we must now turn our
attention.
CHAPTER VIII
THE UTICA & BLACK RIVER
The beginnings of the Utica & Black River Railroad go away back to
1852--the year of the real completion and opening of the Watertown & Rome.
The fact that not only could that line be built successfully, but that
there would come to it immediately a fine flow of traffic was not without
its effect upon the staunch old city of Utica, which had felt rather
bitterly about the loss, to its smaller neighbor, Rome, of the prestige of
being the gateway city to the North Country. From the beginning Utica had
been that gateway. Long ago we read of the fine records that were made on
the old post-road from Utica through Martinsburgh and Watertown to
Sackett's Harbor. The Black River valley was the logical pathway to the
Northern Tier. The people who dwelt there felt that God had made it so.
And now the infamy had come to pass that a new man-built highway had
ignored it completely; had passed far to the west of it.
Spurred by such feelings, stung by a new-found feeling of isolation, the
people of Lewis County held a mass meeting on a December evening in 1852,
at Lowville, to which their county-seat had already been moved from
Martinsburgh, but two miles distant. They set the fire to a popular
feeling that already demanded a railroad through the natural easy
gradients of the valley of the Black River. The blaze of indignation
spread. Within a fortnight similar meetings were held at Boonville and at
Theresa. And within a few months the Black River Railroad Company was
organized at the first of these towns with a capital of $1,200,000 and
Herkimer, in the valley of the Mohawk, was designated as its probably
southern terminal.
Once again Utica writhed in civic anguish. But in three days gave answer
to this proposed, second blow to her prestige by the organization of the
Black River & Utica Railroad, with a capital of $1,000,000--a tentative
figure of course. As an evidence of her good faith she raised a cash fund
for the employment of Daniel C. Jenney to survey a route for her own
railroad, north and straight through to French Creek (about to become the
present village of Clayton) one hundred miles distant.
To this move Rome replied. Having acquired a new and exclusive prestige,
she was quite unwilling that it should be lost, or even dimmed. She
called attention to the fact that she was, in her own eyes, of course, the
logical gateway to the Black River country, as well as to the eastern
shore of Lake Ontario, to which the Watertown & Rome already led. There
was a natural pass that rested just behind her that led to Boonville and
the upper waters of the Black River. Had not this natural route been
recognized some years before by the builders of the Black River Canal, who
readily had chosen it for the waterway, which to this day remains in
operation through it?
Rome felt that her argument was quite irrefutable. To support it, however,
she pledged herself to furnish terminal grounds for the new line at $250
an acre, in addition to subscribing $450,000 to the stock and bonds of the
company. Money talks. Utica came back with an offer of terminal lands at
$200 an acre and proffered a subscription of $650,000 to the securities of
the Black River & Utica. A meeting was held. The mooted question of a
southern terminal was put to vote. Rome and Utica tied with twenty-two
votes each; Herkimer, despite her suggestion of the valley of Canada Creek
as a natural pathway for the new line north to the watershed of the Black
River, had but two votes. She promptly withdrew from the contest.
Money does talk. Eventually Utica had the terminal of the Black River
road, even though the noble Romans, retiring to their camp in a blue funk
for a time threatened a rival line straight north from their town to
Boonville and beyond. They went so far as to incorporate this company; as
the Ogdensburgh, Clayton & Rome. The promoters of the Black River & Utica
having planned to locate their line in the low levels of the flats of the
river, the Rome group said that they would build _their_ road upon the
higher level, rather closely paralleling the ancient state highway and so
making especial appeal to the towns along it, which felt miffed at the
indifference of the Utica group to them.
In the long run, as we all know, the road was built along the low level of
the Black River valley, and many of the once thriving towns along the
State Road left stranded high and dry. The road from Rome became a memory.
From time to time the suggestion has been revived, however--in my boyhood
days we had the fine classical suggestion of the Rome & Carthage Railroad
all ready for incorporation--but there is little prospect now that such a
road will ever be built. The times are not propitious now for that sort of
enterprise.
* * * * *
Ground was broken at Utica for the new Black River line on August 27,
1853. There was a deal of ceremony to the occasion; no less a personage
than the distinguished Governor Horatio Seymour, being designated to make
remarks appropriate to it. And, as was the custom in those days for such
an event, there was a parade, music by the bands and other appropriate
festivities. Construction, in the hands of Contractor J. S. T. Stranahan,
of Brooklyn, went ahead with great briskness. Within two years the line
had been builded over the hard rolling country of the upper Canada
Creek--it included the crossing of a deep gully near Trenton Falls by a
high trestle (subsequently replaced by a huge embankment)--to Boonville,
thirty-five miles distant from Utica.
This much done, the Black River & Utica subsided and became apparently a
semi-dormant enterprise--for a number of long years. The promises which
its promoters had made to have the line completed to Clayton by the first
of July, 1855, apparently were forgotten. These had been made at a mass
meeting of the enthusiastic proponents of the Ogdensburgh, Clayton & Rome,
held at Constableville on the evening of Monday, August 22, 1853. They
were definite, and the Rome crowd under them badly worsted. But promises
were as easily made in those days as in these. As easily accepted ... and
as easily broken.
* * * * *
In 1857, the Black River & Utica Railroad was operating a single passenger
train a day, between Utica and Boonville. It left Boonville at eight
o'clock in the morning and arrived at Utica at 10:20 a. m. The return run
left Utica at 4:00 p. m. and arrived at Boonville at 6:20 p. m.
Seventy-five cents was charged to ride from Utica to Trenton and $1.25
from Utica to Boonville. The little road then had four locomotives, the
_T. S. Faxton_, the _J. Butterfield_, the _Boonville_ and the _D. C.
Jenney_. The _Faxton_ hauled the passenger train, and a young man from
Boonville, who also owned a coal-yard there, was its conductor. His name
was Richard Marcy and afterwards he was to come to prominent position, not
only as exclusive holder of its coal-selling franchise for a number of
years, but also as a politician of real parts.
In 1858, the little road doubled its passenger service. Now there were two
passenger trains a day in each direction. And each was at least fairly
well-filled, for the Black River & Utica held as its supreme attraction
Trenton Falls. Indeed, if it had not been for the prominence of Trenton
Falls as a resort in those years, it is quite probable that a good many
folk in the State of New York would never have even heard of it.
[Illustration: THE BIRTH OF THE U. & B. R. The Boonville Passenger Train
Standing in the Utica Station, Away Back in 1865.]
But Trenton Falls--Trenton Falls of the sixties, of the fifties--all the
way back to the late twenties, if you please--here was a place to be
reckoned! All the great travelers of the early half of the last
century--European as well as American--made a point of visiting it. The
most of them wrote of it in their memoirs. That indefatigable tourist, N.
P. Willis, could not miss this exquisitely beautiful place--alas, in these
late days, the exquisitely beautiful place has fallen under the vandal
hands of power engineers, and the exquisite beauty no longer is. Trenton
Falls is but a memory. Yet the record of its one-time magnificence still
remains.
"... The company of strangers at Trenton is made somewhat select by the
expense and difficulty of access," wrote Willis, late in the fifties. The
Black River & Utica had then barely been opened through to the Falls.
"Most who come stay two or three days, but there are usually boarders here
who stay for a longer time.... Nothing could be more agreeable than the
footing upon which these chance-met residents and their daily accessions
of newcomers pass their evenings and take strolls up the ravine together;
and for those who love country air and romantic rambles without 'dressing
for dinner' or waltzing by a band, this is 'a place to stay.' These are
not the most numerous frequenters of Trenton, however. It is a very
popular place of resort from every village within thirty miles; and from
ten in the morning until four in the afternoon there is gay work with the
country girls and their beaux--swinging under trees, strolling about in
the woods near the house, bowling, singing, and dancing--at all of which
(owing, perhaps to a certain gypsy-ish promiscuosity of my nature that I
never could aristocrify by the keeping of better company) I am delighted
to be, at least, a looker-on. The average number of these visitors from
the neighborhood is forty or fifty a day, so that breakfast and tea are
the nearest approach to 'dress meals'--the dinner, though profuse and
dainty in its fare, being eaten in what is commonly thought to be rather
'mixed society.' I am inclined to think that, from French intermixture, or
some other cause, the inhabitants of this region are a little peculiar in
their manners. There is an unconsciousness or carelessness of others'
observation and presence that I have hitherto seen only abroad. We have
songs, duets and choruses, sung here by village girls, within the last few
days, in a style that drew all in the house to listen very admiringly; and
even the ladies all agree that there have been very pretty girls day
after day among them. I find they are Fourierites to the extent of common
hair-brush and other personal furniture--walking into anybody's room for
the temporary repairs which belles require on their travels, and availing
themselves of whatever was therein, with a simplicity, perhaps, a little
transcendental. I had obtained the extra privilege for myself of a small
dressing room apart, for which I presumed the various trousers and other
merely masculine belongings would be protective scarecrows sufficient to
keep out these daily female invaders, but, walking in yesterday, I found
my combs and brushes in active employ, and two very tidy looking girls
making themselves at home without shutting the door and no more disturbed
by my _entrée_ than if I had been a large male fly. As friends were
waiting I apologized for intruding long enough to take a pair of boots
from under their protection, but my presence was evidently no
interruption. One of the girls (a tall figure, like a woman in two
syllables connected by a hyphen at the waist) continued to look at the
back of her dress in the glass, and the other went on threading her most
prodigal chevelure with my doubtless very embarrassed though unresisting
hair-brush, and so I abandoned the field, as of course I was expected to
do ... I do not know that they would go to the length of 'fraternizing'
one's tooth-brush, but with the exception of locking up that rather
confidential article, I give in to the customs of the country, and have
ever since left open door to the ladies...."
We have drifted away for the moment from the railroad. I wanted to show,
through Mr. Willis's observant eyes, the Northern New York of the day that
the Black River & Utica was first being builded. One other excerpt has
observed the various sentiments, sacred and profane, penciled about the
place and its excellent hotel and concludes:
"... Farther off ... a man records the arrival of himself 'and servant,'
below which is the following inscription:
"'G. Squires, wife and two babies. No servant, owing to the hardness of
the times.'
"And under this again;
"'G. W. Douglas, and servant. No wife and babies, owing to the hardness of
the times.'"
* * * * *
The tremendous popularity of Trenton Falls in those early days was a vast
aid to the slender passenger possibilities of the early Black River &
Utica. There was not much else for it south of Boonville. True it was that
at that thriving village it tapped the fairly busy Black River Canal
which led down to the navigable upper waters of that river. Yet this was
hardly satisfactory to the progressive folk of the Black River valley.
They kept the project alive. And once when the old company's continued
existence became quite hopeless they helped effect a complete
reorganization of it, under the title of the Utica & Black River. This was
formally accomplished, March 31, 1860. As the Utica & Black River, the new
railroad came, upon its completion into the North Country, into a season
of continued prosperity. It did not share the vast reversals of fortune of
its larger competitor, the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. Through all the
years of its complete operation as a separate railroad it never missed its
six per cent dividends. It was a delight, both to its owners and to the
communities it served.
* * * * *
The Black River road thrust itself into Lowville in the fall of 1868. Four
years later it had reached Carthage. The next year it was at the bank of
the St. Lawrence, at Clayton. And before the end of the following year it
again touched with its rails the shore of that great river; at both
Morristown and Ogdensburgh. As railroads went, in those days, it was at
last a through-route; with important connections at both of its
terminals. At Utica it had fine shop and yard facilities adjoining the
tracks of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, whose venerable
passenger station it shared. And, when at one time, it sought a close
personal connection for itself with the Ontario & Western there, it
builded an expensive bridge connection over the New York Central tracks.
This bridge is now gone, but the piers remain.
At both Clayton and Ogdensburgh the Black River road possessed fine
waterside terminals. Its station in the latter city still stands; for many
years it has been the local storage warehouse of Armour & Co., of Chicago.
* * * * *
In the busy months that the Utica & Black River was building its line up
through Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, a railroad was being builded
from it at Carthage down the lower valley of the Black River to Watertown
and to Sackett's Harbor. This was distinctly a local enterprise; the
Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, financed and built almost entirely
by Watertownians and retaining its separate corporate existence until but
a few years ago. It was inspired not only by the great success of the
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh at that time, but by the quite natural
desire of the one really industrial city of the North Country to have
competitive railroad service. There have been few times when there were
not in Watertown a generous plenty of men who stood ready to put their
hands deep into their pockets in order to promote an enterprise whose
value seemed so obvious and so genuinely important to the town.
So it was then that the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor first came
into its existence, there at the extreme end of the sixties; in the very
year that Watertown itself was first becoming a city. Its officers and
directors as it was first organized were as follows:
_President_, GEORGE B. PHELPS, Watertown
_Secretary and Treasurer_, LOTUS INGALLS, Watertown
_Engineer_, F. A. HINDS, Watertown
_Directors_
George P. Phelps, Watertown
Lotus Ingalls, Watertown
Norris Winslow, Watertown
Pearson Mundy, Watertown
L. D. Doolittle, Watertown
George H. Sherman, Watertown
George A. Bagley, Watertown
Hiram Converse, Watertown
Theodore Canfield, Sackett's Harbor
Walter B. Camp, Sackett's Harbor
David Dexter, Black River
William N. Coburn, Carthage
Alexander Brown, Carthage
A little later Mr. Hinds was succeeded as the road's Engineer, by L. B.
Cook also of Watertown. And eventually Mr. Bagley succeeded Mr. Phelps,
as its President, George W. Knowlton, becoming its Vice-President.
* * * * *
To encourage the new line, which it prepared itself to operate, the Utica
& Black River made quite a remarkable contract. Shorn of its verbiage it
agreed to give the C. W. & S. H. forty per cent of the gross revenue that
should arise upon the line. This contract in a very few years arose to
bedevil the railroad situation in the North Country. As the paper industry
began to expand there, and huge mills to multiply along the lower reaches
of the Black River, this contract grew irksome indeed to the U. & B. R. R.
Finally it sought to modify its terms, very greatly. The Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, quite naturally refused. "After all," it
said, through its President, the late George A. Bagley, "what is a
contract but--a contract?"
The Utica road pressed its point. It finally went down to New York and
gained a promise from Roswell P. Flower that the agreement would be
greatly mollified, if not abrogated. It did seem absurd that a carload of
paper moving eighteen miles from Watertown to Carthage and seventy-five
from Carthage to Utica should pay forty per cent of its charges to the
road upon which it had moved but eighteen miles. Yet, a contract is a
contract.
Governor Flower went up to Watertown and put the matter before the
officers and directors of the C. W. & S. H. But, led by the stout-hearted
Bagley, they refused to move, a single inch.
"I've given my promise," stormed Roswell P. Flower, "that you would do the
right thing in this matter. And in New York I am known as a man who always
keeps his word."
Bagley said nothing. The meeting ended abruptly--in all the bitterness of
disagreement. The Utica & Black River decided upon a master stroke; it
would terminate paying its rental, based chiefly on this forty per cent
division to its leased road. That would cause trouble. The Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor was, itself, liable to its bondholders, for
the mortgage that they held against it. It would have to pay their
interest. Without receiving its rental money from the Black River road it
would be hard pressed indeed to meet these coupons. It looked as if it
might have to go into receivership, even though at that moment its stock
had reached well above par.
The situation was saved for it by a New York banking house, Vermilye &
Company, who sent a lawyer up to Watertown who examined the famous
contract and pronounced it perfectly valid. The Vermilye's then announced
their willingness to advance the C. W. & S. H. the money to meet its
interest charges--for an indefinite period. After which the Black River
people came down a peg or two and bought the stock and bonds of their
leased road, at par. While the city of Watertown and some of its adjoining
communities possessed of a sudden and unexpected wealth refunded a portion
of their taxes for a year or two.
Mr. Bagley had won his point. He had the reward of a good deed well
performed. He had another reward. His salary as President of the Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor had remained unpaid; for a number of years.
He collected back pay from the Black River settlement; for several years
at the rate of $15,000 a year.
* * * * *
I have anticipated. We are building the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's
Harbor, not, as yet, operating it. The construction of the line began late
in the year of 1870, westward from Carthage, its base of supplies. The
road from Watertown to the Harbor--eleven miles--was constructed in the
following summer. After a disagreeable fight with the R. W. & O., its main
line finally was crossed at grade at Mill Street, closely adjacent to the
passenger stations of the two rival roads and, after following the
embankment for a mile, once again at Watertown Junction. Its entrance
into the Harbor was accomplished over the right-of-way of the former
Sackett's Harbor & Ellisburgh, which had been abandoned a decade before.
It utilized the old depot there.
George W. Flower, the first Mayor of Watertown, who we have already seen
in these pages, had the contract for the building of this section of the
line. He rented a locomotive from his competitor and obtained the loan of
engineer, Frank W. Smith. For himself, he kept oversight over the progress
from the saddle seat of a fine horse that he possessed.
This section of the road was completed and ready for operation early in
'74. But because of certain legal complications the Utica & Black River
refused to accept it at once. A large celebration had been planned at the
Harbor for the Fourth of July that year and rather than disappoint the
folk who wanted to go down to it, Mr. Flower took his leased locomotive
and hitched behind it a long line of flat contractor's cars, equipped with
temporary wooden benches. His improvised excursion train did a good
business and he realized a comfortable sum from the haulage of both
passengers and freight before the line was turned over to the Utica &
Black River for operation.
The first passenger station of that line in Watertown was in a former
brick residence in Factory Street, just beyond the junction with Mill. It
was small, not overclean and most inconvenient. But a few years later, the
U. & B. R. built the handsome passenger station at the Northeast corner of
Public Square which for many years now has been the office and
headquarters of the Marcy, Buck & Riley Company. Its original brick
freight-house nearby--afterwards relieved by the construction of a most
substantial stone freight-house at the foot of Court Street--still stands.
Back of it a block or so was the round-house. I remember that round-house
well. It was a favorite resort of mine through some extremely tender years
of youth.
* * * * *
I have not set down the earliest lists of officers of the Utica road. They
are not particularly germane to this record. It is, perhaps, enough for it
to know that, with the exception of the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's
Harbor--which, as we have just seen, was financed chiefly by the Flowers,
the Knowltons, George A. Bagley and George B. Phelps, of Watertown--the U.
& B. R. as reorganized, was constructed and managed almost exclusively by
Uticans--John Thorn, Isaac Maynard, Theodore Faxon and John
Butterfield--and New Yorkers--Robert Lenox Kennedy, John J. Kennedy (who
afterwards had a prominent rôle in the early financing of the Canadian
Pacific) and others.
Charles Millar was the first Superintendent of the road. He was succeeded,
along about 1865, by Hugh Crocker, who a couple of years later was killed
while in the cab of a locomotive running between Lyons Falls and Glendale.
It was in the season of high water and the Black River was following its
usual springtime custom of overflowing the flats of the upper valley. The
railroad was fresh and green and young. The water undermined its
embankments and sent Crocker's locomotive tumbling over upon its side; and
Crocker to his death. J. D. Schultz, who still is residing in Glendale and
who is one of the best-known of the pioneers of the old R. W. & O. in his
own arms carried young Crocker's body out of the wreck. It was a most
pathetic incident. Yet it is a remarkable fact, and one well worth
recording here, that in its entire thirty-one years of operation not one
passenger was killed while riding upon the Utica & Black River.
The unfortunate Crocker was succeeded by Addison Day, who we already have
seen upon the R. W. & O. as an early and distinguished Superintendent. A
little later Thomas W. Spencer, who had been the Construction Engineer of
the road, replaced Day, and in 1872, J. Fred Maynard, son of Isaac Maynard
of Utica, assumed the operating management of the road, first with the
title of Superintendent and eventually as its Vice-President and General
Manager. He remained in that post through the remainder of the operating
existence of the road.
* * * * *
Steadily the Black River sought to improve its service. As it succeeded in
so doing it became more and more of a thorn in the side of the R. W. & O.
It touched that system at three points only--but they were important
points. It was a slightly longer route into Watertown from the New York
Central's main stem, but considerably shorter to both Philadelphia--where
it crossed the R. W. & O. at a precise right-angle--and Ogdensburgh. At
the first of these two last towns it developed an irritating habit of
holding its trains until the Rome road train had come, in hopes of luring
Ogdensburgh passengers away from it and getting them in to their
destination at an earlier hour than they had hoped. Several times it was
suggested that the roads pool their interests and work in harmony. For one
reason or another this was accomplished but once--the R. W. & O.
management almost always opposed such plans. It apparently preferred to
play the lone hand.
The Utica & Black River had a very considerable tourist advantage in
reaching the St. Lawrence River at Clayton, in the very heart of the
Thousand Island district, instead of at Cape Vincent, which was rather
remote from the large hotel and cottage sections. It established its own
boat connections with the _John Thorn_, as the flagship of its fleet.
John Thorn's name and personality were again reflected in a fine
coal-burning, Schenectady-built locomotive, which also bore his name (the
U. & B. R. in those days had a decided penchant for the engines that the
Ellises were building at Schenectady). Its motive-power was almost always
in the pink of condition, brightly painted like its cars, which bore the
same shade of yellow upon their sides that had been borrowed from the Lake
Shore & Michigan Southern. Like the R. W. & O., the locomotives were all
named. In addition to the _John Thorn_, there were the _Isaac Maynard_,
the _DeWitt C. West_ (named after a resident of Lowville, who was an early
president of the road), the _Theodore Faxton_, the _Fred S. Easton_, the
_Charles Millar_, the _John Butterfield_, the _J. F. Maynard_, the _Ludlow
Patton_, the _A. G. Brower_, the _Lewis Lawrence_, the _D. B. Goodwin_,
and others too. The road at the end of the seventies had a fleet of about
twenty locomotives.
There was one time, at least, when the upkeep of the motive power suffered
a real shock. I am referring to the noisy way in which the road entered
Watertown, by the explosion of the locomotive _Charles Millar_, No. 4,
near the Mill Street crossing there on May 9, 1872. It was one of the few
accidents, however, in the entire history of the Utica & Black River.
Augustus Unser, better known as "Gus" Unser, of Watertown was at that time
engineer of the _Millar_, which was one of the earliest wood-burners that
the road ever possessed--it did not begin the installation of coal grates
until 1874. Unser was standing in the cab at the moment of the explosion,
talking to Jacob H. Herman--better known as "Jake" Herman--who was at that
time conductor on the Rome road.
Without the slightest warning came the explosion. There was a terrific
roar and a crash, followed by a rain of small engine parts over a goodly
portion of Watertown. Fortunately neither Unser nor Herman were seriously
injured. An investigation into the cause of the wreck, which tore the
_Millar_ into an unrecognizable mass of metal, failed to develop the cause
of the accident. It was generally supposed, however, that the engine-crew
had permitted the water in the boiler to fall below the level of the
crown-sheet.
* * * * *
Back of the highly developed and independent Utica & Black River of a
decade later there stood a pretty well developed human organization. John
Thorn was its President; the head and front of its aggressive and alert
policy. The full official roster was, in 1882:
_President_, JOHN THORN, Utica
_Vice-Pres. and Gen'l Man'g'r_, J. F. MAYNARD, Utica
_Treasurer_, ISAAC MAYNARD, Utica
_Secretary_, W. E. HOPKINS, Utica
_Gen'l Supt._, E. A. VAN HORNE, Utica
_Asst. Supt._, H. W. HAMMOND, Utica
_Gen. Pass. and Fgt. Agent_, THEO. BUTTERFIELD, Utica
_Directors_
Robt. L. Kennedy, New York
John Thorn, Utica
Abijah J. Williams, Utica
Isaac Maynard, Utica
Lewis Lawrence, Utica
William J. Bacon, Utica
Edmund A. Graham, Utica
Theodore S. Sayre, Utica
Abram G. Brower, Utica
Russell Wheeler, Utica
J. F. Maynard, Utica
Daniel B. Goodwin, Waterville
Fred S. Easton, Lowville
* * * * *
The final thrust of the Utica & Black River into the sides of its older
competitor, whilst that competitor was still in the anguish of the Sloan
administration of its affairs, came in the ferry row up at Ogdensburgh. By
1880 the once-brisk lake trade of that port had fallen to low levels. The
fourteen-foot locks of the Welland Canal, between Lakes Ontario and Erie
had failed utterly to keep pace with the development of carriers upon the
upper Lakes. The steamers that still came to the elaborate piers of the
old Northern Railroad at Ogdensburgh--for many years now, the Ogdensburgh
& Lake Champlain--were comparatively small and infrequent. Buffalo was a
more popular and a more accessible port. And yet the time had been when
the Northern Railroad had had a daily service between Chicago and
Ogdensburgh; some fifteen staunch steamers in its fleet.
One most important form of water-borne traffic has always remained at
Ogdensburgh, however; the ferry route across the St. Lawrence to Prescott
upon the Canadian shore just opposite. Prescott is not only upon the old
main line of the Grand Trunk Railway but also has a direct railroad
connection with Ottawa by a branch of the Canadian Pacific (formerly the
Ottawa and St. Lawrence). The original boat upon this route was a small
three-car craft, the _Transit_, which was owned in Prescott. In the
mid-seventies this steamer was supplanted by the staunch steam car-ferry,
_William Armstrong_, whose whistle was reputed to be the loudest and the
most awful thing ever heard on inland waters anywhere. The _Armstrong_
speedily became one of the fixtures of Ogdensburgh. Twice she sank, under
excessive loading, and twice she was again raised and replaced in service.
In 1919 she was sold to a firm of contractors at Trenton, Ont., and she is
still in use as a drill-boat in the vicinity of that village. The
important ferry at Ogdensburgh still continues, however, under the
direction of Edward Dillingham, for many years the Rome road's agent in
that city.
To compete with the service that the _Armstrong_ rendered the R. W. & O.
at Ogdensburgh, the Utica & Black River along about 1880 put a car-float
and tug into a hastily contrived ferry between its station grounds at
Morristown, eleven miles up the river from Ogdensburgh and the small
Canadian city of Brockville just opposite. Into Brockville came the
Canadian Pacific, beginning to feel its oats and pushing its rails rapidly
westward each month. That was a better connection than the somewhat longer
one of the St. Lawrence & Ottawa, and gradually freight began deserting
the old ferry for this new one; with the result that within a year the
_Armstrong_ was moved up the river to the Morristown-Brockville crossing,
and Ogdensburgh gnashed its teeth in its despair. It appealed to the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh for relief in the situation.
That road was in its most important change of management--the succession
of the Parsons' administration to that of Samuel Sloan. Charles Parsons
had had his eye upon the Utica & Black River for some time. It was a
potential factor of danger within his territory. Suppose that the
Vanderbilts should come along and purchase it? That nearly happened twice
in the early eighties. There was strong New York Central sympathy and
interest in the U. & B. R. It showed itself in an increase of traffic
agreements and coöperative working arrangements. The Rome road tried to
offset this strengthening alliance of the Utica & Black River by making
closer working agreements with the New York, Ontario & Western, which it
touched at Rome, at Central Square and at Oswego. But the O. & W. with its
wobbly line down over the hills to New York was a far different
proposition than the straight main line and the easy grades of the New
York Central. It is possible that had the West Shore, which was completed
through from New York to Buffalo in the summer of 1883, been successful,
it might eventually have succeeded in absorbing the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh; in which case the New York Central certainly would have taken
the Utica & Black River, and the competitive system of railroading been
assured to the North Country for many years to come. But that possibility
was a slight one. The disastrous collapse of the West Shore soon ended it.
Yet the Utica road was a constant menace to Charles Parsons. No one knew
it better than he. And because he knew, he reached out and absorbed it;
within three years of the day that he had first acquired the R. W. & O. He
not only guaranteed the $2,100,000 of outstanding U. & B. R. bonds and
seven per cent annually upon a $2,100,000 capitalization, but, in order to
make assurance doubly sure, he purchased a majority interest of $1,200,000
of Utica & Black River shares and turned them into the steadily
strengthening treasury of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. The Utica
road formally passed into the hands of the Rome road on April 15, 1886.
The mere announcement of the transfer was a stunning blow to the North
Country.
Now Parsons had a real railroad indeed; more than six hundred miles of
line--the Utica road had brought him 180 miles of main line track. Now he
had over eighty locomotives and an adequate supply of other rolling stock.
From the U. & B. R. he received twenty-four locomotives, of a size and
type excellent for that day, twenty-six passenger-cars, fourteen
baggage-cars and 361 freight cars. But, best of all, he was now kingpin
in Northern New York. There was none to dispute his authority, unless you
were to regard the tottering Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain as a real
competitor. He was king in a real kingdom. The only prospect that even
threatened his monopoly was that the Vanderbilts might sometime take it
into their heads to build North into the valleys of the Black River and
the St. Lawrence. But that was not likely--not for the moment at any rate.
They were too occupied just then in counting the costs of the terrific,
even though successful, battle in which they had smashed the West Shore
into pulp, to be ready for immediate further adventures. If they should
come to war seven or eight years later, Parsons would be ready for them.
In the meantime he set out to reorganize and perfect his merged property.
He wanted once again to make the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh the best
run railroad in the state of New York. And in this he all but completely
succeeded.
CHAPTER IX
THE BRISK PARSONS' REGIME
With the Black River thoroughly merged into his Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh, Parsons began the extremely difficult job of the merging of
the personnel of the two lines. Britton, quite naturally, was not to be
disturbed. On the contrary, his authority was to be very greatly
increased. The U. & B. R. operating forces gave way to his domination. On
the other hand, Theodore Butterfield, who was recognized as a traffic man
of unusual astuteness and experience, was brought from Utica to Oswego and
made General Passenger Agent of the combined property. The shops were
merged. Most of the sixty-five workers of the Utica shop were also moved
to Oswego; it was retained only for the very lightest sort of repairs.
As soon as the arrangements could be made, the U. & B. R. passenger trains
were brought into the R. W. & O. stations at both Watertown and
Ogdensburgh; while the time-tables of the combined road were readjusted
so as to make Philadelphia, where the two former competing, main lines
crossed one another at right angles, a general point of traffic
interchange, similar to Richland. Cape Vincent lost, almost in a single
hour, the large railroad prestige that it had held for thirty-three long
years. To bind it more closely with the Thousand Island resorts, the
swift, new steamer, _St. Lawrence_, had been built at Clayton in the
summer of 1883, and at once crowned Queen of the River. Now the _St.
Lawrence_ was used in the Clayton-Alexandria Bay service exclusively. For
a number of years service was maintained intermittently between the Cape
and Alexandria Bay by a small steamer--generally the _J. F. Maynard_--but
after a time even this was abandoned. Until the coming of the motor-car
and improved state highways, Cape Vincent was all but marooned from the
busier portions of the river.
Clayton gradually was developed into a river gateway of importance. The
Golden Age of the Thousand Islands, during the season of huge summer
traffic--which lasted for nearly two decades--did not really begin until
about 1890. Yet by the mid-eighties it was beginning to blossom forth. The
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh of that decade knew the value of
advertising. It adopted the four-leaved clover as its emblem--the long
stem served very well to carry the attenuated line that ran West from
Oswego to Rochester and to Niagara Falls--and made it a famous trade-mark
over the entire face of the land. It was emblazoned upon the sides of all
its freight-cars. Theodore E. Butterfield, the General Passenger Agent,
devised this interesting emblem for it. It was he who also chose the
French word, _bonheur_, for the clover stem. It was, as subsequent events
proved, a most fortuitous choice.
* * * * *
Charles Parsons, having merged the two important railroads of Northern New
York, was now engaged in rounding out his system as a complete and
well-contained unit. For more than a decade the Lake Ontario Shore
extension of the R. W. & O. had passed close to the city of Rochester
through the then village of Charlotte (now a ward of an enlarged
Rochester), and had touched that city only through indifferent connections
from Charlotte. Parsons, at Britton's suggestion, decided that the road
must have a direct entrance into Rochester; which already was beginning
its abounding and wonderful growth. The two men found their opportunity in
a small and sickly suburban railroad which ran down the east bank of the
Genesee from the northern limits of the city and over which there ran from
time to time a small train, propelled by an extremely small locomotive.
They easily acquired that road and gradually pushed it well into the heart
of the city; to a passenger and freight terminal in State Street, not far
from the famed Four Corners. To reach this terminal--upon the West Side of
the town--it was necessary to build a very high and tenuous bridge over
the deep gorge of the Genesee. This took nearly a year to construct.
Injunction proceedings had been brought against the construction of the R.
W. & O. into the heart of the city of Rochester. Yet, under the laws of
that time, these were ineffective upon the Sabbath day. Parsons took
advantage of this technical defect in the statutes, and on a Sabbath day
he successfully brought his railroad into its largest city.
In the meantime a fine, old-fashioned, brick residence in State Street had
been acquired for a Rochester passenger terminal. To make this building
serve as a passenger-station, and be in proper relation to the tracks, it
was necessary to change its position upon the tract of land that it
occupied. This was successfully done, and, I believe, was the record feat
at that time for the moving of a large, brick building. The bridge was
completed and the station opened for the regular use of passenger trains
in the fall of 1887.
* * * * *
At the same time that the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh was slipping so
stealthily into Rochester, it was building two other extensions; neither
of them of great length, but each of them of a considerable importance.
Away back in 1872 it had leased the Syracuse, Phoenix & New York--a
proposed competing line against the Lackawanna between Oswego and
Syracuse, which had been organized two or three years before--but the
project had been permitted to lie dormant. First it lacked the necessary
funds and then Samuel Sloan, quite naturally, could have no enthusiasm
over it. Parsons had no compunctions of that sort. The more he could dig
into Sloan the better he seemed to like it. Moreover the Syracuse, Phoenix
& New York involved very little actual track construction; only some
seventeen miles of track from Woodward's to Fulton, which was very little
for a thirty-seven mile line. From Woodward's into Syracuse it would use
the R. W. & O.'s own rails, put in long before, as the Syracuse Northern,
whilst from Fulton into Oswego the Ontario & Western was most glad to sell
trackage rights.
The seventeen-mile link was easily laid down; a sort of local summer
resort was created at Three River Point upon it, and five passenger trains
a day, in each direction, began service over it, between Syracuse and
Oswego in the early spring of 1886. In that same summer another extension
was also being builded; at the extreme northeastern corner of the
property. The Grand Trunk Railway had built a line with very direct and
short-distance Montreal connections, down across the international
boundary to Massena Springs, in St. Lawrence County--then a spa of
considerable repute, but destined to become a few years later, with the
development of the St. Lawrence water-power, an industrial community of
great standing in the North Country, second only to Watertown in size and
importance. To reach this new line, the R. W. & O. put down thirteen miles
of track from its long established terminus at Norwood, and moved that
terminal to Massena Springs. The right-of-way for the line was entirely
donated by the adjoining property-holders. For a time it was thought that
an important through route would be created through this new gateway,
which was opened in March, 1886, but somehow the traffic failed to
materialize. And to this day a rail journey from Watertown to Montreal
remains a portentous and a fearful thing. Yet the two cities are only
about 175 miles apart.
* * * * *
Parsons was, in heart and essence, a master of the strategy of railroad
traffic, as well as of railroad construction. Whilst he was making the
important link between Norwood and the Grand Trunk terminus at Massena
Springs, but thirteen miles distant, he was coquetting with the Central
Vermont--in one of its repeated stages of reorganization--for the better
development of its lines in connection with the Boston & Maine and the
Maine Central through to the Atlantic at Portland. In all of this he was
assisted by his two most capable assistants, E. M. Moore, General Freight
Agent, and Mr. Butterfield, the General Passenger Agent. Mr. Butterfield
we have already seen. He took very good care of the travel necessities of
the property. Mr. Moore had been with it for many years. He, too, was a
seasoned traffic man. More than this he was a maker of traffic men; from
his office came at least two experts in this specialty of railroad
salesmanship--H. D. Carter, who rose eventually to be Freight Traffic
Manager of the New York Central Lines, and Frank L. Wilson, who is to-day
their Division Freight and Passenger Agent at Watertown. Mr. Wilson bears
the distinction of being the only officer on the property in the North
Country who also was an officer of the old Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh.
He started his service in Watertown as a messenger-boy for the Dominion
Telegraph Company when its office was located in the old Hanford store at
the entrance of the Paddock Arcade. Later he began his railroad service
with the R. W. & O. as operator at Limerick Station. From that time
forward his rise was steady and constant.
* * * * *
I have digressed once again. We left Parsons strengthening a through line
from Suspension Bridge to Portland, Maine, through Northern New York and
across the White Mountains. As an earnest of his interest in this route he
established, almost as soon as he had acquired control of the Rome road,
the once-famous White Mountain Express. In an earlier chapter we have seen
how the local Watertown management of the road had, some years before, set
up a through sleeping-car service in the summers between Watertown and
Fabyan's; using its fine old cars, the _Ontario_ and the _St. Lawrence_
for this service.
The White Mountain Express of the Parsons' régime was a far different
thing from a mere sleeping-car service. It was a genuine through-train,
with Wagner sleeping-cars all the way from Chicago to Portland. It passed
over the rails of the R. W. & O. almost entirely by night; and because of
the high speed set for it over so many miles of congested single-track,
the older engineers refused to run it. The younger men took the gambling
chance with it. And while they expected to run off the miserable track
that Samuel Sloan had left for Parsons, and which could not be rebuilded
in a day or a week or a month or a year, they managed fairly well,
although there were one or two times when the accidents to this train were
serious affairs indeed.
There comes to my mind even now the dim memories of that nasty wreck at
the very beginning of the Parsons' overlordship, when the east-bound White
Mountain, traveling at fifty miles an hour, came a terrible cropper at
Carlyon (now known as Ashwood), thirty miles west of Charlotte. It was on
the evening of the 27th of July, 1883, barely six weeks after Parsons and
Britton had taken the management of the road into their hands. The White
Mountain, in charge of Conductor E. Garrison, had left Niagara Falls, very
heavily laden, and twenty minutes late, at 7:30 p. m., hauled by two of
the road's best locomotives. It consisted of a baggage-car, a day-coach
and nine sleepers; six of these Wagners, and the other three the company's
own cars, the _Ontario_, the _St. Lawrence_ and the _DeKalb_.
A fearful wind blowing off the lake had dislodged a recreant box-car from
the facing-point siding there at Carlyon and had sent it trundling down
toward the oncoming express. In the driving rain the train thrust its nose
right into the clumsy thing. Derailment followed. The leading engine, upon
which Train Despatcher and Assistant Superintendent W. H. Chauncey was
riding, was thrown into the ditch at one side of the track, and the
trailing engine into the ditch at the other. Its engineer and fireman were
killed instantly. The wreckage piled high. It caught fire and it was with
extreme difficulty that the flames were extinguished. In that memorable
calamity seventeen lives were lost and forty persons seriously injured.
Yet out of it came a definite blessing. Up to that time the air-brake had
never been used upon the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. The Carlyon
accident forced its adoption.
* * * * *
I have no mind to linger on the details of disasters such as this; or of
the one at Forest Lawn a little later when a suburban passenger-train
bound into Rochester was in a fearful rear-end collision with the delayed
west-bound White Mountain and more lives were sacrificed. The Rome road,
as a rule, had a fairly clean record on wrecks, on disastrous ones at any
rate. There was in 1887 a wretched rear-end collision just opposite the
passenger depot at Canton, which cost two or three lives and made
Conductor Omar A. Hine decide that he had had quite enough of active
railroading. And shortly before this there had been a more fortunate, yet
decidedly embarrassing affair down on the old Black River near Glenfield;
the breaking of a side-rod upon a locomotive which killed the engineer and
seriously delayed a distinguished passenger on his way to the Thousand
Islands--Grover Cleveland, then President of the United States, was taking
his bride for a little outing upon the shores of the St. Lawrence River. A
few years later Theodore Roosevelt, in the same post, was to ride up over
that nice picturesque stretch of line. Yet was to see far less of it than
his predecessor had seen. At Utica he had accepted with avidity the
Superintendent's invitation to ride in the engine-cab of his special. He
swung himself quickly up into it. Then reached into his pocket, produced a
small leather-bound book and had a bully time--reading all the way to
Watertown.
One more wreck invites our attention, and then we are done with this
forever grewsome side of railroading: This last a spectacular affair, if
you please, more so even than that dire business back to Carlyon. The
Barnum & Bailey circus was a pretty regular annual visitor to Northern New
York in those days. It began coming in 1873 and for more than a quarter of
a century thereafter it hardly missed a season--generally playing Oswego
(where once the tent blew down, during the afternoon performance, and
there was a genuine panic), Watertown and Ogdensburgh. In this particular
summer week, the show had gone from Watertown to Gouverneur, where it
violated its tradition and abandoned the evening performance in order that
it might promptly entrain for the long haul to Montreal where it was due
to play upon the morrow.
Going down the steep grade at Clark's Crossing, two miles east of Potsdam,
the axle of one of the elephant cars, in one of the sections, broke and
the train piled up behind it--a fearful and a curious mass of wreckage.
Fortunately the sacrifice of human life was not a feature of this
accident. But the loss of animal life was very heavy. Valuable riding
horses, trained beasts and many rare and curious animals were killed. Into
the annals of Northern New York it all went as a wonderful night. In the
glare of great bonfires men and women from many climes and in curious
garb stalked solemnly around and whispered alarmedly in tongues strange
indeed to Potsdam and its vicinage. Giraffes and elephants and sacred cows
found refuge in Mr. Clark's barn. Outside long trenches were dug for the
burial of the wreck victims. John O'Sullivan, for forty years station
agent at Potsdam, and now resting honorably from his labors, says that it
was the worst day that he ever put in.
It was at this wreck that Ben Batchelder, whose name brings many memories
to every old R. W. & O. man, finding that his wrecking equipment was
entirely inadequate for clearing the miniature mountain range of débris
that ran along the track, put the Barnum & Bailey elephants at work
clearing it. Under the charge of their keepers these alien animals pulled
on huge chains and long ropes and slowly cleared the iron. Yet it was not
until late in the afternoon of the following day that the track was fully
restored and usable. By that time the children of Montreal had been robbed
of that which was their right. And Charles Parsons, in New York, was
remarking to his son, that perhaps, a fleet of well-trained elephants
would make a good addition to a wrecking crew.
* * * * *
Once again I have digressed. Yet offer no apologies. Parsons did not let
the wrecks of the White Mountain discourage him in the operation of the
train. On the contrary, he ordered Mr. Britton to proceed with haste to
the complete installation of the air-brake--then still a considerable
novelty--upon every corner of the road. He steadily bettered the bridges
and the track, tore out the old, stub-switches and substituted for them
the newest, split-switches, with signal lights. The White Mountain
remained; all through his day, and many a day thereafter--even though in
the years after Mr. Britton and he were gone from the road, it was to be
operated between Buffalo and Syracuse over the main line of the New York
Central. And, inasmuch as he was steadily increasing his affiliations with
the Ontario & Western, he installed in connection with it and the Wabash,
a through train from Chicago to Weehawken (opposite New York); going over
the rails of the R. W. & O. from Suspension Bridge to Oswego. This train,
running the year round, and also put at a pretty swift schedule, had
little reputation for adhering to it. Upon one occasion a commercial
traveler bound to Charlotte approaching the old station at "the Bridge" to
find out how late "the O. & W." was reported, was astounded when the agent
replied "on time." Such a thing had not been known before that winter, or
for many winters. And the fact that for a week past it had stormed almost
continuously, only compounded the drummer's perplexity.
"How is it--on time?" he stammered.
"This is yesterday's train," was the prompt response. "She's just
twenty-four hours late."
Eventually and in the close campaign for railroad economy that came across
the land a few years ago, this train, too, was sacrificed. For a time the
experiment was tried of sending its through sleeping-car over the main
line of the Central from Suspension Bridge to Syracuse on a through train;
passing it on from the latter town to the Ontario & Western by way of the
old Chenango Valley branch of the West Shore. The experiment lingered for
a time and then expired. It is not likely that it will ever be renewed.
* * * * *
By 1888 Parsons had begun to develop a very real railroad, indeed. The
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh once again was a power in the land. It had
ninety-one locomotives, ninety-one passenger-cars, forty-eight baggage,
mail and express cars, and 2302 freight-cars, of one type or another.
Parsons, as its President, was assisted by two Vice-Presidents, Clarence
S. Day, and his son, Charles Parsons, Jr. Mr. Lawyer still remained
Secretary and Treasurer of the road, even though his offices had been
moved two years before from Watertown to New York City. At Watertown, the
veteran local agent, R. R. Smiley, remained in charge of affairs, with the
title of Assistant Secretary of the company. And Mr. Britton was, of
course, still its General Manager, at Oswego.
He was really a tremendous man, Hiram M. Britton, in appearance, a big
upstanding citizen, red of beard and clear of eye. I have not, as yet,
given anything like the proper amount of consideration to his dominating
personality. He made a position for himself in North Country railroading
that would fairly entitle him to a whole chapter in a book such as this.
Mr. Britton was born in Concord, Mass., November 22, 1831. At that time
that little town was almost at the height of its high fame as a literary
center. As a boy he claimed Ralph Waldo Emerson as a friend. The influence
that Emerson had upon Britton remained with him all the years of his life.
At seventeen, owing to financial reverses that his father had sustained,
young Britton was compelled to leave school and go to work. He found a job
on the old Fitchburg as fireman; from that he quickly rose to be engineer
and then Master Mechanic. He made his way down into New Jersey and became
Superintendent of the New Jersey and North Eastern Railway; after that
General Manager of the New Jersey Midland, the portion of the old
Oswego Midland to-day embraced by a considerable part of the New York,
Susquehanna & Western.... From that last post, in the summer of 1883 to
the management of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. That position he
retained until 1890, when increasing ill-health forced him to relinquish
it and travel throughout Europe in a vain effort to regain his strength.
The presidencies, both of the Rome road and of one of the Pennsylvania
System lines were offered him. He was compelled to refuse both. His
strength gradually failed, and in 1893 he died.
[Illustration: HIRAM M. BRITTON The First General Manager of the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh and a Railroad Genius.]
The old R. W. & O. was compelled in its day and generation to assume some
pretty hard, human handicaps. But Britton was a mighty asset to it. He
loved his work. It was a real and an eternal delight to him to achieve the
things that he had set out to do. He was always approachable, obliging and
ready to meet all reasonable requests that came within his power; he had
the faculty of making friends of those who came in contact with him, and
of retaining their friendship. A man's man was Hiram M. Britton, a
railroad captain of great alertness, and possessed not only of vast
enthusiasm, but also of a wondrous ability for hard work. The hard
problems of his job never feazed him. Even the winter snows--forever its
_bete noire_--did not discourage him, not for long, at any rate. He came,
as came so many men from outside the borders of the North Country, with
something like a contempt for its midwinter storms. Before Britton had
been long on the job, however, the line from Potsdam to Watertown was
completely blocked for four long days, and he learned that it was all in a
day's work when the ticking wires reported two engines and a plow derailed
at Pulaski, two more off at Kasoag, and not a train in or out of Watertown
for more than thirty hours. At all of which he would relight his pipe and
send a few telegrams of real encouragement up and down the line. That is,
he sent the telegrams when the wires remained up above the tops of the
snow-drifts and the men were using them to hang their coats upon as they
shoveled the heavy snow. Ofttimes the wires went down, and once in a while
they were deliberately cut--by some harassed and nerve-racked,
snow-fighting boss.
That was before the days of the famous Dewey episode at Manila, but the
emergency at the moment must have seemed quite as great. At any rate the
Gordian knot, translated into a thin thread of copper wire, was cut--not
once, but frequently. I myself, in later years, have seen a Superintendent
go into our lower yard at Watertown late at night when congestion piled
upon congestion, when the zero wind whistled up through the flats from
down Sackett's Harbor way, and the evening train up the line nestled
somewhere near Massey Street crossing in a hopelessly inert and frozen
fashion, and clean up the mess there. Once one of these inbound trains
from down the line coming down the long grade into the yard crashed into a
snowbound freight there, and split the caboose asunder, as clean a job as
if it had been done with a sharp ax. There were six men asleep in the
caboose--to say nothing of two in the cab of the oncoming train, and yet
no lives were lost. Even though the Watertown Fire Department spent most
of the rest of the night putting out the fearful blaze that arose from the
wreckage. Corn meal was spread bountifully about atop of the snow, and no
one on the flats lacked for pudding the rest of that winter.
* * * * *
Once, in the Britton régime, there had been nearly a week when Watertown
was entirely cut off from Richland and the towns to the South of it. A
show-troupe, marooned at that junction for seven fearful days, had rigged
up a theater in the old depot and there had played _Ten Nights in a
Barroom_, in order to pay its hotel bill. At least so runs the tradition.
The Rome road felt that it owed some obligation to its old, chief town and
all the while it kept steadily at its all but hopeless task, although
every night the fresh wind blowing down from Canada and across the icy
surface of Ontario filled the long miles of railroad cuts and completely
erased the sight of the rails. Parsons had bought plows for the road such
as it had never seen before--huge Russells and giant rotaries that would
cut the snow as with a giant gimlet, and then send it shooting a quarter
of a mile off over the country, so that it would not blow back at once
into the cuttings. There is a good deal of real technique in this
practical science of fighting snow--and a deal of variance as to the
proper technique. For instance, in the Rome road they used to place its
old-fashioned "wing-plows" ahead of its pushing locomotives, while the
Black River line invariably had its plows follow the engine. It claimed
for itself the proof of the pudding, in the fact that whereas in blizzard
weather the Rome road almost invariably was blocked, the Black River line
rarely was. It is but fair to add, however, that the original construction
of the R. W. & O. north of Richland was very bad for snow-fighting; there
were many miles of shallow cuttings into which the prevailing winds off
Lake Ontario could easily pack the soft wet snow. In after years and
under New York Central management this primary defect was corrected. And
the large expense of the track elevation was quite offset by the great
economies in snow-fighting costs that immediately ensued.
Yet try as H. M. Britton might and did try he seemed fated there in the
eighties to buck against the worst storms that the North Country had known
in more than half a century. That same storm that tied up his main line
roundabout Richland--always a snow trouble center--completely paralyzed
the Cape Vincent branch. It came as the grand finale to a sequence of
particularly severe snowfalls and hard blows. The deficit upon the Cape
Vincent branch that winter--I think it was the spring of 1887--rose to an
appalling figure. Finally the R. W. & O. gave up the Cape branch as a
hopeless proposition and hired a liveryman to carry the mails between
Watertown and Cape Vincent, in order that it might not violate its
contract with the Postoffice Department.
After the branch had been abandoned a full fortnight, a delegation of
citizens from the Cape drove to Watertown and there confronted Britton,
who had made an appointment to meet them. They made their little speeches
and they were pretty hot little speeches--hot enough to have melted away
more than one good-sized drift.
"When are you going to cart that snow off our line?" finally demanded the
spokesman of the Cape Vincent folk.
Britton looked at the delegation coolly, and lighted a fresh cigar.
"I am going to let the man that put it there," he said slowly, "take it
away."
And he did. It was thirty-two days before a railroad engine entered Cape
Vincent from the time that the last one had left it.
* * * * *
The days of that final decade of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh were,
most of them, however, good days indeed. Fondly do the men of that era,
getting, alas, fewer each year, speak of the time when the Rome road had
its corporate identity and, what meant far more to them, a corporate
personality. For the R. W. & O. did have in those last days those elusive
qualities, that even the so-called inanimate corporation can sometimes
have--a heart and a soul. Yet, in every case, attributes such as these
must come from above, from the men in real charge of a property. The
courtesy of the ticket-agent, the friendliness of the conductor are the
reflection of the courtesy and the friendliness of the men above him. It
is enough to say that H. M. Britton was at all times both courteous and
friendly. He was a tremendous inspiration to the men with, and below him.
In the doleful days of the Sloan administration the R. W. & O. began to
deteriorate in its morale, with a tremendous rapidity. In the days after
the coming of Parsons and of Britton it began slowly, but very surely, to
regain this quality so precious and so essential to the successful
operation of any railroad. The property began to pick up amazingly. At
first it was, indeed, a heartbreaking task. As we have seen, at the end of
the Sloan régime little but a shell remained of a once proud and
prosperous railroad. The road needed ties and rails, bridges, shops,
power, rolling-stock--everything. More than these even it needed the
future confidence of its employes. It needed men with ideas and men with
vision. From its new owners gradually came all of these things.
Yet, before the things material, came the things spiritual, if you will
let me put it that way. Britton gained the confidence of his men. He
played the game and he played it fairly. And no one knows better when it's
being played fairly by the big bosses at headquarters, than does your
keen-witted railroader of the rank and file. Perhaps, the best testimony
to the bigness of H. M. Britton came not long ago, from one of the men
who had worked under him--a veteran engineer, to-day retired and living at
his home in St. Lawrence County.
"We didn't get much money, I'll grant you," says this man, "but somehow we
didn't seem to need much. And yet, I don't know but what we had as much to
live on as we do now. But that didn't make any difference. We were
interested in the road and we were all helping to put it in the position
that we felt it ought to be in. In those earliest days, you know, our
engines used to have a lot of brasswork. We used to spend hours over them,
keeping them in shape, polishing them and scrubbing them. And when we had
no polishing or scrubbing to do, we'd go down to the yard and just sit in
them. They belonged to us. The company may have paid for them, but we
owned them."
So was it. "Charley" Vogel running the local freight from Watertown to
Norwood, down one day and back the next, in "opposition" to "Than"
Peterson used to boast that he could eat his lunch from the running-board
of his cleanly engine; which had started her career years before as the
_Moses Taylor_, No. 35. Ed. Geer, his fireman, was as hard a worker as the
skipper. This frame of mind was characteristic of all ranks and of all
classes. Indeed, the company may have paid for the road, but the men did
own it. And they owned it in a sense that cannot easily be understood
to-day--in the confusion of national agreements and decisions by the Labor
Board out at Chicago and a vast and pathetic multiplicity of red-tape
between the railroad worker and his boss.
Take Ben Batchelder: We saw him a moment ago with John O'Sullivan working
a thirty-six hour day to clean up a circus wreck just outside of Potsdam.
That was Ben Batchelder's way always. Incidentally, it was just one of his
days. One time, in midwinter, during a fortnight of constant and heavy
snow, when Ben had become Master Mechanic at Watertown, the Despatcher
called him on the 'phone and asked for a locomotive to operate a
snow-plow. Ben replied that all the locomotives were frozen and that it
would be slow work thawing them out, and making them ready for service.
"Then why don't you take them into the house and thaw them out?" shouted
the Despatcher.
"There's no roof on the house, and I'm too busy to-day to put one on," was
the quick retort.
Faith and loyalty--we did not call it morale in those days, but it was,
just the same. Here was Conductor William Schram with a brisk little job,
handling the way freight on the old Cape branch: He had just spent three
days bringing a big Russell plow through from the Cape to Watertown. On
getting into Watertown it was needed to open up the road between that city
and Philadelphia. Schram had been on duty three days without rest. Another
conductor was called to relieve him. William Schram protested. He said
that he did not feel that he could desert the road when it was in a fix.
Three other conductors, well famed in the days of the Parsons' régime of
the Rome road, were Andrew Dixon, Tom Cooper and Daniel Eggleston--and a
fourth was the well-known Jacob Herman, of Watertown. Jake was a warm
personal friend of both Parsons and Britton. Finally, it came to a point
where the President would have no other man in charge of his train when he
made his inspection trips over the property, and he advanced and protected
him in every conceivable way. He insisted even upon Jake accompanying him
back and forth from New York on the occasion of his frequent visits into
the North Country.
In an earlier chapter I referred to the easy traditions of the long-agos
in regard to the passenger receipts from the average American railroad.
The R. W. & O. had been no exception to this general rule. Along about
1888 or 1889 Parsons decided that he would make it an exception
henceforth. He violated the old traditions and sent "spotters" out upon
the passenger trains. As a direct result of their observations some
thirteen or fourteen of the oldest men on the line were dropped from its
service. Not only this, but several months' pay was withheld from the
envelopes of each of them as they were discharged. Just prior to this
volcano-like eruption on the part of "the old man" Parsons sent Herman up
to Watertown as station master--a position which he has continued to hold
until comparatively recent months.
The "stove committees" "joshed" Jake pretty well over his boss's strategy,
knowing full well all the while, that if there was one honest conductor on
the whole line, it was that selfsame Jacob Herman. Not only honest, but
courageous. It was in a slightly earlier era that the road had a good deal
of trouble on the Rome branch with what they called "bark
peelers"--woodsmen, who would come down out of the forest and in their
boisterous fashion make a deal of trouble for the train-crew.
Jake Herman was told off to end that nuisance. It was a regular
honest-to-goodness-carry-the-message-to-Garcia sort of a job. Well, Jake
got the message through to Garcia. He picked out six brakemen as
assistant messengers, any one of whom would have made a real Cornell
center-rush. They were the "flower of the flock."
At Richland the gang boarded the evening train down from Watertown.
Somewhere between that station and Kasoag they detrained--as a military
man might put it. But not in a military fashion. Along the right-of-way
Captain Jake and his lieutenants distributed "bark-peelers," with a fair
degree of regularity of interval. Up to that time it had been no sinecure,
being a conductor or a trainman on the old Rome road. After that it became
as easy as running an infant class in a Sunday School.
John D. Tapley was another well known conductor of those days, and so was
W. S. Hammond, who afterwards became division superintendent at Carthage.
These men were U. & B. R. graduates, and it was but logical that when
Hammond came to his promotion reward, it should be upon the corner of the
property on which he had been schooled and with which he was most
familiar. He was a man of tremendous popularity among his men.
* * * * *
Sometimes these men of the rank and file had their reward. More often they
did not. John O'Sullivan's came when in 1890, after a few years of
unsuccessful experimentation, General Passenger Agent Butterfield handed
him the annual Northern New York Sunday excursion to Ontario Beach (in the
outskirts of Rochester) and asked him what he could do with it. O'Sullivan
replied that he could make it go. He had watched the success of the road's
annual long-distance excursions; to Washington in the spring and to New
York in October--this last for a fixed fare of six dollars, for a six or
seven hundred mile journey. The excursions ran coaches, parlor-cars,
dining-cars and sleeping-cars, and did a land-office business. Northern
New York had acquired a taste for railroad travel. O'Sullivan knew this.
"I'll take you on," said he to Mr. Butterfield.
And so he did. For seventeen successive years thereafter he handled the
annual Ontario Beach excursion from Potsdam and all its adjoining
stations--all the way from Norwood to Watertown--on a one-day trip over
some four hundred miles of single-track railroad. The excursion had a vast
business--invariably running in several sections, each drawn by two
locomotives, and having from fifteen to sixteen cars each. It carried
passengers for $2.50 for the round trip. Few Northern New York folk along
the road went to bed until it returned, which was always well into the wee
small hours of Monday morning. And yet, it was withal, a reasonably
orderly crowd. O'Sullivan kept it so. On the handbills which announced it
each year appeared these conspicuous words:
"Behave yourself. If you can't behave yourself, don't go."
* * * * *
Yet a practical reward such as this could in truth be handed to but a very
few of the road's workers indeed. Yet it continued until the end to
command their loyalty. Not even the cruel handling of the property by the
predecessors of Parsons could dampen that loyalty. To even attempt to make
a list of the hard-working and energetic workers of that day and
generation of the eighties would mean a catalogue far larger than this
little book. There comes to mind a brilliant list--names some of them
to-day still with us, and some of them but affectionate traditions: George
Snell, who began by running the _Doxtater_; Patsy Tobin, who had the old
_Gardner Colby_ on the day that she exploded on Harrison Hill, just
outside of Canton; Ed. McNiff; William Bavis; Butler (who had started his
career toward an engine-cab as blacksmith at DeKalb Junction, trimming for
relaying the old iron rails that the section-gangs brought to him); and
Superintendent W. S. (Billy) Jones.
Jones was a much-loved officer of the old R. W. & O. He started his
railroad career at Sandy Creek, as an operator, receiving his messages
with one of the old-fashioned printing-telegraphs. One day Richard Holden,
of Watertown, dropped into the Sandy Creek depot and suggested to Jones
that he throw the old contraption out of the window--it was forever
getting out of order. Jones demurred for a time; then accepted the
suggestion. And in a few weeks was one of the best operators on the line,
which led presently to his appointment as agent at Ogdensburgh, where he
remained until the days of the Parsons' control.
Both Britton and Parsons were constantly on the alert to discover the best
available material on their property and Jones was appointed in the
mid-eighties to be superintendent of the line east of Watertown, with
headquarters at DeKalb. Later he was moved to Watertown and there became
one of the fixtures of the town.
* * * * *
I cannot close this chapter of the second golden age of the Rome road
without a passing reference to George H. Haselton, who died but a year or
two ago. Mr. Haselton was the successor of Griggs of Jackson and of Close,
becoming Master Mechanic of the road in 1878, or at about the time its
shops were moved from Rome to Oswego. He builded in the latter city the
engines that were the precursors of the mighty power of to-day. He used
great facility in building and rebuilding the early locomotives of the R.
W. & O.--in keeping them in service, seemingly forever and a day. In the
North Country a locomotive goes in for long service and, in its difficult
climate, hard service, too. There still is, or was until very recently at
least, a locomotive in service at the plant of the Hannawa Pulp Company at
Potsdam, which although ordered by the Union Pacific Railroad from the
Taunton Locomotive Works was delivered to the Central Vermont in May,
1869. First named the _St. Albans_ and then the _Shelbourne_, she was
inherited by the Rutland Railroad and then, after many rebuildings turned
over by its Ogdensburgh branch (the former Northern Railroad) to the
Norwood & St. Lawrence Railroad. Fifty years of service through a stern
northland seemed to work little damage to this staunch old settler. She
was typical of her kind--old-fashioned built, and with old-fashioned
standards of the service to be rendered.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH RAILROADS MULTIPLY
The all but defunct Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, of 1880, was not a
property to attract any considerable amount of attention from the
financiers and big railroaders, who had located themselves in the city of
New York. A local and feeding line of but some four hundred miles of
trackage--and most of that in an utterly wretched and deplorable
condition--it commanded neither the attention nor the respect of the
metropolis. The Vanderbilts in their comfortable offices in the still-new
Grand Central Depot, snapped their fingers contemptuously at it. They
would have but little of it. They did not need it. It fed their prosperous
main line anyway. As we have already seen, William H. Vanderbilt had at
one time acquired a considerable interest in the Utica & Black River
Railroad. Twice he had actually moved toward securing control of that snug
little property. It seemed to be a far more logical feeder to the New York
Central than the Rome road might ever become. Yet, eventually Mr.
Vanderbilt sold his Black River stock.
"I am not going to dissipate my energies in sundries," he then told one of
his cronies. "I am going to stick by the main line hereafter."
As I have already intimated if he had succeeded in acquiring the Utica &
Black River, there at the beginning of the eighties the entire railroad
history of the North Country might have been changed, down to this very
day. It was in that uncertain hour that the elaborate but ill-fated West
Shore was being builded through from New York to Buffalo--a route ten
miles shorter than the main line of the New York Central. The West Shore
needed feeders, very greatly needed them, and it was having a hard time
getting them. Remember too, if you will, that if the Utica & Black River
had become the sole Northern New York feeding line of the New York
Central, it is entirely probable and consistent that the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh would have been an extremely valuable and essential factor of
the West Shore. The greater part of the state of New York would then have
been placed upon a competitive railroad basis. Instead of being, as it is
to-day, largely upon the monopolistic basis.
* * * * *
The Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh of 1890 was an extremely different
railroad from the woe-begone and utterly wretched property that had borne
that name but a decade earlier. Reorganized, to a large extent rebuilded,
it was a reincarnation of the excellent rail highway which the citizens of
Watertown and other communities of the North Country had built for
themselves away back there at the beginning of the fifties. Charles
Parsons was never a popular figure in Northern New York. He made no
efforts toward popularity. Yet simple justice compels the recognition of
the fact, that in the rebuilding of the R. W. & O. he accomplished a very
large constructive work. He had relaid and reballasted hundreds of miles
of main line track and put down not only many miles of sidings but also a
considerable quantity of new main line; between Norwood and Massena
Springs, between Oswego and Syracuse, between Windsor Beach and Rochester,
chief among these extensions. He had built new bridges by the dozens;
purchased and rebuilded cars and locomotives by the hundreds. It was
almost as if he had built a brand new railroad.
Now--in 1890--he had 643 main line miles of as good a railroad, generally
speaking, as one might find in the entire land. The Rome road owned an
even hundred locomotives, ninety-eight passenger-cars, thirty-five
baggage-cars, and 2609 freight-cars of one type or another. It was a
monopoly within its territory. Its busy main-stem stretched all the way
from Suspension Bridge (with excellent western connections) to Norwood and
Massena Springs (each with excellent eastern connections). It was in a
superb strategic position as a competitor for through freight from the
interior of the land to the Atlantic seaboard ports--either Boston, or
Portland, or Montreal. Parsons was unusually expert in his traffic
strategy. Frequently he went so far and dared so much that the line of the
four-leaved clover gradually became something of a thorn in the side of
some of its larger competitors. Parsons in competitive territory was a
rate-smasher. He did not hesitate to put the screws upon the territory
wherein his road was a purely monopolistic carrier. There are citizens
dwelling in the northern portions of Jefferson county who still
remember--and with bitterness in their memories--how he helped put the
Keene mines out of business.
In an earlier chapter of this book I referred to the large part that James
Sterling had played in the upbuilding of this iron industry. After several
successive failures the mines had, sometime in the seventies, been put
upon a basis, seemingly permanent. Their ore was good--and popular. At the
time that Parsons first assumed control of the Rome road, the Keene mines
were shipping out from six to eight carloads of hematite daily--to
connecting lines at Syracuse, at Sterling and at Charlotte--at an average
rate of $1.25 a ton. Parsons advanced the rate to $1.50 a ton, and they
quit. They have remained idle ever since; their abandoned shaft-houses
melancholy reminders of a vanished enterprise. Yet the ore is still there,
in vast quantities; richer than the Messaba and in the opinion of many
experts, extending up to and under the St. Lawrence, and into the province
of Ontario.
* * * * *
Oddly enough, as Keene quit other mine districts of Northern New York
began to open up. It had been known for many years that in the
neighborhood of the small village of Harrisville in the north part of
Lewis county there were valuable deposits of black, magnetic iron ore. To
reach these beds, to open and to develop them had long been the dream of
certain North Country men, notably George Gilbert, of Carthage and Joseph
Pahud, of Harrisville. As far back as 1866, a line had been surveyed from
Carthage to Harrisville, twenty-one miles. Yet, it was not until twenty
years later that a standard railroad was put down between these two
villages.
In the meantime--to be exact, in the summer of 1869--the so-called
"wooden railroad" was built for the ten miles between Carthage and Natural
Bridge. Literally this line--its corporate name was the Black River & St.
Lawrence Railway Company--had rails hewn and smoothed from maple. It was
so very crude that it was doomed to failure from the beginning. Yet its
right-of-way served a similar purpose for the Carthage & Adirondack
Railroad which was organized in 1883, and which opened its line through to
Jayville, thirty miles distant three years later; and on to Bensons Mines
in the fall of 1889. A little later it was completed to Newton Falls, its
present terminus.
One other small railroad was built out from Carthage a few years later. It
deserves at least a paragraph of reference. The quiet old-fashioned North
Country village of Copenhagen, situated upon the historic State Road from
Utica to Sackett's Harbor, between Lowville and Watertown, had not ceased
to regret how the building of the Black River road--which quite naturally
had followed the water-level of the river valley--had completely passed it
by. Copenhagen also wanted a railroad. It waited for forty years after the
completion of the Utica & Black River before its desire was fulfilled.
Then, by almost superhuman effort on the part of its citizens, as well as
those of Carthage, it built its railroad to that village, eleven miles
distant. A former citizen of the town, one Jimmy March, who had won fame
and success as a contractor in New York City, bought a second-hand
passenger-coach from the Erie Railroad and presented it to the Carthage &
Copenhagen. A locomotive was purchased with a few work-cars and a brave
but almost hopeless transportation effort begun.
The Carthage & Copenhagen already has ceased to exist. The recent
development of the state highways and with them, of the motor-truck and
the motor omnibus sealed its fate. In 1917 it was abandoned and its track
torn up, for its wartime value in scrap iron: Its little yellow depot at
Copenhagen still stands. And upon it, but two or three years ago, there
still was affixed the blue and white signs of the telegraph company and
the express company. Yet no longer a track led to it; only a half-hidden
and weed-grown row of rotting ties, stretching away off in the distance
toward Carthage. In truth it has become but a mere mockery of a railroad
depot.
The day of the small railroad apparently is gone; its fate sealed. True it
is that the little railroad from Norwood to Waddington and the one that
the Lewis family built from Lowville to Croghan and Beaver Falls are both
still in operation, but these have large local industries to serve--they
are, in fact, hardly more than independently operating industrial sidings.
So, too, has continued the branch road from Gouverneur to Edwards, which
Engineer Bockus helped open in 1893 and upon which he has run ever since.
* * * * *
Charles Parsons had but little use for the small railroad. He thought of
railroads in large units indeed. His thought of the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh was, forever and a day, as a trunk-line, nothing less.
Sometimes he talked, rather airily to be sure, of buying the Ogdensburgh &
Lake Champlain or even the Wabash. Yet, in reality, he would have had
nothing of either of these somewhat moribund properties. He did not need
them. They were not germane to a single one of his plans. For one, and the
most important thing, neither of them could stand alone. The R. W. & O.
could. In the largest sense, it was a self-contained property; with its
monopolistic control of a huge territory, rich in basic wealth and still
in a period of healthy and continued growth.
Once, there at the beginning of the nineties, Grand Trunk made tentative
offers for the control of the rebuilded property. It hinted at a
willingness to pay par for such an interest. Parsons paid no attention to
the offer. Some people said that he was waiting for the Canadian Pacific
to come along and buy his road; there have always been plans for
international bridges across the St. Lawrence; all the way from Cape
Vincent to Morristown.
But even Canadian Pacific was not the big thing in Parsons' mind. I think
it may be safely said that from the middle of the eighties he had realized
the necessity that would yet confront the Vanderbilts of owning the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh. At that earlier time they were having their hands
full with the aftermath of their victorious but terribly costly battle
with the West Shore. It would be some years before they would be in a
position to go further afield than their own main line territory. But
Parsons could wait--wait and upbuild his property. And show his constant
independence of the New York Central.
In a hundred different ways he showed this. More than ever he became a
thorn in the side of the bigger road. He slashed more through rates--and
raised more of the local ones to make good the loss to his treasury.
Northern New York groaned, and yet was helpless. Parsons laughed at it. As
far as possible he kept out of it. He cut the wires. His right-hand man,
Hiram M. Britton, began breaking physically under the pressure and the
criticism, finally was forced to leave his desk altogether to seek,
vainly, the restoration of his health in Europe.
Mr. E. S. Bowen succeeded Mr. Britton as General Manager of the road. A
quiet, gentle sort of a man--a native of Lock Haven, Pa., and a former
General Superintendent of the Erie--of far less dominant personality than
his predecessor. He came quite too late upon the property to make a large
personal impress upon it. The memories that he left of himself are mostly
negative. He was thorough, conscientious, apparently seeking to please, in
an all but impossible situation. He was the last General Manager of the
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh Railroad.
* * * * *
The steadily increasing clamor of the North Country against the road and
its management brought a man up from the South with a definite scheme for
building a competitive relief line into it. His name was Austin Corbin,
and while primarily he was always promoter rather than railroader, he did
have one or two railroad successes distinctly to his credit. In control of
the Long Island, his had been the vision that planned the creation of a
great ocean terminal at Fort Pond Bay, near Montauk Point. From here
Corbin saw four-day steamers plying that would connect America and Europe.
A day would be saved in not bringing these fast super-craft in and out of
the crowded harbor of New York. It was a fascinating plan and one which
still is revived every few years.
Corbin did some distinctly creative work upon the Long Island; and yet
forever was promoter, rather than railroader. He had associated with
himself, A. A. McLeod, who a little later was to achieve a spectacular
notoriety by successfully uniting--for a short time--such conservative
properties as Reading, Lehigh Valley and Boston & Maine into a single,
sprawling, top-heavy railroad. Together these men had picked up for a song
an unhappy railroad, which stretched more than halfway across New York
State and which was known as the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira. Corbin acquired
this road in 1882. It was a wonder. It reached neither Utica nor Ithaca
nor Elmira. Starting at Horseheads, four or five miles north of Elmira, it
twisted and turned itself through the hills of the Southern Tier and of
Central New York, narrowly missing Ithaca--which steadily and consistently
refused to build itself up the hill to meet it--threading Cortland and
finally terminating at Canastota.
This road came almost as a gift to Corbin and his associates. Its sole
value was that in its brief course it intersected nearly all of the
important railroads in New York state; the Pennsylvania, Erie, Lehigh
Valley, Lackawanna, and the New York Central. Corbin renamed the road,
Elmira, Cortland & Northern, and in 1887, extended it north from Canastota
to Camden, intersecting the Ontario & Western and the Rome road. He was
then within about fifty miles of Watertown. At about the same time he gave
his property its own entrance well within the heart of Elmira.
Vainly Corbin tried to peddle this road either to the Pennsylvania or to
the Vanderbilts. He finally offered it to them at the assumption of its
mortgage-bonds and its fixed charges. Even then it fell dead. As a last
resource he determined upon Watertown. Word of that small but growing
city's traffic plight had come to him. He jumped aboard a train and went
up to the rich county-seat of Jefferson, cultivated the friendship of its
men of affairs. Alluringly he spoke to them of the road he owned, of its
rare connections, its peculiar value as a coal-carrier, his ambition to
thrust it still further across the state.
So there was formed, in May, 1890, the Camden, Watertown & Northern
Railroad to fill at least the fifty mile gap between Camden, which was
nothing as a railroad terminus, and Watertown, which even then had a heavy
originating traffic. Watertown even in 1890, was employing 2500 workers
in its factories which alone burned more than 33,000 tons of coal
annually. It was receiving 68,000 tons of freight a year and sending out
about 178,000. It was a fair fling under any conditions for a competing
railroad; under the peculiar conditions that then prevailed seemingly a
double opportunity.
Corbin, himself, became President of the Camden, Watertown & Northern. As
its Secretary and Treasurer, James L. Newton was chosen. Around these men
a most representative directorate was grouped; S. F. Bagg, B. B. Taggart,
H. F. Inglehart, George W. Knowlton, George A. Bagley and A. D. Remington.
Whatever might have been Corbin's motive in the entire undertaking, there
was no mistaking the motives of the Watertown men, who had gathered about
him. They were determined to give their town a competing line; to undo, if
possible, the fiasco of a few years before when the Carthage, Watertown &
Sackett's Harbor had passed from their hands to hands unfriendly and
alien.
* * * * *
All these preparations Parsons watched with a great equanimity. He
realized the potential weaknesses of the connecting link of the proposed
new line; the terrific curves and the heavy grades of the E. C. & N.
Perhaps, he realized these fundamental weaknesses all the more because of
the steadily growing alliance between his road and the Ontario & Western.
The R. W. & O. sought to dig more deeply than ever into the sides of the
Vanderbilts by taking more and more traffic away from them; in the five
years from 1885 to 1890, the business delivered by the Rome road to the
New York Central at Utica, at Rome and at Syracuse had dwindled from two
million dollars a year to a little less than a million, and that of the
Ontario & Western had practically doubled.
The Vanderbilts have never taken punishment easily. But they are good
waiters. And apparently they did not propose in this instance to be
hurried into reprisals. William H. Vanderbilt hated to do business with
Charles Parsons. He detested going down to the Rome road's offices in Wall
Street, and there facing his new rival, a tall, cadaverous man, whose hair
in his Rome road years had changed from part-white to snow-white, and who
persisted in an inordinate habit of sitting at his desk in his stocking
feet; sometimes Parsons flaunted his feet upon the radiator. If the pedal
extremities of the fastidious Vanderbilt ever hurt him, he succeeded at
least in keeping his shoes on. Decency compels many things.
Across from Parsons sat his son, another Charles, who held the post of
Vice-President of the road of which his father was President. Together
they smoked cigarettes, incessantly. It was not usual for elderly men in
those days to smoke cigarettes and because the elder Parsons did it in his
office, Mr. Vanderbilt distrusted him all the more.
And yet, there were about Parsons certain distinct qualities of charm and
interest. A State of Maine man--he came from Kennebunkport--he was a born
horse-trader, as his operations in the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
steadily showed. He was not a man to pay for that which he might possibly
get for nothing. On one memorable occasion he came to the office of
William Buchanan, the veteran Motive Power Superintendent of the New York
Central, who designed and built the famous No. 999, in order to get some
free advice on locomotive equipment. The Rome road then had a rather fair
supply of antiquated motive-power--it still was using some of the
converted wood-burners of its earliest days--and Parsons wanted to buy,
second-hand, some of the older engines of the N. Y. C. & H. R. He argued
that his bridges would not permit the purchase of heavy modern
locomotives.
But the Central folk argued back that they had scrapped all their light
engines, save those that they still needed for certain local and
branch-line services. In the long run they drew up plans for locomotives
suited to the special necessities of the Rome road and presented Parsons
with them. From that time on he came frequently to consult the technical
authorities in the Grand Central Depot.
"I have a first-class staff working for me and I don't have to pay it a
blessed cent," he would chuckle as he went out of its doors.
The funny part of it all being that the Vanderbilts apparently were
perfectly willing that he should make such use of their staff.
* * * * *
Here was Charles Parsons steadily proposing the most disagreeable things
to the Vanderbilts. The Lehigh Valley which, like the Lackawanna of a
decade before, had begun to tire of the Erie as a sole entrance into the
Buffalo gateway, and was building its own line into that important city,
was making eyes at the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. Parsons, still
smoking his cigarettes, made eyes back at the Lehigh Valley and its
owners, the enormously wealthy Packer family of South Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania. Together they slipped into an alliance. For ten years
Charles Parsons had coveted an entrance of his own into Buffalo. The
Packers wanted to get from Buffalo into the traffic hub of Suspension
Bridge. On a competitive basis, neither the existing lines of the New
York Central nor of the Erie between those two places were open to them.
The interests of the R. W. & O. and the Lehigh Valley in this situation
were identical. It was quite logical therefore that they should get
together and form the Buffalo, Thousand Islands & Portland; quite a grand
sounding appellation for twenty-four miles of railroad, which was to run
from Buffalo to Niagara Falls and Suspension Bridge. Once formed, there in
the eventful midsummer of 1890, no time was lost in acquiring the
right-of-way for this important railroad link. As a separate corporation
it expended something over a million dollars for land and for preliminary
grading.
To complete its line it was necessary that it should cross the lines of
the then New York Central & Hudson River--not once, but several times. Up
to that time the New York Central had generally pursued a pretty
broad-gauge policy in permitting other railroads to cross its lines. Even
in this instance it granted the necessary permissions, but this time Mr.
Parsons went north to the Grand Central Depot and not Mr. Vanderbilt south
to Wall Street. Mr. Vanderbilt was quite willing that Mr. Parsons should
cross his tracks, when and where it was absolutely necessary, but, of
course, Mr. Parsons would reciprocate, if ever the occasion should arise
and permit the New York Central to cross the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh
tracks, if ever it should become necessary? What is sauce for the goose is
sauce for the gander.
What could Mr. Parsons do? Mr. Parsons acceded. Of course. Reciprocal
contracts covering all future grade-crossing matters were signed; and
duplicate copies of the peace treaty, signed, sealed and delivered. After
which work on the Buffalo, Thousand Islands & Portland went ahead quite
merrily once more.
* * * * *
It was in December of that same year, 1890, hardly more than six months
after Mr. Austin Corbin had made the first of his Queen-of-Sheba visits to
Watertown that that brisk community found that it was to have a very
special gift in its Christmas stocking. Watertown was not only going to
have one new railroad. It was going to have two. Intimations reached
it--in that strange but sure way that big business always has of sending
out its intimations--that Watertown within the twelvemonth was to be upon
the lines of the New York Central. That seemed to be too good to be true.
But it was true. Telegraphic confirmation followed upon the heels of mere
rumor. The Vanderbilts, tired of shilly-shallying with Parsons and his
railroad and of playing second fiddle to Ontario & Western, were going to
build their own feeder line into Northern New York. Already, it was
organized and named--the Mohawk & St. Lawrence--preliminary surveying
parties were already struggling through the deep December drifts.
All the oldtime rage and rivalry between Utica and Rome as to which should
be the recognized gateway broke out anew. The jealousies of thirty and
forty years before were renewed. Even Herkimer joined the squabble,
pushing forward the narrow-gauge line that had been built from her limits
north to the little village of Newport and Poland some years before.
Finally talk led to promises. Subscription papers were passed. Rome
trotted out the terminal grounds and the right-of-way for the Black River
& Utica Railroad that had passed her by there before the beginnings of the
sixties. Utica met her offers. Yet it seemed as if Rome was to be chosen.
The congestion of the New York Central yards in Utica--it was, of course,
well before the days of the Barge Canal and the straightening of the
Mohawk--made Rome the most practical terminal.
Railroad meetings were again the order of the day throughout the North
Country. Carthage vied with Gouverneur and even Cape Vincent, stung to
the quick by the neglect of her port by the Parsons' management, joined in
the clamor. And Watertown? Watertown was beside herself with enthusiasm.
She saw herself as the future railroad capital of the state. Corbin and
his local backers were not slow to take advantage of the situation.
Adroitly they urged that while the Mohawk & St. Lawrence would approach
the city from the southeast and the upper Black River valley, the Camden,
Watertown & Northern would reach it from the southwest. They even hinted
at the possibilities of a union station. Perhaps, the union station would
be big enough to take in a recreant but reformed R. W. & O. And some one
hinted that the Canadian Pacific by a series of wondrous bridges was to
build into the town from Kingston and the northwest. In the union station
of Watertown of a decade hence one was to be able to go in through limited
trains-de-luxe to almost any quarter of the land. And this in a town which
up to that day, at least, had never seen a dining-car come into its
ancient station.
All that winter Watertown ate railroads, slept railroads, dreamed
railroads. Surveyors went across back lots and put funny little yellow
wooden stakes in the snow drifts, where there had been potato rows the
previous summer and the next might see the beginnings of a great railroad
yard. Soft-voiced and persuasive young men went before the Common Council
and had all manner of permissive ordinances passed without a single word
of protest. Plans and routes by the dozen were filed with the County
Clerk. A local poetess burst into song in the _Times_ in commemoration of
the spirit of the hour.
* * * * *
As I look back upon the printed records of these proceedings, after thirty
years, quite dispassionately, it seems to me that there was, after all, an
extraordinary vagueness in the plans of these railroad promoters of that
strenuous time. The railroad lines ran here and there and everywhere upon
the map. But very little real money was expended, either in land or in
construction. The promoters, of both of the proposed new railroads, who
suddenly had become wondrously accessible to the dear public and its
advance agents, the newspaper reporters, were taking very few real steps
toward the real construction of a railroad.
Mr. Parsons, stung to the quick apparently by the newfound energy of his
friend, Mr. Vanderbilt, retaliated at once by threats of building a line
from his southeastern terminal at Utica through the Mohawk valley--even
through the narrow _impasse_ of Little Falls--to Rotterdam Junction and
the Fitchburg some seventy miles distant. To link Utica with Rome and (by
a more direct line, than by the way of Richland), with Oswego and his
straight through route to Suspension Bridge would be the next and a
comparatively easy step. That done he would at least have a powerful,
competitive route, as against the New York Central's, east to Troy and
Boston--and for ten months of the year by water down the Hudson to New
York. Yet I cannot find any record of Mr. Parsons buying any real estate
in the Mohawk valley.
Finally the Camden, Watertown & Northern did buy two plats of land
somewhere in the outskirts of Watertown, a fact which was promptly
recorded and spread to the four winds. It did more. It began laying track.
It laid nearly a hundred feet of unballasted track in the yards of Taggart
Brothers' Paper Mill and all Watertown went down in the chilly days at the
beginning of March and venerated that little piece of track. It was a
precious symbol.
To offset land-buying and track-laying the Vanderbilts sent the flower of
their railroad flocks up to see Watertown, to see and be seen, to ask
questions and to be interviewed. More maps were filed. One only had to
squint one's eyes half closed and see the New York Central feeder
following the north side of the river through the town, and the Camden,
Watertown & Northern squeezing its way, somehow, along the south side of
it. The enthusiasm quickened. A despatch from Utica said that the
contractors, their men and their horses were setting up their quarters
upon the old Oneida County Fair Grounds. Actual construction of the Mohawk
& St. Lawrence was to begin within the fortnight. Watertown braced up and
finished the subscription for the purchase of the right-of-way and depot
site for the new road through its heart.
* * * * *
And then?
Then--
On the fourteenth day of March, 1891, at one o'clock in the afternoon, a
quiet little telegraphic message--unemotional and uninspired, flashed its
monotonous way over the railroad wires into the gray old Watertown
passenger station back of the Woodruff House. It read, as follows:
OSWEGO, March 14, 1891.
_To all Division Superintendents_:
The entire road and property of this company has been leased to the
New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, and by direction of the
President, I have delivered possession to H. Walter Webb, Third
Vice-President of that company. Each Superintendent please acknowledge
and advise all agents on your division by wire.
(Signed) E. S. BOWEN,
_General Manager_.
And Watertown?
Poor Watertown!
It was as if a man had touched the tip of a lighted cigar to a tiny, but
much distended gas-balloon.
CHAPTER XI
THE COMING OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
Out of the vast wreckage of great hopes and broken ambitions there slowly
arose the smoke of a great wrath. Watertown, in particular, smoldered in
her anger. Her position was a most uncomfortable one. Her pride had not
only been touched but sorely tried. She felt, and truly, that she had
helped to shake the bushes while the New York Central got all the plums.
It hurt. Her traditional rivals pointed their fingers of fine scorn toward
her. Ogdensburgh chuckled with glee. Oswego chortled.
Yet out of her uncomfortable position she was yet to gain much. She was in
a position not only to demand but to receive. And because of the inherent
power of that position the ranking officers of the New York Central made
every effort to placate her. For one of the very few times, if not indeed
the only time in his life, Cornelius Vanderbilt--then the ranking head of
the family--made public appearance upon the stage of her Opera House,
before a great throng of her citizens, who crowded that ample place and
sat and stood there with anger in their hearts, but with justice in their
minds. They had not appreciated being made dupes. And yet they stood there
willing to give the newcomers the square deal. Which spoke whole volumes
for their upbringing.
That was a memorable night in the history of Watertown; the evening of
March 24, 1891. The meeting at the City Opera House had been hastily
arranged. The telegraph wires only that morning had announced the coming
of Mr. Vanderbilt, accompanied by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, his personal
friend and adviser and at that time President of the New York Central &
Hudson River, as well as a small group of other railroad officers. The
party had left New York the preceding evening. All that day it held
meetings in the North Country--at Carthage, at Gouverneur, at Potsdam and
at Ogdensburgh. To a large extent these meetings were, however, somewhat
perfunctory. The real event of that memorable day was the evening meeting
at Watertown. In announcing the affair, but a few hours before, the editor
of the _Times_ (we suspect Mr. William D. McKinstry's own brilliant hand
in the penning of these paragraphs) had said:
"Of course Mr. Depew will be the spokesman of the party. Having had his
dinner, which will be at his own expense, he will be in a good mood to
meet our citizens, and will, of course, have many pleasant things to say.
But we hope he will come no joke on our citizens. With us, this railroad
business is no joking matter. It affects us closely; it comes right into
our homes, affects our comfort of living and the prosperity of our
business enterprises. It puts more or less coal in our fires to warm our
homes, according to the price we have to pay for it, and it makes a
difference with how we are to be fed and clothed. This new railroad
monopoly has the power, if it chooses, to make us the most happy,
contented and prosperous people, or the most dejected and discontented....
It is a great power to have and it calls for the utmost consideration in
its use...."
So was laid the platform for the evening meeting; fairly and squarely. To
it the New York Central officers responded, fairly and squarely. Even the
genial Doctor Depew, to whom a speech without a funny story was as a
circus without an elephant, respected the real seriousness of the issue.
At the beginning he told some funny stories--of course. He alluded
playfully to the fact that the citizens of Watertown had met them without
a band--referring inferentially to the first official visit of Charles
Parsons as President of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, upon which
occasion the City Band had been engaged and the whole affair given the
appearance of a _fête_. Mr. Depew alluded half jestingly to the demise of
the Mohawk & St. Lawrence and then turned seriously to the real kernel of
the situation--the inevitable tendency of American railroads toward
consolidation into larger single operating units.
The merger of the Utica & Black River into the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh five years before had been in obedience to such a natural law.
The R. W. & O. system, reaching only Northern New York, disconnected and
not united to the great railroad properties of the country which spread
all over the face of the United States, had, partly by reason of its
isolation, failed to properly develop the territory that it had set out to
serve. It had been hedged in by barriers that it could not surmount.
It was a good speech, filled not only with good intention, but with a deal
of economic hard sense. The crowded Opera House listened to it with
courtesy, with attention and with applause. But always with a feeling that
the deeds of the new management and not their mere words or promises would
be the atonement for the indignity that had been heaped upon the town.
And the next evening the _Times_ again said editorially:
[Illustration: SNOW FIGHTERS A Scene in the Richland Yard on Almost Any
Zero Day in the Dead of a North Country Winter.]
"... Mr. Depew appeared last evening and made the apology which is
reported in full in our local columns. He did it nicely. He called it
frescoing. Whitewashing is the common name for it when the job is done by
less artistic hands. But, by whatever name, it was pleasantly received by
an audience which packed the Opera House and a good feeling was created.
Mr. Depew ... did not go into any detailed statement of what the new
management of the R. W. & O. proposed to do except to make the general
statement that they had come to stay; that our interests were mutual; that
in building up the prosperity of this section they would be adding to
their own prosperity and that they would be one with us in every way. In
carrying out this assurance everything else must follow, and therefore it
is sufficient and satisfactory to our citizens. They will give the
management a good, fair chance to carry out this assurance and wait
confidently for acts to take the place of words ..."
* * * * *
That the new management had some real desire to assuage the extremely
irritated local situation became evident within the next few days. The
members of the Vanderbilt party had had many quiet consultations with the
leading men of Watertown and the North Country generally; had noted with
great patience and care the many, many transport grievances of the entire
territory. And proceeded wherever it was possible to remedy these, at
once.
As a first earnest of its desires it tore down the high, unpainted,
hemlock fence around the Watertown passenger station. That high-board
fence had been an eyesore. It had been far worse than that however. It had
been a slap in the face to the average Watertownian who for years past had
regarded it as part of his inherent right and privilege to go down to the
depot whenever and as often as he pleased, not alone to greet friends or
to see them off, but also for the sheer joy of seeing the cars come in and
depart. Upon the occasion of the state firemen's convention in the
preceding August, the R. W. & O. management caused the ugly fence to be
builded--as a temporary measure. But the firemen's convention gone and a
matter of joyous memory, the fence remained. One might only enter within
upon showing one's ticket.
Now, no matter how common and sensible a practice that might be elsewhere,
in this broad world, Watertown resented it, as an invasion of personal
privilege. It protested to the R. W. & O. management over at Oswego. Its
protests were laughed at. The fence remained. The New York Central tore it
down ... within a fortnight after it had acquired the road.
* * * * *
I have mentioned this episode in some detail because it is so typical of
the fashion that so many railroad managements, and with so much to gain,
go blindly ahead neglecting utterly the one great thing essential toward
the gaining of their larger ends--public sympathy and public support.
Charles Parsons, with everything to gain from Northern New York, scoffed
at these great aids, so easily purchased. Vastly bigger than Sloan in most
ways, he, nevertheless, shared the contempt of the old genius of the
Lackawanna for public opinion. The Vanderbilts rarely have made this
mistake with their railroads. I think that it can be put down as one of
the great open secrets of their success.
Similarly Parsons had offended Watertown by his treatment of its newly
born street railway. It had been planned to extend in a single straight
line from the northeastern corner of the city, just beyond Sewall's Island
through High, and State, and Court, and Main Streets to the westerly
limits of the town, and thence down the populous valley of the Black
River through Brownville to the little manufacturing village of Dexter,
eight miles distant. In this course it needed to cross the steam railroad
tracks four times at grade--all of these within the city limits.
The old R. W. & O had stoutly fought these crossings; using one specious
argument after another. The new management of the property said that the
crossings could go down as soon as the street railway company could have
them manufactured. It kept its word. The street railway went ahead--and
thrived; and the steam railroad lost little by its slight competition
between Watertown and Brownville.
One other very popular form of grievance still remained--I shall take up
the question of the freight and passenger rates at another time--the
persistent refusal of the Parsons' administration to install through
all-the-year sleeping-car service between Watertown and New York. The
Vanderbilts installed that service, also one between Oswego and New York
within three weeks of their acquisition of the road. These have remained
ever since with the single exception of a short period during the Chicago
World's Fair, when the extreme shortage of sleeping-cars induced the
headquarters of the New York Central temporarily to withdraw the
Watertown cars. A protest from the Northern New York metropolis brought
them back--within seven days' time.
The new management did more. It instituted Sunday trains upon the line;
also as an all-the-year feature, a travel necessity for which the North
Country had cried for years, vainly. It placed parlor-cars upon the
principal trains. It shortened the running-time of all of these. It showed
in almost every conceivable fashion a real desire to propitiate its
public. And for that desire much of the Mohawk & St. Lawrence fiasco was
eventually forgiven it.
* * * * *
One other problem--and a passing large one--confronted it; the question of
taking proper care of the official personnel of the Rome road. That is
always a difficult and delicate question in a merger of large
properties.... The Parsons family was taken care of--although in the
entire transaction it had taken pretty good care of itself. Arrangements
were made to carry its members upon the New York Central pay-rolls for a
season, even though they were quickly off and into new enterprises--the
New York & New England and South Carolina Railroad--but never again was
there to be such a killing as they had had in the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh. Such an opportunity does not arise once in a lifetime; not
once in a thousand lifetimes.
The rest of the official roster was to be continued, for the next two or
three months at any rate. With great astuteness the Vanderbilts planned to
upset the operation of the road, to the least possible degree. It was to
keep its name and its individuality as far as was possible. As a matter of
operating convenience it was arranged to abolish the auditing offices at
Oswego and to have the R. W. & O. agents and conductors make their reports
direct to the New York Central headquarters in the Grand Central Station,
in New York City. Similarly orders went forth from those headquarters to
drop the old name, "Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh" from the locomotive
tenders and the sides of the passenger-cars. A rather bitter blow that
was. With all of its hatred against the property at one time and another,
the North Country cherished a real affection for the name. In deference,
to which sentiment, the Vanderbilts still clung to it for a number of
years; in their advertising and printed matter of every sort. It was
necessary, in their opinion, to emblazon "New York Central" upon their
newly acquired rolling-stock in order to permit a greater flexibility in
its interchange with that they already held. They had not owned the R. W.
& O. a fortnight before its eternal shortage of motive-power had been
relieved, by the assignment to it of engines No. 316 and No. 414 of the N.
Y. C. & H. R. R. And it should not be forgotten that one large reason for
all of these orders was the large affection of the Vanderbilt family for
the name and the fame of the New York Central. Both have loomed large in
their eyes.
* * * * *
The old Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh, quickly reorganized in that
March-time of 1891, had then as its chief officers the following men:
_President_, CHARLES PARSONS, New York
_First Vice-President_, CLARENCE S. DAY, New York
_Second Vice-President_, CHARLES PARSONS, JR., New York
_Third Vice-President_, H. WALTER WEBB, New York
_Secretary and Treasurer_, J. A. LAWYER, New York
_Freight Traffic Manager_, L. A. EMERSON, New York
_Gen. Pass. Agent_, THEODORE E. BUTTERFIELD, Oswego
_General Manager_, E. S. BOWEN, Oswego
_Supt. of Transportation_, W. W. CURRIER, Oswego
_Master Mechanic_, GEORGE H. HASELTON, Oswego
_Superintendents_
W. S. Jones, Watertown
H. W. Hammond, Carthage
I. H. McEwen, Oswego
Mr. Webb, who also was the Third Vice-President of the New York Central &
Hudson River, was now, of course, the real guiding head of the property.
Well schooled in the Vanderbilt methods of railroad operation, it was his
task to begin their introduction into the newly acquired railroad. How
well he succeeded can easily be adjudged by the results that were
attained. They need no comment by the historian.
To this group of men was given the operation of 643 miles of busy
single-track railroad. Prior to the acquisition of the R. W. & O., the New
York Central & Hudson River, itself, had only contained some 1420 miles of
line, including those which it held on leasehold. The Rome road then had
given it upwards of two thousand miles of route line--not to be confused
with mere miles of trackage, which would run to a far greater total. The
capital stock of the R. W. & O. as shown on its balance-sheet for the year
ending June 30, 1890, was $6,230,100, of which $238,243 was still in the
company's treasury. Its funded debt came to $12,672,090 (this latter
included income bonds, also in the company's treasury). In addition to
which there was a profit and loss account of $762,298. Parsons had builded
up a real railroad. Always himself short of ready cash he had acquired a
habit of dealing in millions--in a day when a million dollars still
represented a good deal of money.
* * * * *
The real problem of the new management of the Rome road lay, however, in
an immediate readjustment of its rates; particularly its freight rates.
The hemlock fence around the Watertown depot, the persecution of the
little street railway system of that community, the irritating defects of
the passenger service, were in the eyes of the commercial factors of the
North Country as nothing compared with the railroad freight tariffs that
it was called upon to pay. Charles Parsons, as I have said already, had
had no hesitation whatsoever in putting the burden of his income
necessities upon his non-competitive territory in order that he might be
in a position to slash rates right and left wherever and whenever he was
forced to compete.
New York Central control promised a modification of this situation. To a
certain extent it accomplished it. Some of the rates were slashed from
twenty-five to fifty per cent, and Mr. Parsons lived long enough to see
more equitable systems of freight-carrying charges established on the old
line. It was only a short time after the New York Central had acquired the
Rome road before the huge Solvay Process Company had located themselves on
the western limits of Syracuse. Their location there was due primarily to
the salt-beds but they also needed great quantities of limestone daily for
their products. This the R. W. & O. furnished by means of an attractive
low rate. And, after a little time, there was a solid train each day from
Chaumont on the old Cape branch to Syracuse, laden exclusively with
limestone rock. At other times there would be solid trains of paper, and
in the season, of such rare specialties as strawberries from the Richland
section and turkeys from St. Lawrence county for the New York City
markets. And despite the well-famed superiority of the North Country in
cheese making, its rich dairy areas were invaded by the milk-supply
companies of the swift-growing metropolis.
All made business--and lots of it--for the new owners of the North
Country's old road. They could afford to forget Parsons' dream of a
through route along the northerly border of the country--single-track and
filled with hard curvature and grades--to the seaboard docks of Portland,
Maine. The intensive development of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh was
their opportunity; and this opportunity they promptly seized. And
accomplished. Even the once despised Lake Ontario Shore Railroad came at
last into its own. Along its rails upgrew the greatest orchard industry in
the United States. And even as powerful and as resourceful a railroad as
the New York Central, at times, is hard put to find sufficient equipment
for the proper handling of the vast quantities of apples, pears and
peaches that to-day are grown upon the gentle south shore of Ontario.
The Vanderbilts paid a high price for the R. W. & O. And then it was a
bargain. Not only was competition practically forestalled forever in one
of the richest industrial and agricultural areas in the entire United
States--by an odd coincidence the actual acquisition of the R. W. & O. was
followed a few months later by the enactment of a state law forbidding one
railroad acquiring a parallel or competing line--but the menace of the
powerful and strategic Canadian Pacific ever reaching the city of New York
was practically removed. A high price, and yet a low one. Which marks the
beginning and the end of railroad strategy.
* * * * *
For some time now we have lost track of Mr. Austin Corbin and his
ambitious plan of the Camden, Watertown & Northern. Upon the explosion of
the Mohawk & St. Lawrence bubble a good many keen Watertown men who were
bent, heart and soul, upon providing their community with competitive
railroad service turned earnestly toward the Corbin scheme. The most of
the $60,000 that had been hastily subscribed in the town toward providing
the Mohawk & St. Lawrence with a free right-of-way and depot grounds
through it, was turned over to Mr. Corbin. Edward M. Gates, who was very
active in the matter, went further. He wired Mr. H. Walter Webb, who, as
Third Vice-President of the New York Central, and personal representative
of the Vanderbilts, had made a personal subscription of $30,000 to the
Watertown fund, if he, too, would agree to turning his subscription to the
Camden, Watertown & Northern. There is no record of a reply from Mr. Webb
on this proposition.
Gradually Corbin grew lukewarm upon his Camden, Watertown & Northern plan.
Truth to tell, he had lost his largest opportunity on the day that Charles
Parsons had landed the Vanderbilts with the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh.
They had needed that road. They had never thought that they needed the
Elmira, Cortland & Northern, not even at the time that Corbin offered it
to them at the assumption of its mortgage-bonds and its fixed charges.
Eventually he succeeded in getting the Lehigh Valley, which at just that
time was cherishing a fond idea that it might succeed in seriously cutting
into the New York Central's traffic between the seaboard and Central and
Northern New York, to buy the E. C. & N. Thereafter the Corbin project
disappeared. From time to time it has been revived, as a possible
extension of the Lehigh Valley, north from its present unsatisfactory
terminal at Camden to Watertown or even beyond. It is hardly likely now
that that extension will ever be builded. For one thing, the day of
building competing railroads is over, and for another, the E. C. & N. is
far too unsatisfactory a railroad dog to which to tie an efficient tail.
The Ontario & Western would have been a far more advantageous opportunity.
* * * * *
Out of all the tumult and excitement of that strenuous winter of 1890-91
the net result then to Northern New York was no new railroads. No, permit
me to correct that statement. One new railroad was builded, and an
important enterprise it was. A brother of H. Walter Webb's, Dr. Seward
Webb, who had married into the Vanderbilt family, was instrumental in
acquiring from Henry S. Ives, of New York, and some of his associates, the
little narrow-gauge Herkimer, Newport & Poland Railroad, stretching some
twenty miles northward from Herkimer in the Mohawk valley and upon the
main line of the New York Central. With the road renamed, the Mohawk &
Malone, Dr. Webb conceived the idea of building it through the North Woods
to the Canada line. Where the long ago promoters of the Sackett's Harbor
& Saratoga had failed, he succeeded after a fashion. He moved the
contractors' duffle from the terminal of the nascent Mohawk & St.
Lawrence, at Utica, down to Herkimer, and began by first changing the H.
N. & P. into a standard-gauge railroad. This done he proceeded with its
extension, up the valley of the Canada Creek to Remsen, where it touched
the Utica line of the R. W. & O. (the main line of the former Utica &
Black River).
This done, and arrangements made for handling the through trains of the
Mohawk & Malone over the R. W. & O. for the twenty-two miles between Utica
and Remsen, Dr. Webb struck his new road off through the depths of the
untrodden forests for nearly 150 miles. At first it was said that it was
his aim to meet and terminate his line at Tupper Lake, which had been
reached by the one-time Northern Adirondack from Moira, on the Ogdensburgh
& Lake Champlain. Dr. Webb did meet this line, also the tenuous branch of
the Delaware & Hudson, extending westward from Plattsburg, and then down
to Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. But he passed by all of these. His scheme
was a far more ambitious one. He had determined to build a railroad from
Utica to Montreal, and build a railroad from Utica to Montreal he did.
Before he was done the New York Central had its own rails from its main
line almost into the very heart of the Canadian metropolis. And while this
route was a little longer in mileage between New York City and Montreal
than the direct routes along both shores of Lake Champlain, it possessed
large strategic value for the western end of the New York Central & Hudson
River. And it was entirely a Vanderbilt line. As such it probably was
worth all it cost; and it was not a cheap road to build.
This line was then the one tangible result of the most agitated railroad
experience that the people of New York state ever faced--with the possible
exception of the West Shore fiasco. The other plans--you still can find
them by the dozens carefully filed in the clerk's office of the Northern
New York counties--all came to nought. The folk of the North Country
ceased their dreamings; settled down to the intensive development of their
rarely rich territory. And sought to make its existing transport
facilities equal to their every need.
CHAPTER XII
THE END OF THE STORY
For six or seven years after it had secured possession of the property,
the New York Central continued the operation of the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh as a separate railroad, to a very large degree, at least.
Gradually, however, the individual executive officers of the leased road
ceased to exist; in some cases berths with the parent road were found for
them; in others, they were glad to retire to a life of comfortable ease.
The separate corporate existence of the R. W. & O. as well as that of the
Utica & Black River and the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, was
continued, however, until 1914, when the Vanderbilts made a single
corporation under the title of the New York Central Railroad of some of
their most important properties; the New York Central & Hudson River, the
Lake Shore & Michigan Southern and the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh,
chief amongst them. That step taken, the R. W. & O. had ceased to
exist--legally as well as technically. Yet the work that it had done in
the development of a huge community of communities could never die. It was
to live after it; for many years to come.
* * * * *
On the 20th of May, 1891, within three months after the leasing of the
Rome road, its headquarters were moved back to the place where originally
they had been located, and from which they never should have been
removed--Watertown. The entire property was then consolidated into a
single division, and Mr. McEwen brought over from Oswego to become its
Superintendent, with Mr. Jones his assistant at Oswego and Mr. Hammond in
a similar capacity at Watertown. Mr. P. E. Crowley was, also, promoted at
this time to the position of Chief Despatcher of the division. This
arrangement did not long continue, however. Charles Parsons already was
interesting himself in the New York & New England, and presently he called
to that property, as superintendents, Mr. Bowen and Mr. Jones, who
established their offices at Hartford, Conn. Soon afterwards Mr. Hammond
followed them. There had come a real change in _régime_.
The R. W. & O. division of the New York Central & Hudson River, as the old
property then became known, stretched all the way from Suspension Bridge
to Massena Springs and was, I believe, with its 643 miles of route
mileage, the longest single railroad division in the United States at that
time. To run that division was a man's job, and only a real man could
survive it.
Yet into that grimy old station at Watertown there came, one by one, a
succession of as brilliant railroaders as this country has ever known--Van
Etten, Russell, Moon, Hustis, Christie. These were men tested and tried
before they were sent up into the North Country--it was no place for
novices up there. Once there they made good, by both their wits and their
energies. Success on that division called for almost superhuman energy.
And when once it had been won; when down in the Grand Central they could
say that "X--had been to Watertown and made good there," it meant that
X--had taken, successfully, the thirty-third degree in modern railroading.
There were a few men between these five, who did not make good--but
somehow that was never charged against them. Other jobs were found for
them; headquarters felt that perhaps the mistake in some way should
rightly be charged against it.
After seventeen years of operation of the R. W. & O. as a single division
it was recognized at headquarters that the test was not a fair one; and
the famous old road was divided into two divisions, with Watertown
Junction as the dividing point and the divisions named, the St. Lawrence
and Ontario, with Watertown and Oswego as their respective division
headquarters. Just why the system was divided in that way no one seems to
know. It would have been more logical to have made the former Rome road,
east of Oswego, a single division with headquarters at Watertown, and have
split the old Lake Ontario Shore into the main line divisions of the
western part of the state. Yet this is history, and not a criticism. The
men who have run the New York Central have generally known their business
pretty well.
* * * * *
Edgar Van Etten came to the railroad game by way of the historic Erie. He
is a native of Port Jervis, New York, a famous old Erie town, and it was
just as natural as buttering bread for him to go to work upon that road,
rising in quick successive steps, freight conductor, to-day, trainmaster
to-morrow--oddly enough there was a little time when he was Superintendent
of the Ontario division of the R. W. & O., in the days of the Parsons'
control. Then we see him as Superintendent of the Erie at Buffalo, finally
General Manager of the Western New York Car Association, in that same busy
railroad center. From that task the Vanderbilts picked him for an even
greater one--taking that newly merged, single-track 643-mile-division of
the R. W. & O., and putting it upon their operating methods and
discipline.
Only an Edgar Van Etten could have done the trick. A lion of a man he was
in those Watertown days, relentless, indomitable, fearless--yet possessing
in his varied nature keen qualities of humor and of human understanding
that were tremendous factors in the winning of his success. It was but
natural that so keen a talent should have been recognized in his promotion
from Watertown to the vastly responsible post of General Superintendent of
the New York Central at the Grand Central Station. In those days the
position of Operating Vice-President of the property had not been created.
Nor was there even a General Manager. The General Superintendent was the
big boss who moved the trains and moved them well. If he could not, the
Vanderbilts discovered it before they ever made him a big boss.
Mr. Van Etten's final promotion came in his advancement to the post of
Vice-President and General Manager of their important Boston & Albany
property; a position on that road corresponding to the presidency of
almost any other one. Here he remained until 1907, when ill-health caused
his retirement from railroading. He moved across the continent to
California, where he is to-day an enthusiastic resident of Los Angeles.
* * * * *
E. G. Russell was cast in a somewhat gentler mold than Van Etten. Thorough
railroader he was at that, a man of large vision and seeking every
opportunity for the advancement of the property that he headed. For
remember that in all these years at Watertown these men were virtual
General Managers of a goodly property, in everything but actual title.
Upon their initiative, upon their ability to make quick decisions--and
accurate--in crises, to handle even matters of a goodly size the huge
division rose or fell. Theirs was no job for the weakling or the hesitant.
Mr. Russell was neither a weakling nor hesitant. On the contrary he risked
much--even the friendship of the organized labor of the road--when he felt
that he was right and must go ahead upon the right path. Eventually his
policies in regard to labor forced his retirement from the R. W. & O.
division. He went, capable railroader that he always was, to Scranton
where he became General Superintendent of the Lackawanna. From there he
went to one of the roads in lower Canada, and finally to Michigan, where
he met his tragic death late at night on a lonely railroad pier in the
dead of winter.
* * * * *
After Russell, Dewitt C. Moon; a man with an unusual genius for placating
labor and getting the very best results out of it. Mr. Moon succeeded Mr.
Russell as Superintendent at Watertown, April 1, 1899, leaving that post
September 1, 1902, to become General Manager of the Lake Erie & Western, a
Vanderbilt property of the mid-West. He had been schooled in that family
of railroads, starting in as telegraph operator on the old Dunkirk,
Allegheny Valley & Pittsburgh, which was gradually merged, first into the
Lake Shore and then into the parent reorganized New York Central of
to-day. Before that reorganization, he had become General Manager of the
former Lake Shore in some respects the very finest of the old Vanderbilt
properties--at Cleveland. At Cleveland he still remains, as Assistant to
the Vice-President of the New York Central in that important city. He is a
railroader of the old school, trained in exquisite thoroughness and with a
capacity for detail, not less than marvelous.
Moon's great forte, however, was and still is, coöperation. Men like him.
He likes men. A big and genial nature, a quick sympathy and understanding
have proved great assets to a railroad executive. These assets Moon has
possessed from the beginning. Upon them he had builded--and upgrown.
* * * * *
Still another of this famous quintette to whom the running of a 650 mile
railroad division was as but part of a day's work--James H. Hustis. More
than any of the three who preceded him Hustis is in every sense a thorough
graduate of the Vanderbilt school of railroading. He was born to it. His
father, too, was a veteran New York Central man. "Jim" Hustis entered that
school in 1878, as office-boy to the late John M. Toucey, then General
Superintendent of the New York Central in the old Grand Central depot. He
rose rapidly in the ranks, filling several superintendencies in the old
parent property before he went to Watertown, in the late summer of 1902.
He left there on October 1, 1906, to assume executive charge of the Boston
& Albany. And it was soon after he left that the old division was broken
into two parts and the R. W. & O. ceased to exist, even as a division
name. Mr. Hustis is to-day President of the Boston & Maine Railroad. He
holds the unique distinction of having headed the three most important
railroads of New England. After leaving the office of Vice-President and
General Manager of the Boston & Albany--as we have already seen the
ranking position of that property--he was for a time President of the New
York, New Haven & Hartford, before going to his present post with the
Boston & Maine. That he is a thorough railroader, hardly needs to be said
here--if nothing else said that, the fact that he spent four successful
years in full control at Watertown, of itself would tell it.
* * * * *
After Hustis, Cornelius Christie, the last of the executive
Superintendents that were to supervise the operation of the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh as a single unit--why the folks down in the Grand
Central did not create a general superintendency at Watertown, I never
could understand. Christie, a huge six-foot-three man, big both physically
and mentally, also was trained in the wondrous Vanderbilt school of
railroading. Long service both upon the main line of the Central and the
West Shore, equipped him most adequately for the arduous task at
Watertown.
It was in Christie's day--in the summer of 1908--that the famous old
division was divided into two large parts, as we have already seen; the
Ontario and the St. Lawrence. For three years more, Mr. Christie remained
at Watertown, as Superintendent of the St. Lawrence, being promoted from
that post to a similar one on the busy Hudson River division between
Albany and New York. He was succeeded at Watertown by F. E. Williamson,
the present General Superintendent of the New York Central at Albany.
At the time Christie became Superintendent of the St. Lawrence Division at
Watertown, Frank E. McCormack was set up in a similar job, heading the
Ontario Division at Oswego. The genial Frank was R. W. & O. trained and
bred. As far back as April 1, 1885, he was working for the property as
night operator and pumper, at a salary of $25 a month. Some one must have
recognized the real railroader in him, however, for but a year later his
"salary" was raised to $30 and the following year he was transferred to
the Superintendent's office at Watertown as confidential clerk and
operator. From that time on his progress was steady and uninterrupted;
despatcher, chief despatcher, trainmaster, and with one or two more
intermediate steps, Superintendent.
* * * * *
To attempt even a listing of the able railroad crowd that hovered around
the old Watertown depot, in the years that measured the beginnings of the
Vanderbilt operation of the old Rome road again, would be quite beyond the
province of this little book. H. D. Carter, Frank E. Wilson, George C.
Gridley, W. H. Northrop, Clare Hartigan, how the names come trippingly to
mind! And how many, many more there are of them.
Yet I cannot close these paragraphs without singling out two of
them--Wilgus and Crowley. Here are two more graduates of its hard, hard
school, in which the Rome road may hold exceeding pride. Colonel W. J.
Wilgus was with the old division for but four years--from 1893 to
1897--but they were years of exceeding activity in the rebuilding of the
property; particularly its "double-tracking" and the extremely important
job of raising the track-levels for many miles north of Richland so that
the eternal enemy of the road--snow--would have a much harder time
henceforth in endeavoring to fight it. From that job he went to far bigger
ones; such as building the new Grand Central Terminal and installing
electric operation on the lines that entered it, digging the Michigan
Central tunnel under the river at Detroit and building the new station in
that city. These and others. But none more interesting to him, I dare say,
than the task that he laid out overseas in the Great War, building and
arranging the rail lines of communication for the American Army in France.
A job to which he brought all his experience, his great energy and his
rare tact.
And finally, Patrick E. Crowley. Mr. Crowley's connection with the Rome
road goes back to the Parsons' régime--even though before that day he had
had eleven hard years of experience with the old Erie; in about every
conceivable job from station agent to train despatcher. He was with the R.
W. & O., however, almost an even year before its acquisition by the New
York Central--as train despatcher at Oswego. In May, 1891, he was
transferred to Watertown as chief train despatcher and later as train
master. His stepping upward has been continuous and earned. To-day as
Vice-President, in charge of operation, of the entire New York Central
system he is recognized as one of the king-pins of railroad operators of
all creation and is the same simple and unassuming gentleman that one
found him in the old days at Oswego and Watertown.
That seems to be the mark of the real railroader, always. Ostentation does
not get a man very far in the game. In the North Country it got him
nowhere, whatsoever. In our land of the great snows and the hard years a
very real and simple democracy plus energy and some real knowledge of the
problems in hand were the only qualities that put a big boss ahead.
Forever--no matter what the name or how long the division--the job up
there was the survival of the fittest. The fit man might be here, there,
anywhere. He might be a greaser in the round-house, a news-butcher upon
the train, an office boy upstairs in the depot headquarters, an operator
in a lonely country station. If he was fit he got ahead and got ahead
quickly. Merit won its own promotion and generally won it pretty quickly.
Not that everything was always plain sailing. There is one pretty keen
railroad executive in the land who remembers his joy at being promoted to
Despatcher on the old Rome road. The pay was eighty dollars a month, which
was good in those days. He walked into the new job with a plenty of
cocksure enthusiasm. The "super" did not like young men with cocksure
enthusiasms. He said so, frankly. And in order to drive his ideas home
paid the young man the Despatcher's rate for thirty days; then, for the
next five or six months at the old-time operator's rate. The young man
caught on. He understood. A job's a job and a boss is a boss. And all the
jobs in the world are not worth the paper that they are written on, unless
the boss wants to make them so. Which may be put down as an unscientific
maxim; yet a very true one nevertheless.
* * * * *
Back of these men who sought with all their energy and vigor, of mind and
of body alike, steadily to upbuild the old Rome road, was the great
wealth, organization and _esprit de corps_ of one of the leading railroad
organizations of the world. The Vanderbilts were always thorough
sportsmen. They showed it in their reincarnation of the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh. Parsons had been handicapped, forever and a day, by the
constant lack of ready cash--there have been few times when the New York
Central has been so handicapped. I bear no brief for the Vanderbilts. They
have made their mistakes and they have been grievous ones. But they have
not often made the mistake of being miserly with their properties. That
mistake was not made in Northern New York.
Into the R. W. & O., once they had clinched their title to it, they poured
money like water--whenever they could be shown the necessity of such a
procedure. New track went down and then new bridges went up--superb
structures every one of them--until there no longer were any limitations
upon the motive-power for the North Country's rail transport system. A
locomotive that could run upon the main line could run practically
anywhere upon the Rome road divisions. And when Watertown complained that
the traffic was rising to a volume that no longer could be handled upon a
single-track basis, the Vanderbilts double-tracked the road--in all of
its essential stretches, many, many miles of it all told. They built and
rebuilt the round-houses and the shops. "Property improvement" became
their slogan.
In such property improvement Watertown has always shared, most liberally.
The double-tracking of the old main-stem of the R. W. & O. brought with it
as a corollary the construction of a much needed freight cut-off outside
the crowded heart of that city. That done the local freight facilities
were removed from the old stone freight-house opposite the
passenger-station and that staunch old landmark torn down. To replace it a
huge freight terminal of the most modern type and worthy of a city of
sixty thousand population was erected on a convenient site upon the North
side of the river. As a final step in this program of progress the old
depot was torn away--without many expressions of regret on the part of the
townsfolk--and the present magnificent passenger terminal erected, at a
cost of close to a quarter of a million dollars. The management of what
Watertown will always know as the "old Rome road" has not been niggardly
with its chief town.
Nor has it been niggardly with any other parts of Northern New York
territory. Oswego has rejoiced in a new station--the blessed old Lake
Shore Hotel, which for many years housed tavern and railroad offices and
passenger depot, combined, is now a thing of memory. Ogdensburgh has a
fine new station, and so has Massena Springs. Norwood still worries along
with its old depot, but Richland rejoices in a neat but excellent
structure, in which the Wright brothers still serve the coffee, the rolls,
the sausage and the buckwheat cakes that cannot be excelled. The North
Country has never taken to the dining-car habit; perhaps, because it never
has had the chance. But it actually likes its old-fashioned way of living;
the innate democracy of the American plan hotel and
dinner-in-the-middle-of-the-day.
* * * * *
Never can I ride up through it in these fine basking days of peace and of
prosperity over its well-maintained railroad without thinking of the days
when journeying into the North Country was not a comfortable matter of
Pullman cars and swift trains by day and by night; of the days when one
came to Utica by stage or by canal and immediately reëmbarked upon another
stage for an even hundred miles of rackingly hard riding over an uneven
plank-road into Watertown. If one went further toward the North, travel
conditions became still worse. Such expeditions were not for tender folk.
And sometimes to-day when I ride north from Watertown upon the
railroad--and the cars toil laboriously through Factory Street, as they
have been toiling for sixty-five long years past--I press my face against
the window and look for a little house upon that Appian Way; the little,
old, stone house in which Clarke Rice and William Smith were wont, so long
ago, to operate their toy train upon the table and so try to induce the
folk of the village to invest their money in a scheme which then seemed so
utter chimerical. A house in which a real idea was born forever fascinates
me. For it I hold naught by sympathy--and understanding. So many of us are
dreamers.... And so few of us may ever live to see the full fruition of
our dreams.
APPENDIX A
(Being taken bodily from a poster issued at Watertown in the Summer of
1847.)
WATERTOWN, ROME, AND CAPE-VINCENT RAIL-ROAD
ACCORDING TO NOTICE IN THE JEFFERSON COUNTY PAPERS, the inhabitants of
this Town will be speedily called on to complete subscriptions towards the
above named Road, sufficient to warrant a commencement.
BY THE CHARTER WE HAVE TILL THE 14TH OF MAY, 1848, to complete
subscriptions, and make an expenditure towards the Road.
THE TIME IS SHORT IN WHICH TO DO THIS BUSINESS; therefore it is highly
important that every citizen, from the St. Lawrence on the North to the
Erie canal on the South--from the highlands on the East to the lake on the
West, come forward and spread himself to his full extent for the Road.
TO STIMULATE US TO ACTION LET IT BE BORNE IN MIND that the sun never shone
on so glorious a land as lies within the bounds above described. To one
who for the first time visits our towns, the scene is enchanting in the
extreme. Our climate is bland and salubrious; winters more mild than in
any part of New England or southern New York--the atmosphere being
softened by the prevalence of southwesterly winds coursing up the Valley
of the Mississippi and along the waters of Erie and Ontario, to such
degree that for salubrity and comfort we stand almost unrivalled.
WHEAT, CORN, BARLEY, OATS, PEASE, BEANS, BUCKWHEAT, fruit, butter, cheese,
pork, beef, horses, sheep, cattle, minerals, lumber, etc., are produced
here with a facility that warrants the hand of labor a bountiful return.
WE HAVE WATER POWER ENOUGH TO TURN EVERY SPINDLE in Great Britain and
America. In fact we have every thing man could desire on this globe,
except a cheap and expeditious method of getting rid of our surplus
products and holding communication with the exterior world.
THE WANT OF THIS, PLACES US _THIRTY YEARS_ BEHIND almost every other
portion of the State. When we might be _first_, we suffer ourselves to be
last.
CITIZENS! HOW LONG IS THIS STATE OF THINGS TO ENDURE? After having lain
dormant until we have acquired the dimensions of a young giant, will we,
like the brute beast, ignorant of his powers, be still led captive in the
train of our country's prosperity--affording, by our supineness, a foil to
set off the triumphs of our more enterprising brethren of the East, the
South, and the West?
NO,--FROM THIS MOMENT FORWARD, LET US RESOLVE to cut a passage to the
marts of the New World, and, by the abundance of our resources, strike
their "Merchant Princes" with admiration and astonishment.
THIS CAN EASILY BE DONE IF UNANIMITY, PERSEVERANCE, and, above all,
LIBERALITY, be exhibited. If every farmer owning 100 acres of land, and he
not much in debt, will take five shares in the Road, _and others in
proportion_, the decree will go forth that the work is done. _Without
this_, it is feared the whole must be a failure.
VIEWED IN AN ENLIGHTENED MANNER, THERE NEED BE NO hesitation on the part
of the owners of the soil. They are the ones to be most essentially
benefited. There is no reason why their lands, from having a market and
increased price of products, would not be worth fifty to eighty dollars
per acre, as is the case in less favored sections, where Rail Roads have
been constructed. The very fact that a Road was to be made would add
_half_ to the value of land--its completion would more than _double_ the
present prices.
A TAX ON THE LAND TEN MILES EACH SIDE OF THE ROAD, to build it, would in
three years repay itself, and leave to the present population and their
posterity an enduring source of wealth and importance. We lose one hundred
thousand dollars annually in the price of butter and cheese alone, when
compared with the prices obtained by Lewis and the northerly part of
Oneida, simply because they are nearer the Canal and the Rail Road.
BUT TAKING STOCK IS _NOT A TAX_, IN ANY SENSE OF THE phrase. It is only
resolving to purchase a certain amount of property in the Road, which,
taking similar investments elsewhere as a sample, will pay interest, or
can be at all times sold at par, or at an advance, like other property or
evidence of value. The owner of shares can at any time sell out, and have
the satisfaction of knowing that he has greatly added to his wealth merely
by affording countenance to the project while in embryo.
THE DIRECTORS ARE POWERLESS UNLESS THE PEOPLE RALLY to their aid. They
have made efforts abroad for capital to build the Road, by adding to the
subscriptions on hand at the time they were chosen. Owing to causes not
prejudicial to the character of our enterprise, they have not for the
present succeeded. Aid they have been promised, but they are enjoined
first to show a larger figure at home. The ability and disposition of our
population must be more thoroughly evinced than has yet been the case.
AGENTS ARE AT WORK, OR SPEEDILY WILL BE, ON THE whole length and breadth
of the line from Cape Vincent to Rome. A searching operation is to be had.
If the Road is a failure, the Directors are determined that it shall not
be laid at their door. Let this be remembered, and every one hereafter
hold his peace.
CLARKE RICE,
Secretary W. & R. R. R. Co.
Watertown, Aug. 27, 1847.
APPENDIX B
A LIST OF THE OFFICERS AND AGENTS OF THE ROME, WATERTOWN & OGDENSBURGH
RAILROAD (March 22, 1886)
_President_, CHARLES PARSONS, New York
_Vice-President_, CLARENCE S. DAY, New York
_Secretary and Treasurer_, J. A. LAWYER, New York
_General Manager_, H. M. BRITTON, Oswego
_Supt. of Transportation_, W. W. CURRIER, Oswego
_Gen'l Freight Agent_, E. M. MOORE, Oswego
_Gen'l Pass. Agt._ (Acting), G. C. GRIDLEY, Oswego
_Gen'l Baggage Agent_, T. M. PETTY, Oswego
_Gen'l Road Master_, H. A. SMITH, Oswego
_Supt. of Motive Power_, GEO. H. HASELTON, Oswego
_Assistant Superintendents_
W. H. Chauncey, Oswego
J. D. Remington, Watertown
W. S. Jones, DeKalb Junction
_Agents_
Suspension Bridge, G. G. Chauncey
River View, J. B. S. Colt
Lewiston, Samuel Barton
Ransonville, D. C. Hitchcock
Wilson, G. Wadsworth
Newfane, F. S. Coates
Hess Road, C. Sheehan
Somerset, Thomas Malloy
County Line, G. Resseguie
Lyndonville, B. A. Barry
Carlyon, T. A. Newnham
Waterport, A. J. Joslin
Carlton, O. Wiltse
East Carlton, J. C. Wilson
Kendall, J. W. Simkins
East Kendall, George L. Lovejoy
Hamlin, C. S. Snook
East Hamlin, D. W. Dorgan
Parma, L. V. Byer
Greece, W. E. Vrooman
Charlotte, H. N. Woods
Pierces, Chas. Ten Broeck
Webster, F. E. Sadler
Union Hill, C. B. Hart
Lakeside, I. H. Middleton
Ontario, George M. Sabin
Williamson, J. E. Tufts
Sodus, J. P. Canfield
Wallington, E. T. Boyd
Alton, H. S. McIntyre
Rose, A. A. Stearns
Wolcott, W. V. Bidwell
Red Creek, S. G. Murray
Sterling, W. A. Spear
Sterling Valley, W. R. Crockett
Hannibal, A. D. Cowles
Furniss, G. Hollenbeck
Oswego, F. W. Parsons
" Ticket Agent, T. M. Petty
East Oswego, F. W. Parsons
Scriba, R. M. Russell
New Haven, E. W. Robinson
Mexico, R. E. Barron
Sand Hill, W. K. Mathewson
Pulaski, W. H. Austin
Richland, T. Higham
Holmesville, C. L. Goodrich
Union Square, F. A. Nicholson
Parish, C. J. Lawton
Mallory, R. E. Brown
Central Square, J. P. Tracey
Brewerton, C. R. Rogers
Clay, Wilber Hatch
Woodard, A. J. Eaton
Liverpool, F. Wyker
Syracuse, M. Breen
" Ticket Agent, Jennie Kellar
Fulton, F. E. Sutherland
Phoenix, O. C. Breed
Rome, J. Graves
" Ticket Agent, A. G. Roof
Taberg, S. A. Cutler
McConnellsville, G. Gibbons
Camden, H. A. Case
West Camden, D. D. Spear
Williamstown, E. B. Acker
Kasoag, J. A. Frost
Albion, J. Buckley
Sandy Creek, W. J. Stevens
Mannsville, J. G. Clark
Pierrepont Manor, L. V. Evans, Jr.
Adams, D. Fish
Adams Centre, W. H. McIntyre
Rices, Miss L. A. Ayers
Watertown, R. E. Smiley
" Ticket Agent, Pitt Adams
Sanfords Corners, M. H. Matty
Evans Mills, F. E. Croissant
Philadelphia, C. T. Barr
Antwerp, Geo. H. Haywood
Keenes, W. E. Giffin
Gouverneur, A. F. Coates
Richville, W. D. Hurley
DeKalb Junction, E. G. Webb
Canton, J. H. Bixby
Potsdam, J. O'Sullivan
Norwood, M. R. Stanton
Rensselaer Falls, A. Walker
Heuvelton, H. B. Whittemore
Ogdensburgh, E. Dillingham
Brownville, G. C. Whittemore
Limerick, F. E. Rundell
Chaumont, W. A. Casler
Three Mile Bay, A. H. Dewey
Rosiere, Joseph Burgess
Cape Vincent, I. A. Whittemore
_Superintendent of Motive Power_, GEO. H. HASELTON, Oswego
_In Charge of Repairs_
Syracuse, John Knapp
Watertown, B. F. Batchelder
Rome, W. D. Watson
_General Road Master_, H. A. SMITH, Oswego
_Division Road Masters_
Suspension Bridge, Geo. Keith
Oswego, S. Bishop
Syracuse, S. Littlefield
Rome, A. M. Hollenbeck
E. Dennison, DeKalb Junction
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