THE STORY OF THE
ROME, WATERTOWN AND
OGDENSBURGH RAILROAD

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

ILLUSTRATIONS

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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.

ORVILLE HUNGERFORD
First President of the Watertown & Rome Railroad.

The original officers of the Watertown & Rome Railroad were:

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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:

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:

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.