will in a few years present a far different aspect-a track of rails, with cars passing and repassing, loaded with merchandise and the products of the country. The freight will amount to $200,000 per annum in a very few years." The latter declaration being received with great incredulity by those present, the speaker concluded his prediction with the modifying expression-"At least, eventually." The address completed, Mr. King shoveled a wheelbarrow full of dirt, and Mr. Ruggles wheeled it away and dumped it. Each one present went through the same routine, and quite an excavation was made, and could be seen for several years afterward, the road as finally located passing to the right of the spot. The shovel and barrow used were loaned by Maurice R. Hulce of Deposit, and President King took the shovel with him to New York. It was preserved by the Company until 1868, when it mysteriously disappeared. Mr. King did not live to see the "track of rails completed, but many of those present when he made his address lived to see the little excavation at Deposit succeeded by some of the grandest of engineering achievements, and the day when the travagant" prediction of Mr. King in regard to the freight revenue of the road seemed ridiculously small, in the light of events that raised the figures indicating the receipts from that traffic from the hundreds of thousands far into the millions. Work on the railroad progressed for a time as if the Company's treasury were surfeited with money. The management felt confident, for the subscribers to the stock, most of them at that time New York merchants and bankers, were regarded as good for any call that might be made upon them at any time. At a time when prospects seemed brightest the terribly disastrous fire of December 16, 1835, broke out in New York, and swept away the entire lower part of the city. Many of the heaviest subscribers to the stock of the New York and Erie Railroad Company were ruined by that conflagration, and thus one of the prospective mainstays of the Company's treasury was destroyed. Following that catastrophe came the historic panic of 1836-37, with its widespread financial stagnation and ruin. This drove into bankruptcy many more of the large sub scribers to the Erie stock, and the prospects of the Company and its work were robbed of whatever of cheer and brightness they may have had. Nevertheless, depending on favorable action of the Legislature on a renewed appeal for State aid to the amount of $3,000,000, the management of the Company ordered a new survey to be made of the route for the road, which was begun by Engineers Captain Andrew Talcott and Edwin F. Johnson. The object of this survey was to ascertain the most favorable and feasible terminal points for the railroad, and, if possible, to modify and improve on the original survey of 1834. Captain Talcott, formerly of the United States Army Engineer Corps, had charge of the route from Lake Erie to Painted Post, in Steuben County, N. Y. Engineer Johnson was in charge between Painted Post and the Hudson River. Although a strong effort was being made to have the Eastern terminus at Newburgh, before the survey was completed the Legislature had passed the first Erie relief bill, and this provided that the Eastern terminus must be in Rockland County, and it was fixed at Tappan. Captain Talcott also reported in favor of Dunkirk as the Western terminus of the railroad. It may be well to state that the proprietors of Dunkirk had made the donation of 5,000 town lots to the Company, and that Cornelius J. Blauvelt and others had given ninety lots-although they were under water-at Tappan. The report of the Directors of the Company for the year 1835, which was the first official report ever made of the Company's affairs, gives in detail the condition and alleged prospects of the railroad at that time. It was filed in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany, January 12, 1836, and was sworn to by James G. King and Samuel B. Ruggles, as the Executive Committee of the Board, January 2, 1835, and signed by them as President and Comptroller. After citing the facts of the organization and the survey, the report is as follows: 'On February 4, 1835, the first instalment of stock, $50,000, was deposited with the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, at interest of 41⁄2 per cent. per annum. On April 15, 1835, the company opened books for subscriptions, and received subscriptions until September 1, during which time. 23,621 shares were subscribed, and 5 per cent., amounting to $118,105, paid thereon. A further instalment of 5 per cent. was called, payable November 2. On this call $105,655 were paid on 21,131 shares. On April 30, 1835, Benjamin Wright was appointed Chief Engineer, at a salary of $3,000 a year. James Seymour, who had been his chief assistant in the survey, was at the same time made Assistant Chief Engineer at a salary of $2,000 a year. May 1, nine parties of engineers were put in the field to revise the previous surveys, making new ones, and locating portions of the time for actual work thereon. The directors and officers have been busy getting information, examining route, getting right of way, etc. In August, 1835, Moncure Robinson of Pennsylvania and Jonathan Knight of Maryland were engaged to consult with Chief Engineer Wright, as a Board of Engineers, upon the surveys of the route made in 1834. They made a voluminous report, approving the work. September 8, advertisements for proposals for contracts were published by the company. The work to be done was the graduation of forty and a half miles of roadway in the Delaware Valley. The company's estimate of the work's cost was $366,286, or $9,040 per mile. President King, Comptroller Ruggles, and a Committee of Directors opened the proposals at Deposit, November 4, 5, and 6, 1835, the work having been divided into forty-four sub-divisions, 157 to 200. They were taken by twenty-six different conThe total amount of contracts was $313.572, or $7,742 per mile, a saving of 161⁄2 per cent. below the estimate. Several additional sections of the line were prepared for contract and the company propose advertising them early in the ensuing spring. The directors are convinced that the whole work can be completed upon the plan recommended in the report of engineers (including vehicles to the amount of $500,000) for a sum not exceeding, and probably falling considerably short of, $6,000,000; that the road when finished will admit of the use of locomotive engines throughout its entire length, drawing weights of at least forty tons, net, and at a rate of speed which will reduce the time of passage within forty hours from the Hudson River to Lake Erie; and, if the necessary funds shall be secured without delay, the whole work can easily be completed and put in operation within five years from this date." tractors. RECEIPTS. $118,105 00 105,655.00 For salary of the late Treasurer and present Secretary, clerk hire, rent, furniture, fuel, etc. . . . . . The President, the Treasurer, and the Comptroller serve without salary. For services and expenses of agents employed in the business of the company. For stationery and blanks, making and engraving maps, printing notices, reports, and other documents... For traveling expenses of committees and officers of the company while engaged in its business, including sundry petty expenses... For amount of box rent, and postage paid. . . . Leaving a balance of. Which is deposited as follows: $3,853 72 2,776 87 1,928 18 812 42 186 42 $38,621 38 $187,742 62 .$130,572 59 Phoenix Bank of New York.... Chautauqua County Bank. Broome County Bank.. Orange County Bank. In hands of Secretary.. Sworn as true in every particular by January 5, 1836. 3,275 00 2,615 00 655 00 335 00 290 03 $187,742 62 P. G. STUYVESANT, Treasurer. TALMAN J. WATERS, Secretary. Early in the session of 1836, consideration of the renewed petition of the Company for aid came up in the New York Assembly, and encountered fierce opposition. The scheme of the road was not only assailed as a wild and visionary one-" the greatest humbug of the age," the Hon. Francis Granger called it and one from which wise business men stood aloof, but the officers and Directors of the Company were attacked on personal grounds, and their motives impugned. President King and the Directors had to defend themselves against the charges of using their connection with the Company for stock-jobbing purposes, and of having purchased lands along the lines of the proposed road as a speculation which their plan of constructing the road would make a most profitable one for them. In 1835 President King, Samuel B. Ruggles, the Comptroller of the Company, and Peter G. Stuyvesant, the Treasurer, had made a tour of the route from New York to Lake Erie, and it was charged that on that trip they had arranged the land speculation, a charge which they indignantly denied, and which no facts were ever put on record to substantiate. It was also charged in the Senate by Senator Young that the rumor was current that agents of the Company had offered large holdings in land to certain Members of Assembly as a bribe to secure their votes for the Erie aid bill. Assemblyman Campbell offered a resolution in that body calling upon Senator Young to give the names of the Assemblymen thus alleged to have been approached corruptly, but it was laid on the table, and the matter was probed no further. Senator Young was arrested on a criminal charge of libel made by citizens of Tioga County for language used in the debates on this bill, but nothing came of it. Every county through which the railroad wa to pass, with the exception of Orange and Rockland, sent petitions to the Legislature asking for the passage of a State-aid bill. The municipal authorities of the cities of New York and Brooklyn also memorialized the Legislature in favor of such a bill. A remonstrance against the bill was forwarded from Orange County. This was the result of political feeling in that county and had no real bearing on the sentiment of the people toward the railroad. Governor William L. Marcy, in his annual message to the Legislature in 1836, called attention to the affairs of the New York and Erie Railroad, and submitted a communication from President King, accompanied by documents, and advised the serious consideration of the questions involved, “uninfluenced by any other views than such as are inspired by a comprehensive regard for the public good." The communication from President King was a résumé of the work in hand, and assured the Governor that no reasonable doubt exists as to the ability of the Company to complete the whole road from the tidewater to the lake, with all requisite vehicles, for the amount stated in the report of the engineer, and that the sum will certainly not exceed, and probably will fall considerably short of, six millions of dollars." It asked the loan of the State's credit to an amount not to exceed three millions of dollars, to be advanced in instalments. The documents accompanying the communication were engineers' reports and estimates. Acting on these petitions and memorials, a bill was introduced in the Assembly providing that certificates of stock be issued when a section of railroad from the Delaware and Hudson Canal to the Chenango Canal, near Binghamton, 146 miles, was completed. The cost of this section was estimated to be $1,646,826. Another block of $700,000 of State stock was to be issued when the railroad was ready for operation from Binghamton to the Alleghany River, 184 miles. This would have compelled an additional outlay by the Company of $1,322,989. When the road should be completed from the Alleghany River to Lake Erie, seventy-nine miles, the Company was to receive another instalment of stock to the amount of $300,000, the cost of that section being estimated at $640,547; and when the railroad should be built from the Hudson River, in Rockland County, to the Delaware and Hudson Canal, seventyseven miles, the cost of which would be $1,664,156, stock to the amount of $400,000 would be issued to the Company. This called for the expenditure by the Company of $4,674,518 to receive $2,000,000 in State stock. The remaining $1,000,000 of the State-aid stock was not to be issued until the railroad was completed, with a double track its entire length, from the Hudson to Lake Erie. This second track, the cost of roadbed having been provided for in the above calculation, the engineers estimated would cost $1,857,000. The certificates of stock thus to be issued to the Company were to bear interest at the rate of 41⁄2 per cent. per annum, payable quarterly, and were redeemable at any time within twenty years, the tolls and income of the railroad to be pledged for the payment of the principal and interest. In default of the payment of principal or interest, the Comptroller of the State was authorized to sell the road by auction, or to buy it in at such sale for the use and benefit of the State. The bill met with strong opposition, one ground of which was the fact that it did. not provide for the beginning of the road at the Hudson River instead of at a point in the interior. This opposition was prompted by the Lord follow ing in the Company. But the bill passed the Assembly, and in the Senate was referred to the Railroad Committee, which, having figured out that the road, with a single track and equipment, could be built for $6,000,000, and that it would, on a low estimate, earn $922,000 a year, net, reported it favorably, with a strong recommendation for its passage. The report (Senate Document No. 62, 1836) was accepted, and the bill became a law April 23d. Although the Company and the friends of the railroad rejoiced over this recognition of the importance and necessity of the railroad through the Southern Tier, and the quick completion of the undertaking was hailed as a certainty by means of the generous helping hand extended by the State (a belief that was affected by the management of the Company in its report to the stockholders as late as September, 1836), it in reality must have been soon apparent to those at the head of the Company's affairs that this bill would be of but little use to them. To receive the first $600,000, first instalment of State stock, the Company would be obliged to expend nearly a million and three-quarters of dollars-more than double the amount to be received. To a corpora The so tion that had not a dollar in its treasury, nor any means of raising a dollar, and which was deeply in debt besides, this was generosity indeed! called State aid could not be utilized, and the Company was soon in sore straits. In December, 1836, a call was made for an instalment of $2.50 on each share of stock that had been subscribed for. The money was wanted to settle overdue claims of contractors, who were becoming clamorous. Less than one-half of the subscribers paid the instalment, and active operations on the work ceased with the close of the year. The extreme seriousnesss of the Company's situation spurred President King to renewed effort to extricate it from its peril. He brought all his great personal influence in the business affairs of New York City to bear in behalf of the lagging enterprise, with the result that a call for a public meeting to be held at Clinton Hall, Friday evening, January 20, 1837, at half-past six o'clock, was signed by all of the leading New York business men of that day. The object of the meeting, as stated in the call, was "to receive from the Board of Directors important statements representing the progress of their undertaking and its improved financial condition, and to adopt measures for an energetic prosecution and early completion of the work." The meeting was called to order by James N. Wells. Mayor Aaron Clark was chosen President; James N. Wells and Nathaniel Weed, Vice-Presidents; and Thomas R. Merceir and William Samuel Johnson, Secretaries. The meeting was addressed by President King, who placed the situation, prospects, and needs of the Railroad Company before it. One tempting scheme he laid stress upon. This was the large provisional donations of land west of the Genesee River along the line of the proposed railroad, which he said were of such value that their sales would permit the payment of 6 per cent. per annum to the stockholders of the Company, among whom, also, the land remaining unsold would be "rateably divided among the then holders of the three millions of stock." He said the Company had received an offer from Goold Hoyt, Nicholas Devereaux, and Nevius & Thompson, of $400,000 for these lands, to be paid in such sums, on July first of each year, until 1841, as should suffice for the interest at 6 per cent., accruing at those periods on the instalments of stock paid up. This offer had been declined, however, as the Company preferred to reserve for its stockholders the rise in the value of these lands which the progress of the road could not fail to occasion, selling only from time to time what mght be needful to meet the payment of dividends. The road, he said, could be completed for $6,000,000. There had been subscribed $1,800,000. The State stood pledged for $2,000,000, on the completion of a single track for the whole route. New York City was asked to raise enough to make the subscription $5,000,000. No subscription thus made would be called in exceeding instalments of 25 per cent. per annum, and the first payment might be made in notes at three or four months. President King insisted on the declaration that he and his associates had no interest in the work beyond that of every stockholder in the value of the stock. They owned no land along the route, and had no separate pecuniary interest. He warned the New York business men against the efforts other cities were making to secure the trade of the great West at the expense of New York. John A. Stevens addressed the meeting in favor of going to the aid of the Company. What was of the greatest importance to the city of New York, he declared, was to be secured by the building of this railroad to the Alleghany Valley-connection in the early spring between this part of New York and the populous valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi-the head of navigation of which rivers, he called the particular attention of the meeting, lay within the limits of this State, in the County of Cattaraugus. "When the railroad shall be completed from the Hudson to the Alleghany, the merchandise of this city can be sent down into the valley of the Ohio before the 10th of March, earlier even than the opening of the Pennsylvania Canal, and nearly six weeks before the opening of the Erie Canal." Speeches were made by George Griswold, Robert Cheesebrough, General Tallmadge, and others, and resolutions favorable to the increasing of the available subscriptions of the stock of the Railroad Company to $3,000,000 were unanimously adopted, and recommending that books for that purpose be opened at the Merchants' Exchange and other places. A committee of thirty-nine was appointed by the chair to obtain subscriptions, as follows: John Haggerty, John A. Stevens, Robert Cheesebrough, Moses H. Grinnell, S. S. Howland, James N. Wells, Charles N. Talbott, Moses Taylor, Benjamin Birdsall, Nathaniel Weed, Frederick Sheldon, E. J. Gould, Stephen Allen, Simeon Draper, Jr., Charles Kelsey, A. G. Thompson, T. R. Merceir, David Austin, Daniel Jackson, D. W. Wetmore, Sheppard Knapp, Samuel Jones, Robert Ray, George W. Bruen, James B. Murray, Thomas E. Davis, Charles Hoyt, J. A. Perry, Ogden E. Edwards, Charles Wolfe, Henry H. Elliott, David Lee, E. G. Vaile, Charles Dennison, Alfred R. Mount, Jacob Lorillard, Martin E. Thompson, Philip H. Woodruff, Andrew Lockwood. It would seem that it would have needed no more aid than what the members of this committee could themselves alone have offered, then and there, to have not only tided the Company over its pressing difficulties but insured the completion of its railroad without further delay or hindrance, if their faith in its future and fears for its failure were as strong as their professions; but there is no record that they did anything more than “open books," and wait for the public to come and take shares in the Company, which the public did not do. The official report for 1836, and of the condition of the Company's affairs, was as follows : The work of grading the forty and a half miles in the Delaware Valley has been actively prosecuted during the year. The amount of work done amounted to $165,010.78, on which the company paid the contractors in cash $121,939.49. Except in ten instances, the people owning the land on that section ceded right of way, and the land the company needed, gratuitously. Legal proceedings before the Vice-Chancellor to condemn the lands were taken by the company, and the valuation as confirmed by them amounted to $3,105. The company has located a section of the road near the west side of the Hudson River, and extending into the same at or near Tappan Landing, in the town of Orange, in Rockland County, and commenced graduation of it. The company has paid on the account of the same during the year $4,000. Engineers have been revising the line, and particularly in surveying and examining with great care the several harbors on Lake Erie in the County of Chautauqua. These examinations have enabled the material shortening and straightening of the line and improvement of the grades of the road which will first approach the Lake at Dunkirk. January 31, 1837. JAMES G. KING, President. Report of the Receipts and Expenditures of the New York and Erie Railroad Company during the Year 1836. RECEIPTS. Balance on hand January 1, 1836. . . . Rent of offices in buildings No. 12 and From payment of money advanced for corps... .$187,742 62 .$22,122 50 6,968 91 740 14 360 00 $30,191 55 $217,934 17 |