Black Diamond Express (monthly magazine published by the Lehigh Valley Railroad) Vol. IX No. 1, Pages 7 through 18, January, 1905
Reminiscences, Heroic and Historic, of Early Days of the Lehigh Valley System in Southern and Central New York.
A glance at the last page f the cover of this magazine will show a network in miniature of the railroads known as the Lehigh Valley System. It extends from Manhattan and Perth Amboy through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York to Buffalo and and Lake Erie, to North Fair Haven on Lake Ontario, and to Camden near the Adirondacks.
Some world-trotter has christened its route through the mountains and Valleys of Pennsylvania - “The Switzerland of America.” Another has named its route through the Lake Region of New York “The Killarney of America” - titles that exhaust the language of scenic and geographical comparison. The lands over which a “through passenger” rides in a Lehigh Valley coach are both the highest and the lowest east of the Rocky Mountains.
The lakes and streams that line its route supply waters to the rivers that empty into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, New York, Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and the Gulf of Mexico. It is all historic territory.
It is the early history of the Lehigh Valley roads in this “Lake Region” that begin at the New York and Pennsylvania State Line, and radiate in various northerly directions that I select as a companion for the brief but intensely interesting chapter relating to the opening of the original Lehigh Valley Railroad published in these columns last May.
These New York branches were chartered between 1866 and 1872, and were often changed as they were extended and developed. Originally they were: The Southern Central Railroad, the Cayuga Lake Railroad, the Ithaca & Athens Railroad, the Geneva & Ithaca Railroad, the Ithaca & Cortland Railroad and the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad.
The Southern Central was opened to traffic in December, 1869, from Owego to Auburn. Its chief promoters and builders were Thomas. Platt of Owego; Jeremiah W. Dwight, of Dryden; Chauncey P. Rich, of Richford; Daniel H. Marsh, of Groton, and J. Lewis Grant, of Auburn, and it connected with the Lehigh ValleyRailroad at Waverly over the Erie tracks from Owego.
Otis E. Wood, of Ithaca first proposed the Ithaca & Cortland R. R. He was a brother-in-law of Ezra Cornell, who contributed his approval and support. Edward S. Esty, Charles M. Titus and H. P. Goodrich, of Cortland, and Gen. William L. Burt, of Boston (a native of Ithaca), joined Mr. Wood in his work. The road was chartered in 1869 and they obtained the consent of adjoining towns to bond for the road. The struggle was severe, but successful, for the fever had taken firm hold of the community.
Ezra Cornell was so profoundly interested in the development of his university that he personally took up the work of the road-bed contractors, who, financially distressed, had abandoned their partly completed work of construction. He invested in this road about $900,000, only $7,000 of which was repaid paid to him. Otis Wood made heroic efforts to push the road to Cortland, and he, too made personal sacrifices and today is proud of the part he performed in the enterprise.
The first time-table issued or published by this railroad appeared in local papers, this being a facsimile of one in the Ithaca Journal, January 3, 1871:
“ RAIL ROAD to ITHACA
and
CORNELL, UNIVERSITY,
Cars leave Auburn for Ithaca
over the Southern Central R.R.
at 8:30 A.M. and 3:45 P.M. DAILY
SUNDAYS EXCEPTED.
Fare from Auburn, including
carriage to Hotels and private
houses in Ithaca, $1.75
Freight delivered without charge
in all narrow gauge cars.
M. L. Wood, SUPT.
Ithaca & Cortland R.R.
Ithaca, January 1st, 1871”
Not a word or figure relating to the departure of any train from, nor arrival at Ithaca, nor any stopping place on the Ithaca & Cortland Road; nor of the time of connection with the Southern Central at Freeville. The first two lines contain the whole story and give expression to Ezra Cornell's ambition: a railroad to Ithaca and his university, to bring passengers to, not from, Ithaca and Cornell. It was not of much how they should leave Ithaca, nor when Ezra Cornell probably prepared that schedule for publication.
The depot was a 15 x 20 ft shanty near the present site of the Armory on the Cornell campus, on wooded and desolate plateau 40 feet above, and a mile from the village proper. Even the University was in its infancy, its doors having first opened to students in October, 1868
The Ithaca & Cortland Railroad was nicknamed “The Shoo Fly" for many years. After a brief period of operation this advertisement appear in the village press:
“TRAFFIC ON THE ITHACA & CORTLAND R.R. is discontinued. Our locomotive, the AMHERST, is disabled. Due notice will be given when it returns from the repair shops ready again for service.”
The road was then finished enough to be opened to Freeville, ten miles from Ithaca, where it made connection with the Southern Central from Ithaca, and eleven from Cortland, where it made connection with the Syracuse and Binghamton Railroad. But in view of other railroads then being built in and around Ithaca it was a grand achievement, and a promise of grander and greater, for Southern and Central New York.
The construction of the road from Ithaca to Elmira, and from Cortland to Canastota, was a repetition of the construction of the road to Cortland, with Joseph Rodbourn, of Breesport, Chemung County, and Sydney Fairchild, of Cazenovia, added to the list of active and influential promoters,: O. B. Curran, Ezra Cornell, Otis Wood, General Burt and H. P. Goodrich. Int was chartered in 1872 as the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira Railroad and included the Ithaca & Cortland road. It is now the Elmira, Cortland & Northern Branch of the Lehigh Valley R.R.
The charter of the Ithaca & Athens Railroad was granted in 1870. To the public general and to Ithaca it was the most important and most popular of them all. It was to be a direct and natural continuation of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and promised the most extensive benefits to Ithaca and its vicinity. Its leading promoters and builders were Lafayette L. Treman, Leonard Treman, Chauncey L. Grant, Ezra Cornell and George McChain of Ithaca, Amos Hixon, of Van Etten, John A. Nichols, of Spence, and Col. Charles Wells of Athens, Pa. They obtained the vote of various towns for bonding, and although much longer than the original Ithaca & Cortland, its construction was more rapid. Lafayette L. Treman was chosen secretary. He was a very popular merchant, successful industrial organizer and distinguished banker.
During the winter of 1870 and 1871 the above advertisement appeared in the Ithaca Journal.
In September, 1871, the following appeared in the same paper:
“ITHACA & ATHENS R.R. CO.
At the request of the Company’s directors a train for passengers and freight will leave Ithaca every morning at 8 o’clock and arrive at Athens at 11 o’clock; returning, leave Athens every afternoon at 5 o’clock, arriving at Ithaca at 7:45 o’clock while the road is being constructed.
C. W. CHURCH, Supt. for Contractors.”
The first passenger train that passed over the Ithaca & Athens Railroad was run under peculiar conditions. The president of the company, Chauncey L. Grant, and Secretary Treman, inspired y the prospects of an early completion of the road, authorized E. M. Treman, a son of the secretary, to compose and issue this invitation:
“ITHACA & ATHENS R. R.
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY,
ITHACA, July 20, 1871.
You are invited to become one of the passengers to ride in the first train that will run from Ithaca to Athens and return next week, Wednesday. It will be a jubilee train. This will pass you free.
Yours, etc.
L. L. TREMAN,
Secretary”
The train was made jun of coaches loaned by President Asa Packer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The contractors refused their consent to the running of the train, but the company disregarded the objection of the contractors. Men were stationed by the contractors at the switches along the road with instructions to run the train on the side tracks and prevent it from going over the road. But a posse on the train forced the men away from the switches and the trip was made in safety to the great satisfaction of all who were on the train.
The company and the contractors already entered into contentions that later resulted in the contractors suing the company for $500,000, the balance due upon the balance due upon the construction contract. General H. A. Dowe and his partner, B. G. Ferris, of Ithaca, were attorneys of record for the company, and Judge Maynard, of Williamsport, Pa., as counsel, tried the case for them in the court house in Towanda, Pennsylvania. It was a long trial, but before it was submitted or decision the contractors settled for $50,000.
The first passenger and freight depot of the Ithaca and Athens road was a 10 x 165 feet shanty. Its first locomotive was named after its president, Chauncey L. Grant, its second one for its director, Leonard Treman. The “C.L. Grant” was used for passenger runs by day and hauling freight at night. During a run one night, with a loaded train of old-fashioned, seven-ton coal jimmies, a jump jumped the track while the train was running slowly over the unfinished track and rough roadbed. Thomas McCarthy, the present Superintendent of Public Works of Ithaca and former Track-Master of the New York branches of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, was conductor on the coal train.
No tool, rope, chain, bar nor thing was on the train that could be used to replace the derailed coal car on the track. No farmhouse was in sight. Necessity and wit furnished a remedy. The train had been descending a hill. The locomotive, under Conductor McCarthy’s command, hauled the cars in front of the derailed car farther down the hill, yanking the car, bit by bit, a short distance with them.
The cars behind it were not moved until it was alone and at a safe distance behind the forward part of the train. The rear jimmies were then “cut loose” and started, with brakemen aboard, to ram the one car off the track. They sped down and struck it at the lucky angle and knocked it off the track down the embankment into the “ditch.” The rammer kept the track and were halted by the brakes. Conductor McCarthy, who was congratulated upon his inventive genius, made up his train and again proceeded to Ithaca.
Mr. McCarthy had been a foreman for the contractors an knew hoe they had performed their contract in constructing the road. The knowledge he used for the benefit of his new employers, the officials of the road, who had appointed him their first track-master.
During the trial, the cross-examiner for the contractors displayed his knowledge of railroad construction by attempting to prove by Mr. McCarthy, who was testifying as a wetness, that both ends of an iron rail were spiked to one tie. He contended that such must have been the manner of spiking rails. The presiding judge, which smiling face, assured him that he would not believe Mr. McCarthy if he made such a statement under oath.
The cross-examiner doubtless meant that two ends of two rails must have been spiked to one tie. The company’s witness on the trial, John Haden, who had been a water-boy in the employment of the contractors, and Mr. McCarthy testified that the grade-stakes has been manipulated, unknown to the company’s civil engineers, for the contractors, so that the roadbed was constructed on an average of nearly six inches lower than the grade named in the contract and fixed by the grade-stakes of the surveyors, but that the grade of the bridges was not changed by the contractors. This was carried on from East Waverly to Ithaca. Haden testified that he cut notches in the stakes six and eight inches above the surveyors’ notches and drove the stakes deeper in the ground the same distance. The contractors answered that they did not know the grade had been changed by their own or any men.
About the time of the running of the “Jubilee Train” on the Ithaca & Athens Railroad, the contracts were awarded for the construction of the roadbeds of the Geneva & Ithaca and the Cayuga Lake Railroads.
The Legislature granted a charter for a railroad from Ithaca to Geneva in 1832. Ebenezer Mack and other Ithacans procured it for the self-evident purpose of extending their Ithaca & Owego Railroad toward Buffalo, but that Ithaca & Geneva was never graded. Mr. Mack was giving his attention to the construction of railroad from Owego to the Hudson River at the base of the Catskill Mountains, in Green County, and to New York by another route. The Geneva & Ithaca Railroad became, as intended, an extension of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, forty years later.
Mr. Mack was elected to the State Senate in 1833, and served as Chairman of the Committee on Railroads until 1838. He proposed and, against great opposition, by Chairman Young of the Committee on Banks, and many other financiers, carried through both branches of the Legislature and obtained for its executive approval, a bill giving the credit and guarantee of the State for $3,000,000 to aid in building the Erie Railroad, during the panic that followed President Andrew Jackson’s battle with the banks.
Senator Mack advocated the construction of railroads to develop Southern New York as the Erie Canal was developing Northern New York, and to secure the act freight of the great West for New York common carriers.
He was founder of the Ithaca Journal (1816) and the ablest and most influential Democratic editor west of the Hudson River, and his paper was a powerful advocate of railroad development in general. He was an industrial organizer, a statesman, an eloquent debater, a crafty politician and leader of his party in the Legislature. Ill health prevented him from becoming governor of the State , and he refused the portfolio of State in President Van Buren’s cabinet for the same reason.
His memory is worthy of special regard in railroad centers forever. He retired from public office in 1838 and, ten years later, passed away, aged 57. His last years were devoted to the quiet and pleasant pursuit of agriculture and literature in a magnificent residence he erected high above Ithaca which gave him unobstructed view of the tablelands, valleys, lake and streams that are famous world over. His daughter was married to Lafayette L. Treman.
Charles M. Titus, Ezra Cornell, John Rumsey, of Ithaca; Nelson Noble, of Trumansburg; R. R. Steele, of Romulus, and a lawyer named McDonald, of Geneva, were chief promoters and builders of the Geneva & Ithaca Railroad, chartered in 1870. President Titus was an enthusiast and an influential citizen, but tis railroad becoming involved in the general railroad and financial distress preceding Black Friday, before it was half built, proposed to his directors to construct the bridges over its many gulfs and ravines with the bonds of the company.
The directors ridiculed the proposition as impossible. They had almost decided, like the Sodus Bay directors, to abandon further work on the road, but he cheered their sunken hopes by saying: “It will cost you nothing. Let me try it. Only pass resolution giving me authority.” The resolution was passed. He went to Philadelphia and convinced the most successful bridge companies in that city that the industrial interests of Pennsylvania were to be among the chief beneficiaries of the line that was being extended from Athens to Geneva, and that they must soon find terminals at the Great Lakes.
“We never have taken railroad bonds in payment for our bridges,” they answered his apparently audacious proposition, “but we will do so for you.” They constructed the bridges and accepted bonds of the road for payment. The bridge companies, as creditors, were the leading bidders for the road against Asa Packer when Receiver Wilbur, of Waverly, sold it in front of the Tompkins House in Ithaca. Their bid was $110,000 and his $E100,000. They withdrew their bid and bluff and Packer made a new bid for $50,000 and, it being the only bid left standing, he was given the roads and paid cash for them to the receiver, on the spot.
President Titus, as an individual, purchased the new passenger coaches operated on his road, as the company could not, but he sold them later to the Lehigh Valley R. R.
The first locomotive constructed for the road was named "Charles M. Titus,” and he was so admired by the new owners of the roads that he was elected vice-president, Robert A. Packer being president, after their sales by the receiver and their consolidation; but he had more
railroad experience than he desired and declined to accept the position. He had also been a director of the Ithaca & Cortland in 1867, was built close to the east shore of the lake for thirty-eight miles, and the roadbed was washed out by the waves, mile after mile, annually, in the spring, which caused long delays in general traffic in addition to ruinous expense for refilling the bed and relaying the new track. The road soon ceased to meet its financial obligations, foreclosure followed, and the road was purchased at a forced sale by Lehigh Valley financiers, and added to the Lehigh Valley System. One small depot, near the Cayuga Inlet, was then made to serve three consolidated roads: The Geneva & Ithaca, the Ithaca & Athens and the Cayuga Lake.
The Cayuga Lake roadbed was then given permanent protection by its new owners who constructed a costly riprap of rocks against which the waters of the lake have dashed harmlessly for many years. Henry Morgan, his brother Col. Edwin D. Morgan, Talmage Delafield, of Aurora
and Leonard Treman were principal promoters of this road. It is the only railroad reaching
Ithaca that has a perfectly level grade its entire length, from Ithaca to Cayuga and to Auburn.
Ezra Cornell did not aid in its promotion nor did Ithaca bond for it, as he opposed any movement that would cause interference with steamer traffic on Cayuga Lake.
Asa Packer and his associates rendered these new railroad promoters and builders encouragement and aid in many ways. His own Lehigh Valley road was too well founded and too solid in its finances to be seriously disturbed by the panic that opened up to him the
golden opportunity which he so wisely accepted. The logic of railroad events made him a friend of our new and bankrupt roads; our people became his friends and were willing that the
roads should fall into such strong and friendly hands. It is not easy to any mistake made in the building of the roads, the benefits already received from them have compensated the builders well for all they cost. We still feel that they are our roads, the people's roads, and still near and dear to us.
Not one of their promoters was an experienced railroad man; they were leaders in their communities, “captains” in commercial, industrial and agricultural affairs. They inspired public sentiment to demand the railroads and the towns and villages to bond them. Mechanics, laboring men and farmers joined capitalists in subscribing for the bonds.
The railroad fever struck hard in Central and Southern New York, but it struck hardest in Ithaca and the vicinity, notwithstanding the fact that the old Ithaca & Owego R. R, the second
railroad chartered in the State (1828) and one of the first two railroads constructed and operated in America (it would have been the first had it not been so much longer than the other)
continued in operation. It was inspired and promoted mainly by Editor and Senator Ebenezer Mack, of Ithaca, to connect the Erie Canal traffic with the Susquehanna River via the port of Ithaca. Pennsylvanians promising to channel that river, for commercial purposes, to Baltimore; a promise never honored.
The little seventeen mile Mohawk & Hudson between Albany and Schenectady was chartered in 1836, and its charter amended in 1828. The Railroad Commissioners of New York, in their published reports of New York railroads and their charters, give the year 1828 as its charter year, but the Session laws of 1826 contain that charter.
It is now asserted by one of the oldest living inhabitants of Ithaca that at least part of the Ithaca & Owego R. R. was in operation as early as was the Schenectady & Albany RR. Ithaca, an original and pioneer railroad town, was made a railroad center by the construction and operation of the new railroads that form the New York L. V. System.
Ebenezer Mack. From a painting by Charles Merrill, of the art and painting department of Cornell University; now published for the first time.
Three other new railroads were in process of construction at this period in the same territory. The New York & Oswego Midland, the Sodus Bay & Athens and the Auburn & Homer Midland. The Oswego Midland skirted Ithaca territory on the east, part of its abandoned roadbed being put into use by the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira management, east of Cortland. The Sodus Bay roadbed was perfected from Spencer, N. Y., to Seneca Falls, almost paralleling the Geneva & Ithaca and the Ithaca & Athens roads, and via the same counties, avoiding the “hills” of the Cayuga valley by following the tableland a few miles west of Ithaca. Rails were never laid on the Sodus Bay roadbed, although the usual signs “Look out for the Cars," were erected along the line, and it is now reverting to the owners of farms through which it was built, according to the origin agreements. John Rumsey's work as a promoter and director of the Geneva & Ithaca road was powerful. He discouraged and “killed off” the completion of the Sodus Bay road and saved the life of his own road. Mr. Titus offered the Sodus Bay R. R. promoters control of his road if
would build it through Ithaca, but they were obstinate and refused the offer.
Trains ran for several years on the Auburn Midland road from Auburn to Freeville; but it was abandoned because the Southern Central and the Cayuga Lake roads paralleled it on either side, and only a few miles distant. It had been purchased by the Lehigh Valley R. R. Co.
Part of a roadbed built in the late “forties” and early “fifties,” and known as the “Murdock Line” ( Lake Ontario, Auburn & New York) - running along the brow of the “hill” east of Ithaca from Cayuga County, to connect with the old Ithaca & Owego R. R., at a station in Caroline, eight miles from Ithaca - was utilized by the builders of the Utica, Ithaca & Elmira R. R. The “Murdock Line” was probably the Ithaca & Auburn R. R. in 1836. The Ithaca & Owego was re-chartered in 1843 under the name of Cayuga & Susquehanna R. R. Lyman Murdock of Venice Center was the champion of the Lake Ontario, Auburn & New York.
Hundreds of cords of first-class ties rotted in piles along the roadbed in Caroline after the road was abandoned. They were never distributed or laid. Some of the creek and sluice bridges of the Murdock road remain in good condition and in public use in the highways.
The Ithaca & Port Renwick R. R., chartered in 1834 and the Ithaca & Chemung R.R., chartered in 1837, were never built except upon map and chart. The railroad fever of that period had spent its forced.
Thomas C. Platt and Lafayette L. Treman were credited with having been the mental forces that led these railroads into the Lehigh Valley System and from the control of amateur owners and managers and from possible abandonment. They all went through receivership sales or foreclosures upon defaults in mortgage or bond obligations, the Southern Central possibly excepted.
Ezra Cornell invested $2,000,000 in the roads. He died in December, 1874, overwhelmed with the work and havoc wrought by Black Friday, his university also struggling for its life in the general financial disaster. Able and crafty financiering by is son, Franklin C. Cornell, as administrator of his estate, saved about $560,000 from the $2,000,000. It was paid by President Packer for the Cornell interests in the Geneva & Ithaca and Ithaca & Athens roads. The crafty and unjust means used in securing a $700,000 judgment against Ezra Cornell for alleged infringement of a patent justified his son’s resort to craft to thwart its collection.
His success was great and the estate was thereby saved from practical bankruptcy. He settled the $7y00,000 judgment by paying the judgment credit’s lawyer, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, $E45,000. Gen. Butler was ignorant of the ownership of the state of any railroad securities worth a dollar. Of course the administrator did not inform him of such ownership.
Black Friday annexed 189 miles more trackage to the Lehigh Valley R. R. in New York in the manner I have described. Those 189 miles have increased to upwards of 600 miles, in New York.
The Black Diamond Express now speeds through the Lehigh, Wyoming and Cayuga valleys twice each day and thus makes neighbors in many towns and cities between Manhattan and Buffalo. Charles M. Titus and Otis E. Wood, still living, have dreams of bygone years and of the mean who aided them in making her course through Ithaca possible, the men who have nearly all passed away, but left noble monuments behind them. Peace to their ashes; gratitude to their achievements; honor to their memories. They sowed but reap the harvest.
T. W. Burns
