[1]The Museum catalog numbers of these are, respectively, USNM 180149,
209826, 180030-A and 277700, and 180030-B.
[2]Davis and Gartner have an earlier claim to engineering fame, for in
conjunction with John Elgar they had constructed in York, in 1825,
the first American-built vessel with a metal hull, the sheet-iron
steamboat _Codorus_.
[3]Although he spelled his name Gartner, and it appears in that form in
the early annual reports of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Co.,
and in all subsequent histories of that road, his tombstone (in lot
34, section H of the Prospect Hill Cemetery in York, Pa.) bears the
name in its Anglicized form, Israel Gardner.
[4]The correct name of the builder of the _Rocket_, according to Dendy
Marshall, was Braithwaite, Milner and Co. The two brass maker’s
plates on the opposite sides of the front of the locomotive’s boiler
read “Braithwaite & Co./ London./ March 1838.” However, as they are
of the same size and shape as the shop plates of the Philadelphia
and Reading in the early 1890’s, and as there was no plate on the
locomotive in the late 1880’s (see figure 51), it is quite likely
that these plates are not original with the locomotive. They were
probably made and installed at the time it was refurbished for
exhibition at Chicago in 1893.
[5]Railroads are known not to have existed in Mexico prior to 1850, and
although locomotives of the 1825-1849 period could possibly have
found their way into that country at some later date, none are to be
found there today, according to advice from the Mexican National
Railways (Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Mexico). Central America falls
outside the scope of this work, as do the Islands of the Caribbean.
However, a railroad was opened in Cuba in 1837, and another was
started across the Isthmus of Panama in 1849 and completed in 1855
(its first locomotive was received soon after the midcentury mark
had been passed), so there is the remote possibility that somewhere
in this area the remains of a pre-1850 locomotive could exist.
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing
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