THE UTICA & BLACK RIVER
The beginnings of the Utica & Black River Railroad go away back to
1852--the year of the real completion and opening of the Watertown & Rome.
The fact that not only could that line be built successfully, but that
there would come to it immediately a fine flow of traffic was not without
its effect upon the staunch old city of Utica, which had felt rather
bitterly about the loss, to its smaller neighbor, Rome, of the prestige of
being the gateway city to the North Country. From the beginning Utica had
been that gateway. Long ago we read of the fine records that were made on
the old post-road from Utica through Martinsburgh and Watertown to
Sackett's Harbor. The Black River valley was the logical pathway to the
Northern Tier. The people who dwelt there felt that God had made it so.
And now the infamy had come to pass that a new man-built highway had
ignored it completely; had passed far to the west of it.
Spurred by such feelings, stung by a new-found feeling of isolation, the
people of Lewis County held a mass meeting on a December evening in 1852,
at Lowville, to which their county-seat had already been moved from
Martinsburgh, but two miles distant. They set the fire to a popular
feeling that already demanded a railroad through the natural easy
gradients of the valley of the Black River. The blaze of indignation
spread. Within a fortnight similar meetings were held at Boonville and at
Theresa. And within a few months the Black River Railroad Company was
organized at the first of these towns with a capital of $1,200,000 and
Herkimer, in the valley of the Mohawk, was designated as its probably
southern terminal.
Once again Utica writhed in civic anguish. But in three days gave answer
to this proposed, second blow to her prestige by the organization of the
Black River & Utica Railroad, with a capital of $1,000,000--a tentative
figure of course. As an evidence of her good faith she raised a cash fund
for the employment of Daniel C. Jenney to survey a route for her own
railroad, north and straight through to French Creek (about to become the
present village of Clayton) one hundred miles distant.
To this move Rome replied. Having acquired a new and exclusive prestige,
she was quite unwilling that it should be lost, or even dimmed. She
called attention to the fact that she was, in her own eyes, of course, the
logical gateway to the Black River country, as well as to the eastern
shore of Lake Ontario, to which the Watertown & Rome already led. There
was a natural pass that rested just behind her that led to Boonville and
the upper waters of the Black River. Had not this natural route been
recognized some years before by the builders of the Black River Canal, who
readily had chosen it for the waterway, which to this day remains in
operation through it?
Rome felt that her argument was quite irrefutable. To support it, however,
she pledged herself to furnish terminal grounds for the new line at $250
an acre, in addition to subscribing $450,000 to the stock and bonds of the
company. Money talks. Utica came back with an offer of terminal lands at
$200 an acre and proffered a subscription of $650,000 to the securities of
the Black River & Utica. A meeting was held. The mooted question of a
southern terminal was put to vote. Rome and Utica tied with twenty-two
votes each; Herkimer, despite her suggestion of the valley of Canada Creek
as a natural pathway for the new line north to the watershed of the Black
River, had but two votes. She promptly withdrew from the contest.
Money does talk. Eventually Utica had the terminal of the Black River
road, even though the noble Romans, retiring to their camp in a blue funk
for a time threatened a rival line straight north from their town to
Boonville and beyond. They went so far as to incorporate this company; as
the Ogdensburgh, Clayton & Rome. The promoters of the Black River & Utica
having planned to locate their line in the low levels of the flats of the
river, the Rome group said that they would build _their_ road upon the
higher level, rather closely paralleling the ancient state highway and so
making especial appeal to the towns along it, which felt miffed at the
indifference of the Utica group to them.
In the long run, as we all know, the road was built along the low level of
the Black River valley, and many of the once thriving towns along the
State Road left stranded high and dry. The road from Rome became a memory.
From time to time the suggestion has been revived, however--in my boyhood
days we had the fine classical suggestion of the Rome & Carthage Railroad
all ready for incorporation--but there is little prospect now that such a
road will ever be built. The times are not propitious now for that sort of
enterprise.
* * * * *
Ground was broken at Utica for the new Black River line on August 27,
1853. There was a deal of ceremony to the occasion; no less a personage
than the distinguished Governor Horatio Seymour, being designated to make
remarks appropriate to it. And, as was the custom in those days for such
an event, there was a parade, music by the bands and other appropriate
festivities. Construction, in the hands of Contractor J. S. T. Stranahan,
of Brooklyn, went ahead with great briskness. Within two years the line
had been builded over the hard rolling country of the upper Canada
Creek--it included the crossing of a deep gully near Trenton Falls by a
high trestle (subsequently replaced by a huge embankment)--to Boonville,
thirty-five miles distant from Utica.
This much done, the Black River & Utica subsided and became apparently a
semi-dormant enterprise--for a number of long years. The promises which
its promoters had made to have the line completed to Clayton by the first
of July, 1855, apparently were forgotten. These had been made at a mass
meeting of the enthusiastic proponents of the Ogdensburgh, Clayton & Rome,
held at Constableville on the evening of Monday, August 22, 1853. They
were definite, and the Rome crowd under them badly worsted. But promises
were as easily made in those days as in these. As easily accepted ... and
as easily broken.
* * * * *
In 1857, the Black River & Utica Railroad was operating a single passenger
train a day, between Utica and Boonville. It left Boonville at eight
o'clock in the morning and arrived at Utica at 10:20 a. m. The return run
left Utica at 4:00 p. m. and arrived at Boonville at 6:20 p. m.
Seventy-five cents was charged to ride from Utica to Trenton and $1.25
from Utica to Boonville. The little road then had four locomotives, the
_T. S. Faxton_, the _J. Butterfield_, the _Boonville_ and the _D. C.
Jenney_. The _Faxton_ hauled the passenger train, and a young man from
Boonville, who also owned a coal-yard there, was its conductor. His name
was Richard Marcy and afterwards he was to come to prominent position, not
only as exclusive holder of its coal-selling franchise for a number of
years, but also as a politician of real parts.
In 1858, the little road doubled its passenger service. Now there were two
passenger trains a day in each direction. And each was at least fairly
well-filled, for the Black River & Utica held as its supreme attraction
Trenton Falls. Indeed, if it had not been for the prominence of Trenton
Falls as a resort in those years, it is quite probable that a good many
folk in the State of New York would never have even heard of it.
[Illustration: THE BIRTH OF THE U. & B. R. The Boonville Passenger Train
Standing in the Utica Station, Away Back in 1865.]
But Trenton Falls--Trenton Falls of the sixties, of the fifties--all the
way back to the late twenties, if you please--here was a place to be
reckoned! All the great travelers of the early half of the last
century--European as well as American--made a point of visiting it. The
most of them wrote of it in their memoirs. That indefatigable tourist, N.
P. Willis, could not miss this exquisitely beautiful place--alas, in these
late days, the exquisitely beautiful place has fallen under the vandal
hands of power engineers, and the exquisite beauty no longer is. Trenton
Falls is but a memory. Yet the record of its one-time magnificence still
remains.
"... The company of strangers at Trenton is made somewhat select by the
expense and difficulty of access," wrote Willis, late in the fifties. The
Black River & Utica had then barely been opened through to the Falls.
"Most who come stay two or three days, but there are usually boarders here
who stay for a longer time.... Nothing could be more agreeable than the
footing upon which these chance-met residents and their daily accessions
of newcomers pass their evenings and take strolls up the ravine together;
and for those who love country air and romantic rambles without 'dressing
for dinner' or waltzing by a band, this is 'a place to stay.' These are
not the most numerous frequenters of Trenton, however. It is a very
popular place of resort from every village within thirty miles; and from
ten in the morning until four in the afternoon there is gay work with the
country girls and their beaux--swinging under trees, strolling about in
the woods near the house, bowling, singing, and dancing--at all of which
(owing, perhaps to a certain gypsy-ish promiscuosity of my nature that I
never could aristocrify by the keeping of better company) I am delighted
to be, at least, a looker-on. The average number of these visitors from
the neighborhood is forty or fifty a day, so that breakfast and tea are
the nearest approach to 'dress meals'--the dinner, though profuse and
dainty in its fare, being eaten in what is commonly thought to be rather
'mixed society.' I am inclined to think that, from French intermixture, or
some other cause, the inhabitants of this region are a little peculiar in
their manners. There is an unconsciousness or carelessness of others'
observation and presence that I have hitherto seen only abroad. We have
songs, duets and choruses, sung here by village girls, within the last few
days, in a style that drew all in the house to listen very admiringly; and
even the ladies all agree that there have been very pretty girls day
after day among them. I find they are Fourierites to the extent of common
hair-brush and other personal furniture--walking into anybody's room for
the temporary repairs which belles require on their travels, and availing
themselves of whatever was therein, with a simplicity, perhaps, a little
transcendental. I had obtained the extra privilege for myself of a small
dressing room apart, for which I presumed the various trousers and other
merely masculine belongings would be protective scarecrows sufficient to
keep out these daily female invaders, but, walking in yesterday, I found
my combs and brushes in active employ, and two very tidy looking girls
making themselves at home without shutting the door and no more disturbed
by my _entree_ than if I had been a large male fly. As friends were
waiting I apologized for intruding long enough to take a pair of boots
from under their protection, but my presence was evidently no
interruption. One of the girls (a tall figure, like a woman in two
syllables connected by a hyphen at the waist) continued to look at the
back of her dress in the glass, and the other went on threading her most
prodigal chevelure with my doubtless very embarrassed though unresisting
hair-brush, and so I abandoned the field, as of course I was expected to
do ... I do not know that they would go to the length of 'fraternizing'
one's tooth-brush, but with the exception of locking up that rather
confidential article, I give in to the customs of the country, and have
ever since left open door to the ladies...."
We have drifted away for the moment from the railroad. I wanted to show,
through Mr. Willis's observant eyes, the Northern New York of the day that
the Black River & Utica was first being builded. One other excerpt has
observed the various sentiments, sacred and profane, penciled about the
place and its excellent hotel and concludes:
"... Farther off ... a man records the arrival of himself 'and servant,'
below which is the following inscription:
"'G. Squires, wife and two babies. No servant, owing to the hardness of
the times.'
"And under this again;
"'G. W. Douglas, and servant. No wife and babies, owing to the hardness of
the times.'"
* * * * *
The tremendous popularity of Trenton Falls in those early days was a vast
aid to the slender passenger possibilities of the early Black River &
Utica. There was not much else for it south of Boonville. True it was that
at that thriving village it tapped the fairly busy Black River Canal
which led down to the navigable upper waters of that river. Yet this was
hardly satisfactory to the progressive folk of the Black River valley.
They kept the project alive. And once when the old company's continued
existence became quite hopeless they helped effect a complete
reorganization of it, under the title of the Utica & Black River. This was
formally accomplished, March 31, 1860. As the Utica & Black River, the new
railroad came, upon its completion into the North Country, into a season
of continued prosperity. It did not share the vast reversals of fortune of
its larger competitor, the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. Through all the
years of its complete operation as a separate railroad it never missed its
six per cent dividends. It was a delight, both to its owners and to the
communities it served.
* * * * *
The Black River road thrust itself into Lowville in the fall of 1868. Four
years later it had reached Carthage. The next year it was at the bank of
the St. Lawrence, at Clayton. And before the end of the following year it
again touched with its rails the shore of that great river; at both
Morristown and Ogdensburgh. As railroads went, in those days, it was at
last a through-route; with important connections at both of its
terminals. At Utica it had fine shop and yard facilities adjoining the
tracks of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, whose venerable
passenger station it shared. And, when at one time, it sought a close
personal connection for itself with the Ontario & Western there, it
builded an expensive bridge connection over the New York Central tracks.
This bridge is now gone, but the piers remain.
At both Clayton and Ogdensburgh the Black River road possessed fine
waterside terminals. Its station in the latter city still stands; for many
years it has been the local storage warehouse of Armour & Co., of Chicago.
* * * * *
In the busy months that the Utica & Black River was building its line up
through Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, a railroad was being builded
from it at Carthage down the lower valley of the Black River to Watertown
and to Sackett's Harbor. This was distinctly a local enterprise; the
Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, financed and built almost entirely
by Watertownians and retaining its separate corporate existence until but
a few years ago. It was inspired not only by the great success of the
Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh at that time, but by the quite natural
desire of the one really industrial city of the North Country to have
competitive railroad service. There have been few times when there were
not in Watertown a generous plenty of men who stood ready to put their
hands deep into their pockets in order to promote an enterprise whose
value seemed so obvious and so genuinely important to the town.
So it was then that the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's Harbor first came
into its existence, there at the extreme end of the sixties; in the very
year that Watertown itself was first becoming a city. Its officers and
directors as it was first organized were as follows:
_President_, GEORGE B. PHELPS, Watertown
_Secretary and Treasurer_, LOTUS INGALLS, Watertown
_Engineer_, F. A. HINDS, Watertown
_Directors_
George P. Phelps, Watertown
Lotus Ingalls, Watertown
Norris Winslow, Watertown
Pearson Mundy, Watertown
L. D. Doolittle, Watertown
George H. Sherman, Watertown
George A. Bagley, Watertown
Hiram Converse, Watertown
Theodore Canfield, Sackett's Harbor
Walter B. Camp, Sackett's Harbor
David Dexter, Black River
William N. Coburn, Carthage
Alexander Brown, Carthage
A little later Mr. Hinds was succeeded as the road's Engineer, by L. B.
Cook also of Watertown. And eventually Mr. Bagley succeeded Mr. Phelps,
as its President, George W. Knowlton, becoming its Vice-President.
* * * * *
To encourage the new line, which it prepared itself to operate, the Utica
& Black River made quite a remarkable contract. Shorn of its verbiage it
agreed to give the C. W. & S. H. forty per cent of the gross revenue that
should arise upon the line. This contract in a very few years arose to
bedevil the railroad situation in the North Country. As the paper industry
began to expand there, and huge mills to multiply along the lower reaches
of the Black River, this contract grew irksome indeed to the U. & B. R. R.
Finally it sought to modify its terms, very greatly. The Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor, quite naturally refused. "After all," it
said, through its President, the late George A. Bagley, "what is a
contract but--a contract?"
The Utica road pressed its point. It finally went down to New York and
gained a promise from Roswell P. Flower that the agreement would be
greatly mollified, if not abrogated. It did seem absurd that a carload of
paper moving eighteen miles from Watertown to Carthage and seventy-five
from Carthage to Utica should pay forty per cent of its charges to the
road upon which it had moved but eighteen miles. Yet, a contract is a
contract.
Governor Flower went up to Watertown and put the matter before the
officers and directors of the C. W. & S. H. But, led by the stout-hearted
Bagley, they refused to move, a single inch.
"I've given my promise," stormed Roswell P. Flower, "that you would do the
right thing in this matter. And in New York I am known as a man who always
keeps his word."
Bagley said nothing. The meeting ended abruptly--in all the bitterness of
disagreement. The Utica & Black River decided upon a master stroke; it
would terminate paying its rental, based chiefly on this forty per cent
division to its leased road. That would cause trouble. The Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor was, itself, liable to its bondholders, for
the mortgage that they held against it. It would have to pay their
interest. Without receiving its rental money from the Black River road it
would be hard pressed indeed to meet these coupons. It looked as if it
might have to go into receivership, even though at that moment its stock
had reached well above par.
The situation was saved for it by a New York banking house, Vermilye &
Company, who sent a lawyer up to Watertown who examined the famous
contract and pronounced it perfectly valid. The Vermilye's then announced
their willingness to advance the C. W. & S. H. the money to meet its
interest charges--for an indefinite period. After which the Black River
people came down a peg or two and bought the stock and bonds of their
leased road, at par. While the city of Watertown and some of its adjoining
communities possessed of a sudden and unexpected wealth refunded a portion
of their taxes for a year or two.
Mr. Bagley had won his point. He had the reward of a good deed well
performed. He had another reward. His salary as President of the Carthage,
Watertown & Sackett's Harbor had remained unpaid; for a number of years.
He collected back pay from the Black River settlement; for several years
at the rate of $15,000 a year.
* * * * *
I have anticipated. We are building the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's
Harbor, not, as yet, operating it. The construction of the line began late
in the year of 1870, westward from Carthage, its base of supplies. The
road from Watertown to the Harbor--eleven miles--was constructed in the
following summer. After a disagreeable fight with the R. W. & O., its main
line finally was crossed at grade at Mill Street, closely adjacent to the
passenger stations of the two rival roads and, after following the
embankment for a mile, once again at Watertown Junction. Its entrance
into the Harbor was accomplished over the right-of-way of the former
Sackett's Harbor & Ellisburgh, which had been abandoned a decade before.
It utilized the old depot there.
George W. Flower, the first Mayor of Watertown, who we have already seen
in these pages, had the contract for the building of this section of the
line. He rented a locomotive from his competitor and obtained the loan of
engineer, Frank W. Smith. For himself, he kept oversight over the progress
from the saddle seat of a fine horse that he possessed.
This section of the road was completed and ready for operation early in
'74. But because of certain legal complications the Utica & Black River
refused to accept it at once. A large celebration had been planned at the
Harbor for the Fourth of July that year and rather than disappoint the
folk who wanted to go down to it, Mr. Flower took his leased locomotive
and hitched behind it a long line of flat contractor's cars, equipped with
temporary wooden benches. His improvised excursion train did a good
business and he realized a comfortable sum from the haulage of both
passengers and freight before the line was turned over to the Utica &
Black River for operation.
The first passenger station of that line in Watertown was in a former
brick residence in Factory Street, just beyond the junction with Mill. It
was small, not overclean and most inconvenient. But a few years later, the
U. & B. R. built the handsome passenger station at the Northeast corner of
Public Square which for many years now has been the office and
headquarters of the Marcy, Buck & Riley Company. Its original brick
freight-house nearby--afterwards relieved by the construction of a most
substantial stone freight-house at the foot of Court Street--still stands.
Back of it a block or so was the round-house. I remember that round-house
well. It was a favorite resort of mine through some extremely tender years
of youth.
* * * * *
I have not set down the earliest lists of officers of the Utica road. They
are not particularly germane to this record. It is, perhaps, enough for it
to know that, with the exception of the Carthage, Watertown & Sackett's
Harbor--which, as we have just seen, was financed chiefly by the Flowers,
the Knowltons, George A. Bagley and George B. Phelps, of Watertown--the U.
& B. R. as reorganized, was constructed and managed almost exclusively by
Uticans--John Thorn, Isaac Maynard, Theodore Faxon and John
Butterfield--and New Yorkers--Robert Lenox Kennedy, John J. Kennedy (who
afterwards had a prominent role in the early financing of the Canadian
Pacific) and others.
Charles Millar was the first Superintendent of the road. He was succeeded,
along about 1865, by Hugh Crocker, who a couple of years later was killed
while in the cab of a locomotive running between Lyons Falls and Glendale.
It was in the season of high water and the Black River was following its
usual springtime custom of overflowing the flats of the upper valley. The
railroad was fresh and green and young. The water undermined its
embankments and sent Crocker's locomotive tumbling over upon its side; and
Crocker to his death. J. D. Schultz, who still is residing in Glendale and
who is one of the best-known of the pioneers of the old R. W. & O. in his
own arms carried young Crocker's body out of the wreck. It was a most
pathetic incident. Yet it is a remarkable fact, and one well worth
recording here, that in its entire thirty-one years of operation not one
passenger was killed while riding upon the Utica & Black River.
The unfortunate Crocker was succeeded by Addison Day, who we already have
seen upon the R. W. & O. as an early and distinguished Superintendent. A
little later Thomas W. Spencer, who had been the Construction Engineer of
the road, replaced Day, and in 1872, J. Fred Maynard, son of Isaac Maynard
of Utica, assumed the operating management of the road, first with the
title of Superintendent and eventually as its Vice-President and General
Manager. He remained in that post through the remainder of the operating
existence of the road.
* * * * *
Steadily the Black River sought to improve its service. As it succeeded in
so doing it became more and more of a thorn in the side of the R. W. & O.
It touched that system at three points only--but they were important
points. It was a slightly longer route into Watertown from the New York
Central's main stem, but considerably shorter to both Philadelphia--where
it crossed the R. W. & O. at a precise right-angle--and Ogdensburgh. At
the first of these two last towns it developed an irritating habit of
holding its trains until the Rome road train had come, in hopes of luring
Ogdensburgh passengers away from it and getting them in to their
destination at an earlier hour than they had hoped. Several times it was
suggested that the roads pool their interests and work in harmony. For one
reason or another this was accomplished but once--the R. W. & O.
management almost always opposed such plans. It apparently preferred to
play the lone hand.
The Utica & Black River had a very considerable tourist advantage in
reaching the St. Lawrence River at Clayton, in the very heart of the
Thousand Island district, instead of at Cape Vincent, which was rather
remote from the large hotel and cottage sections. It established its own
boat connections with the _John Thorn_, as the flagship of its fleet.
John Thorn's name and personality were again reflected in a fine
coal-burning, Schenectady-built locomotive, which also bore his name (the
U. & B. R. in those days had a decided penchant for the engines that the
Ellises were building at Schenectady). Its motive-power was almost always
in the pink of condition, brightly painted like its cars, which bore the
same shade of yellow upon their sides that had been borrowed from the Lake
Shore & Michigan Southern. Like the R. W. & O., the locomotives were all
named. In addition to the _John Thorn_, there were the _Isaac Maynard_,
the _DeWitt C. West_ (named after a resident of Lowville, who was an early
president of the road), the _Theodore Faxton_, the _Fred S. Easton_, the
_Charles Millar_, the _John Butterfield_, the _J. F. Maynard_, the _Ludlow
Patton_, the _A. G. Brower_, the _Lewis Lawrence_, the _D. B. Goodwin_,
and others too. The road at the end of the seventies had a fleet of about
twenty locomotives.
There was one time, at least, when the upkeep of the motive power suffered
a real shock. I am referring to the noisy way in which the road entered
Watertown, by the explosion of the locomotive _Charles Millar_, No. 4,
near the Mill Street crossing there on May 9, 1872. It was one of the few
accidents, however, in the entire history of the Utica & Black River.
Augustus Unser, better known as "Gus" Unser, of Watertown was at that time
engineer of the _Millar_, which was one of the earliest wood-burners that
the road ever possessed--it did not begin the installation of coal grates
until 1874. Unser was standing in the cab at the moment of the explosion,
talking to Jacob H. Herman--better known as "Jake" Herman--who was at that
time conductor on the Rome road.
Without the slightest warning came the explosion. There was a terrific
roar and a crash, followed by a rain of small engine parts over a goodly
portion of Watertown. Fortunately neither Unser nor Herman were seriously
injured. An investigation into the cause of the wreck, which tore the
_Millar_ into an unrecognizable mass of metal, failed to develop the cause
of the accident. It was generally supposed, however, that the engine-crew
had permitted the water in the boiler to fall below the level of the
crown-sheet.
* * * * *
Back of the highly developed and independent Utica & Black River of a
decade later there stood a pretty well developed human organization. John
Thorn was its President; the head and front of its aggressive and alert
policy. The full official roster was, in 1882:
_President_, JOHN THORN, Utica
_Vice-Pres. and Gen'l Man'g'r_, J. F. MAYNARD, Utica
_Treasurer_, ISAAC MAYNARD, Utica
_Secretary_, W. E. HOPKINS, Utica
_Gen'l Supt._, E. A. VAN HORNE, Utica
_Asst. Supt._, H. W. HAMMOND, Utica
_Gen. Pass. and Fgt. Agent_, THEO. BUTTERFIELD, Utica
_Directors_
Robt. L. Kennedy, New York
John Thorn, Utica
Abijah J. Williams, Utica
Isaac Maynard, Utica
Lewis Lawrence, Utica
William J. Bacon, Utica
Edmund A. Graham, Utica
Theodore S. Sayre, Utica
Abram G. Brower, Utica
Russell Wheeler, Utica
J. F. Maynard, Utica
Daniel B. Goodwin, Waterville
Fred S. Easton, Lowville
* * * * *
The final thrust of the Utica & Black River into the sides of its older
competitor, whilst that competitor was still in the anguish of the Sloan
administration of its affairs, came in the ferry row up at Ogdensburgh. By
1880 the once-brisk lake trade of that port had fallen to low levels. The
fourteen-foot locks of the Welland Canal, between Lakes Ontario and Erie
had failed utterly to keep pace with the development of carriers upon the
upper Lakes. The steamers that still came to the elaborate piers of the
old Northern Railroad at Ogdensburgh--for many years now, the Ogdensburgh
& Lake Champlain--were comparatively small and infrequent. Buffalo was a
more popular and a more accessible port. And yet the time had been when
the Northern Railroad had had a daily service between Chicago and
Ogdensburgh; some fifteen staunch steamers in its fleet.
One most important form of water-borne traffic has always remained at
Ogdensburgh, however; the ferry route across the St. Lawrence to Prescott
upon the Canadian shore just opposite. Prescott is not only upon the old
main line of the Grand Trunk Railway but also has a direct railroad
connection with Ottawa by a branch of the Canadian Pacific (formerly the
Ottawa and St. Lawrence). The original boat upon this route was a small
three-car craft, the _Transit_, which was owned in Prescott. In the
mid-seventies this steamer was supplanted by the staunch steam car-ferry,
_William Armstrong_, whose whistle was reputed to be the loudest and the
most awful thing ever heard on inland waters anywhere. The _Armstrong_
speedily became one of the fixtures of Ogdensburgh. Twice she sank, under
excessive loading, and twice she was again raised and replaced in service.
In 1919 she was sold to a firm of contractors at Trenton, Ont., and she is
still in use as a drill-boat in the vicinity of that village. The
important ferry at Ogdensburgh still continues, however, under the
direction of Edward Dillingham, for many years the Rome road's agent in
that city.
To compete with the service that the _Armstrong_ rendered the R. W. & O.
at Ogdensburgh, the Utica & Black River along about 1880 put a car-float
and tug into a hastily contrived ferry between its station grounds at
Morristown, eleven miles up the river from Ogdensburgh and the small
Canadian city of Brockville just opposite. Into Brockville came the
Canadian Pacific, beginning to feel its oats and pushing its rails rapidly
westward each month. That was a better connection than the somewhat longer
one of the St. Lawrence & Ottawa, and gradually freight began deserting
the old ferry for this new one; with the result that within a year the
_Armstrong_ was moved up the river to the Morristown-Brockville crossing,
and Ogdensburgh gnashed its teeth in its despair. It appealed to the Rome,
Watertown & Ogdensburgh for relief in the situation.
That road was in its most important change of management--the succession
of the Parsons' administration to that of Samuel Sloan. Charles Parsons
had had his eye upon the Utica & Black River for some time. It was a
potential factor of danger within his territory. Suppose that the
Vanderbilts should come along and purchase it? That nearly happened twice
in the early eighties. There was strong New York Central sympathy and
interest in the U. & B. R. It showed itself in an increase of traffic
agreements and cooperative working arrangements. The Rome road tried to
offset this strengthening alliance of the Utica & Black River by making
closer working agreements with the New York, Ontario & Western, which it
touched at Rome, at Central Square and at Oswego. But the O. & W. with its
wobbly line down over the hills to New York was a far different
proposition than the straight main line and the easy grades of the New
York Central. It is possible that had the West Shore, which was completed
through from New York to Buffalo in the summer of 1883, been successful,
it might eventually have succeeded in absorbing the Rome, Watertown &
Ogdensburgh; in which case the New York Central certainly would have taken
the Utica & Black River, and the competitive system of railroading been
assured to the North Country for many years to come. But that possibility
was a slight one. The disastrous collapse of the West Shore soon ended it.
Yet the Utica road was a constant menace to Charles Parsons. No one knew
it better than he. And because he knew, he reached out and absorbed it;
within three years of the day that he had first acquired the R. W. & O. He
not only guaranteed the $2,100,000 of outstanding U. & B. R. bonds and
seven per cent annually upon a $2,100,000 capitalization, but, in order to
make assurance doubly sure, he purchased a majority interest of $1,200,000
of Utica & Black River shares and turned them into the steadily
strengthening treasury of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh. The Utica
road formally passed into the hands of the Rome road on April 15, 1886.
The mere announcement of the transfer was a stunning blow to the North
Country.
Now Parsons had a real railroad indeed; more than six hundred miles of
line--the Utica road had brought him 180 miles of main line track. Now he
had over eighty locomotives and an adequate supply of other rolling stock.
From the U. & B. R. he received twenty-four locomotives, of a size and
type excellent for that day, twenty-six passenger-cars, fourteen
baggage-cars and 361 freight cars. But, best of all, he was now kingpin
in Northern New York. There was none to dispute his authority, unless you
were to regard the tottering Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain as a real
competitor. He was king in a real kingdom. The only prospect that even
threatened his monopoly was that the Vanderbilts might sometime take it
into their heads to build North into the valleys of the Black River and
the St. Lawrence. But that was not likely--not for the moment at any rate.
They were too occupied just then in counting the costs of the terrific,
even though successful, battle in which they had smashed the West Shore
into pulp, to be ready for immediate further adventures. If they should
come to war seven or eight years later, Parsons would be ready for them.
In the meantime he set out to reorganize and perfect his merged property.
He wanted once again to make the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh the best
run railroad in the state of New York. And in this he all but completely
succeeded.