The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly
VOLUME 66 ?? NUMBER 1 ?? JANUARY 1957
Faith vs. Economics: The Marietta and
Cincinnati Railroad, 1845-1883
By JOHN E. PIXTON, JR.*
In the 1850's Cincinnati was Queen of
the American West, and
eastern railroad builders pressed
eagerly toward the prize of her
commerce.1 And even before the rails
reaching westward from New
York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore
breached the Appalachian barrier,
Ohio promoters were building lines to
connect with them. By 1857
four Ohio roads fought for traffic
between Cincinnati and the
Atlantic seaboard.
In 1851 a railroad later to become part
of the New York Central
thrust down across Ohio from Cleveland
to Columbus, where it
connected over the Little Miami
Railroad with Cincinnati. In 1857
another local effort, the Steubenville
and Indiana, crossed eastern
Ohio and waited fondly at the river for
a connection with the
* John E. Pixton, Jr., is assistant
professor of history at Pennsylvania State University.
This article and the one following it,
"The Steubenville and Indiana Railroad: The
Pennsylvania's Middle Route to the
Middle West," by Walter R. Marvin, were the
papers given at a session of railroad
history specialists known as the Lexington Group
during the annual meeting of the
Mississippi Valley Historical Association at Pitts-
burgh, April 19-21, 1956.
1 This article is based chiefly upon the
papers of William P. Cutler, the president
of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad
through most of its independent existence. In
addition to correspondence, Cutler left
thirty-two little notebook diaries, covering,
with unequal emphasis, most of his adult
life from 1830 to 1888. The manuscripts
are in the Marietta College Library.
Other basic sources were the annual
reports of the M & C, issued irregularly from
1851 to 1877, a complete set of which is
in the Marietta College Library; the annual
reports of the Ohio Commissioner of
Railways and Telegraphs, which begin in 1867;
and other official documents, as well as
newspapers and periodicals (especially the
Railroad Record, published at Cincinnati from 1852 to 1872).