Ohio History Journal

The Steubenville and Indiana Railroad:

The Pennsylvania's Middle Route

To the Middle West

 

By WALTER RUMSEY MARVIN*

 

 

There is not a port, a harbor, or even a curved place on the Lake

Erie shoreline of Ohio which today is not dreaming of the increased

prosperity it will gain from the completion of the St. Lawrence

Seaway. A little more than one hundred years ago there was hardly

a place in all Ohio which did not foresee for itself boundless growth

and wealth as soon as the great eastern trunk lines had pushed their

way to the borders of the state. But--and this was the sine qua non

of the matter--for a place to benefit from the oncoming railroads

it had to be on a railroad itself.

As a result of this eagerness to share in a prospective good thing,

the decade 1841-50 saw seventy-six railroad companies chartered in

Ohio and a vast amount of enthusiasm aroused for the iron horse.

Almost every town could produce reasons why it ought to be on at

least one line. A case in point is Steubenville.

Any intelligent person could see that, once the Pennsylvania

Railroad had crossed the Alleghenies and reached Pittsburgh, the

trade of the West would flow toward it in three main streams,

originating in Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago, the three prin-

cipal western cities. Since Steubenville is squarely on a straight line

from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, almost on a line to Cincinnati, and not

too far off a direct line to Chicago, its chances were excellent of

 

* Walter Rumsey Marvin is executive director of the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana

Library Association.

This article, like the one preceding it, "Faith vs. Economics: The Marietta and

Cincinnati Railroad, 1845-1883," by John E. Pixton, Jr., was originally a paper given

at a session of railroad history specialists known as the Lexington Group during the

annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association at Pittsburgh, April

19-21, 1956.

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12    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

getting on an important railroad. Nevertheless, to make sure, the

people of the little port on the Ohio River organized one of their

own, the Steubenville and Indiana, chartered in 1848.1

Its proposed route was from Steubenville to Mt. Vernon, Ohio,

and thence to some indeterminate point on the Indiana border,

from which St. Louis or Chicago could easily be reached. All told,

about a dozen railroad companies up to then had been organized

in Ohio with roughly competing routes, each apparently aiming to

carry the trade of the West to the Pennsylvania's railhead at

Pittsburgh.

Efforts to unite the backers of some of these competing ventures

behind a single undertaking failed completely,² so the Steubenville

and Indiana organizers went ahead on their own. They resolved to

sell stock in some ten communities during the summer and named

James Wilson as acting president. He was the same Wilson who

edited a local newspaper, had been an organizer in 1830 of the Ohio

Canal and Steubenville Rail-way Company, the first rail line ever

chartered in Ohio, and was the grandfather of Woodrow Wilson.

Little if any stock was sold, so the promoters turned for help to

the next session of the legislature, in 1849.

That was standard procedure in Ohio in those days. If a railroad

could not raise money under the terms of its charter as first granted,

it went back to the lawmakers for amendments to sweeten the

proposition. It might thereby obtain the right to extend its line, or

build branches, or, best of all, get authorization for the municipalities

along its route to use public funds to buy its stock. Of the five other

rail lines chartered in 1848 with routes similar to the Steubenville

and Indiana's, four of them went back to the legislature for help

of this sort in 1849.

In the case of the Steubenville and Indiana the legislature au-

thorized a number of municipalities to buy its stock, gave permission

to bridge the Ohio River at Steubenville if the state of Virginia

agreed, and allowed what was in effect a change in the route so

that the line could go to Columbus. Tonic of this sort brought

immediate action.

 

^{1 L}aws of Ohio (Local), XLVI (1848), 256.

2 Ohio State Journal (Columbus), April 24, June 8, 1848.

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STEUBENVILLE & INDIANA R. R.       13

 

Friends of the enterprise, to the number of five hundred it was

reported, soon met at Steubenville in a "Grand Central Railroad

Convention," and there decided that connections with Pittsburgh

and St. Louis should be the objectives at the east and west ends of

the line and voted to start the surveys at once.

The matter of a connection with Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania

Railroad was not as settled as it seemed, however. A week after

the convention a Steubenville newspaper was saying that perhaps

the connection to the east should be with the Baltimore and Ohio

at Wheeling, since there was talk that the Pennsylvania was flirting

with a rival Ohio line, the Cleveland and Pittsburgh.³

An obstacle of a different sort to a connection with Pittsburgh

was pointed out by a second rival line, the Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It boasted that no part of its own route "will be subject to the

peculiar legislation of southern communities."⁴ This was no doubt

a reference to the slavery laws of Virginia, through the "panhandle"

part of which state a direct rail line from Steubenville to Pittsburgh

would have to pass. Such laws might have deterred some travelers

from entering the state.

Something was certainly deterring investors from putting their

money into the Steubenville and Indiana, for the company was again

on the doorstep asking for help when the legislature met in 1850.

This time the lawmakers gave permission to those municipalities

which had the right to buy stock in the road with public funds to

borrow money in order to do so. Similar privileges were also

granted competing lines, thereby inspiring the editor of the Ohio

State Journal to wonder if the taxpayers might not eventually suffer.⁵

Meanwhile the question of how the road was to make a connection

with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Pittsburgh had become more

pressing, for the state of Virginia at this time refused permission

for a right of way across the panhandle at Wheeling. In view of

that state's heavy investment in the Baltimore and Ohio its refusal

to help a rival line was understandable.

Two other possible links between Steubenville and Pittsburgh

3 Western Herald and Steubenville Gazette, quoted in the Ohio Statesman (Co-

lumbus), May 8, 1849.

4 Ohio State Journal, August 28, 1849.

5 Ohio State Journal, April 9, 1850.

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14    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

now, however, appeared on the scene. The legislature authorized

the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad to run a branch to the south

to connect with the Steubenville and Indiana .line and, a few days

later, chartered another rail company with a route which would

accomplish the same purpose, the Steubenville and Wellsville Rail-

road. A way to Pittsburgh was therefore in the making, even if it

had to loop around the intervening panhandle.

For the rest of the year 1850 the directors seem to have done

nothing except to follow the custom of the day and vote to pay six

percent interest on money paid on stock subscriptions, and agree to

meet every Saturday, which they very quickly ceased doing.

When the legislature met in January 1851, however, the road's

management must have bestirred itself, for we find the lawmakers

for the third time easing the way, by means of further amendments,

for municipalities to put public funds into this line. It took more

than just a legislative act to put cash into the company's coffers,

it would seem, for some places had to be dunned to pay the amounts

they had voted. Payments when received were in the form of

municipal bonds which the railroad had to sell in the East. It tried

to get eighty-five cents on the dollar for them after it had guaranteed

payment and made them convertible into its own stock at the option

of the holder. The company also had to hire canvassers to work for

a favorable vote in the referendum required by law in each munici-

pality before it could buy stock.

When the company's president went east in the spring of 1851 to

sell the bonds it had thus acquired, he could offer three different lots

of Steubenville bonds and five lots from other places, totaling

$549,000 face amount. The railroad received from seventy-five to

eighty-five cents on the dollar for these securities, which it had

accepted at par.

About this time the matter of a more direct connection with

Pittsburgh came to life again in two forms. Pittsburgh interests

organized the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad, a Pennsylvania

corporation designed to build that part of the road which lay be-

tween Pittsburgh and the Virginia border, although the problem of

crossing the panhandle had not yet been solved. Pittsburgh's efforts

to get a rail link with the West went back at least as far as 1831,

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STEUBENVILLE & INDIANA R. R.       15

 

when its citizens were agitating for a railroad to connect the Penn-

sylvania Canal, which terminated at Pittsburgh, with the Ohio

Canal, which lay to the west of Steubenville.

A second possible way for the Steubenville and Indiana to be

connected with Pittsburgh was over the Hempfield Railroad, which

was just then getting a charter from the state of Virginia to run

east from Wheeling to the state line. There were various objections

to this route, but at least it offered a hope.

It was in the fall of this year, 1851, that at last actual construction

began on the Steubenville and Indiana. Almost immediately the

contractors found themselves overwhelmed by labor troubles, which

grew so menacing as to be termed "the 'Irish' rebellion" in the com-

pany's minutes.⁶ This was putting it mildly, to judge by the lurid

newspaper accounts and the grim reports presented to the directors.

Bitter warfare raged between rival elements or factions among

the laborers, all of whom seem to have been Irish. The Corkonians

from the south of Ireland, called "Far-Ups," engaged in bloody

battles with their ancient foes, the Connaughtmen, from the north,

known as "Far-Downs."

The causes of the fighting are obscured by the mists of time. No

one familiar with Irish-American history has been able to shed much

light on the matter. That there were more men than jobs is one

factor, but not the only one. Religion can be ruled out, since all the

participants were Catholics. The contemporary comment that the

trouble was caused by a "transatlantic feud" brought to the banks

of the Ohio is perhaps the best explanation one can find.⁷

Gangs of hundreds of men from each side would fight it out with

fists, pick-handles, rocks, and occasional firearms until one side had

driven the other from the field. Sometimes the losers were stripped

of their clothes and thrown in the wintry water of the river or

nearest creek, but hardly any deaths were reported.

As word of the fighting, which flared up afresh every few days,

spread from Steubenville, Irish laborers by the hundreds flocked to

the town, either to work or to fight. In one week two hundred

 

6 Minutes of the Steubenville & Indiana R.R., March 29, 1852. Pennsylvania Railroad

Library, Philadelphia.

7 American Union (Steubenville), January 14, 1852.

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16    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

arrivals were reported. A contingent of three hundred armed

Corkonians was setting out from Pittsburgh to aid their embattled

fellows, the mayor of Steubenville was informed by telegram, but

fortunately the would-be warriors were turned back in time by a

priest. On another occasion the Steubenville authorities mobilized

all the men residents by ringing church and school bells in order to

prevent one Irish faction from carrying out its threat of marching

into town and searching the place for members of the opposite

faction, said to be in hiding there.

Eventually, with the aid of cold and hunger, the fighting spirit

was quenched, leaving the county infirmary full of sick Irishmen to

be cared for at the expense of the local taxpayers. Work was re-

sumed on the railroad, but under new contractors. It is worth noting

that one of the old contractors had been Israel Dille of Newark,

Ohio, a somewhat irresponsible railroad promoter, whose career

would repay further study.

Labor troubles were not the only worry confronting the Steuben-

ville and Indiana directors. Their original dream that the rail line

to connect Pittsburgh with Chicago would pass through Steubenville

dissolved when the Pennsylvania Railroad invested heavily in the

Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad in 1852. This so-called "backbone

route," running along the watershed between river and lake, is today

the Pennsylvania's main line to Chicago.

The next year Steubenville's chances of being on the line that

would run from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati were similarly blasted when

the Pennsylvania put the huge sum of $750,000 into capital stock

of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad. This was to be the first of

three times in a period of two years when the great eastern trunk

line would furnish cash or credit to an Ohio railroad for extending

its tracks to a given point--and not once would the extension be

made. In this case the Marietta and Cincinnati was to extend its road

from Marietta to Wheeling as a link in a proposed chain between

Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Five years later the Pennsylvania wrote

off the stock as a total loss.8

At the same time as it made the investment in the Marietta line,

 

8 Pennsylvania Railroad, 19th Annual Report (1865), in the Railroad Record,

March 8, 1866.

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STEUBENVILLE & INDIANA R. R.       17

 

the Pennsylvania hedged it by putting $100,000 into the stock of

the Springfield, Mt. Vernon, and Pittsburgh Railroad as a means of

opening up an alternative route to Cincinnati by way of Springfield.

Here again the link was not built, but this time the monetary loss

was not complete, for there was to be some salvage.

At last, toward the end of 1853, came the turn of the Steubenville

and Indiana. To be triply sure of getting a connection with Cin-

cinnati, still the Queen City of the West, and also with St. Louis, the

Pennsylvania agreed to endorse $500,000 worth of Steubenville and

Indiana second mortgage bonds, on the understanding that half the

proceeds would be used for construction between Steubenville and

Newark, Ohio, and half between Newark and Columbus. Columbus

was already connected with Cincinnati by rail. In return for the

endorsement of its bonds, which were otherwise almost unsalable,

the Steubenville line agreed also to put up an equal amount of its

stock as security.⁹

As will soon be seen, the line from Newark to Columbus was

never built, thus constituting the third occasion when the Penn-

sylvania did not get what it paid for.

On December 22, 1853, a week after the arrangement with the

Pennsylvania had been approved, the Steubenville and Indiana be-

gan operating its first trains as far as Unionport, twenty-one miles

from Steubenville. The immediate benefits to the road's finances

were negligible, in flat contradiction of the article of faith held by

early railroaders that the sooner you got your trains running the

stronger your credit would become. In fact, the opposite proved true,

for from this time on the company had nothing but misfortunes.

Labor troubles broke out again, unctuously characterized by the

line's president as "more than the ordinary share of those riots and

disturbances to which public works are always incident."¹⁰ Financial

problems grew more pressing, and in the absence of cash, unsecured

income bonds were tendered in payment of bills.

The courage of the directors and their faith in the enterprise

deserve mention, for they were frequently called upon for personal

 

9 Minutes of the Steubenville & Indiana R.R., December 16, 1853. Pennsylvania

Railroad Library, Philadelphia.

10 Ibid., January 2, 1854.

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18    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

endorsements of company obligations. Most loyal of all was the

president, James Means, head of a firm of iron founders who had

gone into the railroad-car manufacturing business. Not until the

Steubenville and Indiana was in truly desperate financial straits was

it entered on the minutes that the railroad had been using a large

number of cars made by this concern on the understanding that it

would pay for them later, when it could. It is not clear that the debt

was ever discharged in full.

Despite all obstacles the tracks were pushed ever westward toward

Columbus, although construction was of the sketchiest sort. Sidings,

stations, and warehouses, woodsheds, water tanks, and baliasting--

all were omitted as far as possible. Cheap green wood was used for

fuel, and the trains ran late for lack of power. But the work con-

tinued until Newark was reached and the road opened for its entire

length of 117 miles from Steubenville on April 11, 1855.

Newark was as far west as the company could ever afford to

build, and it was lucky to get that far. Land in Columbus had been

bought for a depot a year or so before, but by this time no hope was

left of reaching there. The directors had toyed with various im-

probable schemes of getting the work done without the use of

money, with results that can easily be imagined. One individual

offered to build from Newark to Columbus if the road would give

him a large quantity of its stocks and bonds at eighty cents on the

dollar and let him keep all the cash he could raise from selling

more stock along the route. The company agreed to this plan, but

it came to naught.

At all events, the Steubenville and Indiana line was completed,

as much as it ever would be, but it still could not pay its bills. There

had been no evidence of excessive costs in its construction or any

signs of dishonesty; almost all its right of way had been donated by

enthusiastic landowners; its directors were loyal and interested--

and yet the road got ever further in the red. Its trouble was a lack

of traffic, resulting from faulty connections at each end. (It in-

tersected no other road en route.)

It would be more accurate to say that when the road was com-

pleted it had no connections at all at either end. At Steubenville no

railroad connected with it until a year and a half later, and at

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STEUBENVILLE & INDIANA R. R.       19

 

Newark lack of cash and a difference in gauge kept it for two years

from joining its rails with those of the Central Ohio Railroad, which

went through Newark on its way from Bellaire to Columbus.

The matter of its gauge was one of the most serious problems

faced by the Steubenville and Indiana, which had been built with a

track width of four feet, eight and one-half inches, the so-called

eastern gauge, used by most roads in that part of the country, in-

cluding the Pennsylvania. No doubt that was one reason why the

Steubenville line adopted it. It was, furthermore, the gauge used

in Indiana, the original western objective of the line. In addition,

it was the gauge of the Columbus, Piqua, and Indiana Railroad,

with which the Steubenville and Indiana planned to connect at

Columbus after it had lost hope of reaching Indiana on its own rails.

Ohio law called for a gauge, with certain exceptions, of four feet,

ten inches, and yet in one year cross-state routes were under con-

struction in the state using no less than four different gauges.

By the end of the first year of operation over its entire length

the Steubenville and Indiana was considering spreading its rails to

the Ohio gauge, but it first had to obtain permission from the

Pennsylvania Railroad. The latter had by that time become its great

and good friend and virtual overlord. Permission was granted after

the trunk line had driven a hard bargain.

The actual change was made about the time the Cleveland and

Pittsburgh Railroad was completing its branch down the river into

Steubenville. It was this piece of construction which was referred to

earlier as furnishing a link in a route between Steubenville and

Pittsburgh, and so it became. Up to then the only traffic moving over

Steubenville and Indiana rails out of Steubenville had either origi-

nated locally or had come by river steamer. Now, by a roundabout

way along the river's edge that soon became known as the

"Circumbendibus Route," the two cities were linked by track.

(Properly speaking, the tracks ran to Allegheny, across the river

from Pittsburgh, but within two years a bridge was carrying the

trains into the latter city.) The roundabout route was a vastly longer

way to Pittsburgh than the direct line across the Virginia panhandle

which the Steubenville's organizers had counted upon, but for the

time being it had to do.

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20    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

The opening of a route to Pittsburgh had the effect of uncorking

the eastern end of the Steubenville and Indiana and added to the

pressure to do the same thing at Newark, the western end. The road

seems, however, to have lacked the $20,000 needed to make a phy-

sical connection with the Central Ohio tracks, even though by this

time the gauge of the two lines was the same. Finally, in the spring

of 1857, the Columbus and Xenia Railroad paid for the connection

at Newark. It had to wait fourteen years before it was repaid.11

A contract between the two roads thus joined allowed the trains of

the Steubenville line to run into Columbus over the Central Ohio

tracks.

At once the Steubenville and Indiana started advertising, "Great

Central Route--Pittsburgh, Columbus and Cincinnati Short Line

Railroad--No change of cars between Columbus and Pittsburgh."

Its principal competitor, the Central Ohio, was advertising, "Great

National Route to the East and West." The Marietta and Cincinnati

contented itself with using the slogan, "The American Central Rail-

road Line."

But slogans could not stand up against the panic of 1857. Hard

times were at hand and railroads were succumbing. Despite help

from the Pennsylvania, despite the through traffic which it could

finally get with both ends uncorked, despite even the presence on

its board of directors of the brilliant Thomas A. Scott as a repre-

sentative of the Pennsylvania, the Steubenville and Indiana went

under. On September 2, 1859, Thomas L. Jewett, the president of

the road, was appointed its receiver. Four months earlier his brother,

Hugh J. Jewett, president of the Central Ohio, had been named

receiver of that company, and three months later a third road run-

ning east and west in Ohio, the Fort Wayne line, also went into

receivership. The list could be made longer.

Besides having to rehabilitate the property in the manner of

all receivers, Jewett saw that the access to Columbus should rest on

a more secure basis than an impermanent contract with the Central

Ohio. Accordingly, as part of the voluntary plan of reorganization

of the Steubenville and Indiana, consummated in 1864, that com-

11 S. H. Church, comp., Corporate History of the Pennsylvania Lines West of

Pittsburgh (n.p., 1906), III, 23-24.

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STEUBENVILLE & INDIANA R. R.     21

 

pany bought from the Central Ohio an undivided half-interest in

the line between Newark and Columbus, an arrangement that is

in effect today between the Pennsylvania and the B & O as successor

corporations.

Access to Pittsburgh was a problem the Steubenville and Indiana

could never solve. It remained for its overlord, the Pennsylvania,

acting through various pawns, to bridge the Ohio at Steubenville,

secure permission and build across the panhandle of what was by

then the new state of West Virginia, lay tracks to the Monongahela

River, bridge it, tunnel under the hill in the heart of Pittsburgh, and

at last run its trains into the Union Station. All this was not accom-

blished until 1865.

Three years later the Pennsylvania merged into one corporation

the Steubenville and Indiana and its two fellow subsidiaries which

together comprised the line between Pittsburgh and Columbus. The

new concern was given the name of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and

St. Louis Railway Company, but everybody called it by the nickname

of "Panhandle," which the line still has to this day. As the full

name shows, Steubenville was finally established on a rail line that

linked it with the great cities of the West about which it had

dreamed.

• 11