CHAPTER XXXIV
FIRST LOCOMOTIVE IN NEW YORK
This locomotive, the "De Witt Clinton," stood upon
the track already fired up, and with a train of some five or six
passenger-coaches attached to it. These passenger-coaches were
of the old-fashioned stage coach pattern, with a driver's seat
or box upon either end outside. They had hitherto been used upon
the road for passengers, and drawn by horse-power. At this early
day when the road was just built, passengers took a car at the
foot of the inclined plane in Albany, and were drawn up by a stationary
engine to the top of the hill where the regular track commenced.
Horses were then hitched to the cars and proceeded to the other
end of the road, where another inclined plane, not then built,
but soon after completed, with a stationary engine, lowered the
cars into Schenectady. (Both these planes are now removed.) On
arriving at the top of the plane at Albany on this memorable occasion,
the engine and train were seen standing upon the track. The peculiar
appearance of the machine and train (the first ever seen by the
author) arrested his attention, and he at once resolved to make
a sketch of the singular-looking affair and its equally singular-looking
appendages. Drawing from his pocket a letter just received of
a few lines only, written upon a whole sheet of paper (no envelopes
were used at that day), and substituting his hat for a desk, he
commenced his sketch of the unique machine standing before him.
Meantime the excursionists were entering the cars, and the author
had taken a hasty, rough drawing of the machine, the tender, the
individual standing on the platform of the machine as its engineer,
and the shape of the first passenger-coach, when a tin horn was
sounded and the word was given, "All aboard," by Mr.
John T. Clark, the master of transportation, he acted as conductor
on that memorable occasion. No such officer as a conductor had
been required upon a railroad before locomotives and long trains
of cars were adopted. Before this event, in place of conductors,
the drivers of the single-horse cars collected the tickets or
fare, as omnibus-drivers do at the present time.
On this occasion, the two first cars, or coaches,
as they were then called, and the third also, were just as the
two are represented in our sketch. The remainder of the cars on
the train were surmounted with seats made of rough plank to accommodate
the vast crowd of anxious expectants assembled to witness the
experiment and participate in this first ride on a railroad train
drawn by a locomotive. The cars were crowded inside and outside;
not an available position was unoccupied. Two persons stood ready
for every place where one could be accommodated, and the train
started on its route, leaving hundreds of the disappointed standing
around.
As there were no coverings or awnings to protect the deck-passengers
upon the tops of the cars from the sun, the smoke, and the sparks,
and as it was in the hot season of the year, the combustible nature
of their garments, summer coats, straw hats, and umbrellas, soon
became apparent, and a ludicrous scene was enacted among the outside
excursionists before the train had run the first two miles.
The author was an inside passenger on that ever memorable occasion.
We say memorable, for it was one never to be forgotten. It was
on the 9th day of August, 1831, when what was represented and
known to be the first American locomotive ever run upon a railroad
in the State of New York. Thus the sketch in our work, representing
a locomotive, tender, and two passenger-cars attached, is, as
we before stated, a truthful representation of one of the first
railroad trains in America, and the very first run in the State
of New York, and followed soon after the last successful locomotive
experiments by Mr. Peter Cooper on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
and the advent of the first American-built locomotives for actual
service upon the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad, in South Carolina.
It was the third locomotive built in America for actual service.
This engine was named the "De Witt Clinton," and is
thus described by Mr. David Matthew, in his letter to the author
in 1859:
"American engine No. 3 was called the 'De Witt Clinton.'
It was contracted for by John B. Jervis, Esq., at the West Point
Foundry, and was commenced by me to fit up in April, 1831, soon
after the engines 'Best Friend' and 'West Point ' were completed
and forwarded to Charleston.
"I left New York with the 'De Witt' on the 28th of June,
1831, and had steam on to commence running in one week from that
time. The 'De Witt' had two cylinders five and a half inches in
diameter and sixteen inches' stroke; four wheels, all drivers,
four and a half feet diameter, with all the spokes turned and
finished. The spokes were wrought-iron, hubs cast-iron, and the
wheels tired with wrought-iron, inside crank and outside connecting-rods
to connect all four wheels; a tubular boiler with drop furnace,
two fire-doors, one above the other; copper tubes two and a half
inches in diameter and about six feet long; cylinders on an incline,
and the pumps worked vertically by bell-crank. This engine weighed
about three and a half tons without water, and would run thirty
miles an hour with three to five cars on a level, with anthracite
coal, and was the first engine run in the State of New York on
a railroad."
On this first excursion, on the 9th day of August, 183l, as
no such officer as a conductor had been required upon the road,
where hitherto no connected train of cars had been run, but where
each driver officiated as collector of fares, Mr. John T. Clark,
as the first passenger railroad conductor in the North, stepping
from platform to platform outside the cars, collected the tickets
which had been sold at hotels and other places through the city.
When he finished his tour, he mounted upon the tender attached
to the engine, and, sitting upon the little buggy-seat, as represented
in our sketch, he gave the signal with a tin horn, and the train
started on its way. But how shall we describe that start, my readers?
It was not that quiet, imperceptible motion which characterizes
the first impulsive movements of the passenger engines of the
present day. Not so. There came a sudden jerk, that bounded the
sitters from their places, to the great detriment of their high-top
fashionable beavers, from the close proximity to the roofs of
the cars. This first jerk being over, the engine proceeded on
its route with considerable velocity for those times, when compared
with stage-coaches, until it arrived at a water-station, when
it suddenly brought up with jerk No. 2, to the further amusement
of some of the excursionists. Mr. Clark retained his elevated
seat, thanking his stars for its close proximity to the tall smoke-pipe
of the machine, in allowing the smoke and sparks to pass over
his head. At the water-station a short stop was made, and a successful
experiment tried, to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon
hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings
of the cars were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail, from
a fence in the neighborhood, was placed between each pair of cars
and made fast by means of the packing-yarn for the cylinders,
a bountiful supply being on hand (as the present brass-ring substitute
had not then been invented). This arrangement improved the order
of things, and it was found to answer the purpose, when the signal
was again given, and the engine started.
In a short time the engine (after frightening the horses attached
to all sorts of vehicles filled with the people from the surrounding
country, or congregated all along at every available position
near the road, to get a view of the singular-looking machine and
its long train of cars; after causing thus innumerable capsizes
and smash-ups of the vehicles and the tumbling of the spectators
in every direction to the right and left) arrived at the head
of the inclined plane at Schenectady, amid the cheers and welcomes
of thousands, assembled to witness the arrival of the iron horse
and its living freight.
After some time passed in the ancient city of Schenectady,
and ample refreshments had been afforded, the word was given by
conductor Clark to prepare for the return. The excursionists resumed
their seats, and in due time, without any accident or delay, the
train arrived at the point from which it had first started, the
head of the inclined plane at Albany. The passengers were pleased
with the adventures of the day, and no rueful countenances were
to be seen, excepting occasionally when one encountered in his
walks in the city a former driver of the horse cars, who saw that
the grave had that day been dug, and the end of horse-power was
at hand.
After the return to Albany, the author made a clean copy from
his rough sketch of the engine "De Witt Clinton," and
also the likeness of the engineer of the day, Mr. David Matthew,
who controlled its movements on this memorable first occasion.
As the tin horn sounded the signal for starting, just as the author
had sketched the shape of the first of the passenger-cars in the
train, he supplied the place of passengers with the likeness of
several of the old citizens of Albany. Hence the appearance of
Mr. Thurlow Weed, ex-Governor Yates, and others, as named in the
article from the Boston Advertiser. This original picture, as
we have before stated, was presented to the Connecticut Historical
Society by the author. It has since been photographed by J. L.
Howard & Company, of Hartford, and from this photograph the
copy in lithograph by Sage & Son was taken; but the engine
is there erroneously called an English machine, the "John
Bull," and John Hampson, an Englishman, is said to have been
the engineer. A second copy of this sketch, calculated to mislead
the public, has just been circulated by a firm in Boston, called
the Antique Publishing Company, to Haverhill Street, and copyrighted
in l870. This picture, like the one by Sage & Son, is taken
from the same photograph of the author's original sketch in the
Hartford Institute, and in its history, like the other, purports
to be a likeness of the English locomotive "John Bull,"
and an Englishman, John Hampson, the engineer. In this volume
we shall furnish the evidence to show that the original picture
in the Connecticut Historical Society Rooms was a true representation
of the American locomotive " De Witt Clinton," the third
American locomotive built for actual service, and the first American-built
locomotive run in the State of New York; Sage & Son, and the
Boston Antique Publishing Company, to the contrary notwithstanding.
Table of Contents
| Antebellum Page | Site
Contents
|