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179

THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE.

In Trial Forty-Eight Years ago—Horation Allen the First Locomotive Driver—The Initial Experiment and the Enthusiasm it Created.

From the New York Times August 8.

HONESDALE, Pa., August 8.—On August 8th, 1829, forty-eight years ago to-day, the first locomotive that ever turned a driving-wheel on a railroad track in America, was run at this place on the newly-finished road that connected the Lackawanna coal fields with tide-water on the Hudson, by way of the Delaware & Hudson Canal. The road in question was the first of any general commercial importance ever built in this country, and inaugurated the economical system of inclined planes since adopted by engineers wherever practicable. Up to the 8th of August, 1829, there were only twelve miles of railroad in operation in America—three miles of a five-foot gage road running from the Quincy granite quarries to the Naponsett river, in Massachusetts, and the novel "mule road," nine miles in length, connecting the Summit Hill Coal Mines, back of Mauch Chunk, with the Lehigh river. The road between Honesdale and Carbondale was sixteen miles in length, and was the result of the enterprise and persistency of Maurice and William Wurts, the pioneer coal operators of the Lackawanna Valley, who introduced the first anthracite coal into New York city. Railroad building was, at the time mentioned, just beginning to awaken interest among capitalists. The first great enterprise of the kind—the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in England—had been in process of construction for some time, and was approaching completion. George Stephenson, the father of steam locomotives, was struggling with the managers of that company for the introduction of steam as a motive power on the road. His experiments had attracted attention in this country. Pending the decision as to whether locomotives should be used on the Liverpool road Horatio Allen, who had been John B. Jervis' assistant engineer in the construction of the Delaware & Hudson Canal, went to England to examine into the merits of steam as applied to transportation on railroads. He was satisfied that Stephenson's idea would revolutionize all branches of commerce, and, acting on his judgement, Mr. Jervis, by authority of the company, commissioned him to purchase three steam locomotives for use on the pioneer road of America. George Stephenson was at the time busy in preparing his subsequently famous engine, the Rocket, for trial on the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Allen contracted, therefore, with other machinists—Foster, Rastwick & Company, of Stourbridge—to construct the machines for the American company. About the middle of May, 1829, one of them reached this country in the ship John Jay, and was landed at the foot of Beach street, New York. The West Point foundry yard was then at the foot of that street. Mr. Allen put the machine together, and blocking its wheels clear of the ground, exhibited its workings by means of steam generated with coal that had been brought from the mines the engine was intended to transport cars from. For six weeks the wonderful machine was visited by thousands. Then it was sent up the North river to Rondout, and from there forwarded in boats up the canal to Honesdale.

The intention of the company had been to open the road and canal, and celebrate the running of the locomotive on the Fourth of July, 1829, but the work was delayed so that it was not ready for use until the 1st of August. The locomotive had arrived on the 23d of July. When the road was in readiness the engine was set up on the track on the company's coal dock, under direction of Mr. Allen. This primitive railroad track consisted of hemlock rails, eight by ten inches in thickness, placed four feet three inches apart, and spiked to hemlock ties, with a space of ten feet between them. The timber had not been well seasoned, and being put down under a midsummer sun, was warped and twisted out of all regularity by the time the trial of the locomotive was to be made. The road ran for nearly a quarter of a mile along the coal docks, facing the village, which had sprung suddenly from the wilderness at the beck of the canal, and had been named Honesdale, in honor of Philip Hone, formerly mayor of New York, and a patron of the great coal enterprise. After quitting the docks the track turned abruptly to the west by a curve of most threatening radius, and crossed the Lackawanna river over a slender hemlock trestle, nearly one hundred feet high. When the ponderous locomotive was placed on the track, the impression became general that it was too heavy to be borne by the hemlock rails, and Mr. Allen was importuned by many prominent men not to attempt the crossing of the trestle. He saw the great danger at a glance, but feeling that locomotive power on railroads was destined to become universal in years to come, the pride of possessing the distinction of having been the man to direct the energies of the first one on the continent, overpowered his sense of danger, and he declared that he would make the trip, let the consequences be what they might. He steamed up the engine, and after running it slowly backward and forward on the dock in sight of the assembled hundreds for a few minutes, he pulled the throttle-valve open and shouting a loud "good-bye" to the crowd, dashed away from the village, around the curve, and over the shaking and swaying trestle at a rate of speed estimated at fifteen miles an hour. He ran several miles up the track, and then returned to the village amid the shouts of the populace and the booming of cannon. Although the locomotive, as a locomotive, was a perfect success, the railroad was not calculated to stand its use, and the expense of adapting it to the weight of the locomotive being too great to call for consideration at that day, the engine was "housed" in a shanty on the dock, where it lay for years, a prey to neglect and decay. Its boiler was finally taken to Carbondale, where it is in use and in excellent order to-day. The pump was used by an employé of the company for several years, and was at last washed away by a freshet and lost. The rest of the machinery was broken up and sold for old iron. The two other locomotives shared the same fate. Only one or two relics of pioneer locomotive of America are in existence to-day. The engine was called the Stourbridge Lion, from the place of its manufacture. The machine weighed seven tons, four tons being what the contract called for. There were four wheels, connected by side rods. Vertical cylinders on each side of the rear end of the boiler communicated motion to a huge walking beam, connected with the side rods of the driving-wheels by long iron rods. The engine was covered with rods and joints, and its appearance was that of a great grasshopper. John B. Jervis, who ordered the locomotive, and Horatio Allen, who ran it, are still living, the one in Rome, N. Y., the other in New York city. Both have since achieved some of the greatest engineering triumphs this country has known.

There is another interesting and important fact connected with the running of the Stourbridge Lion. The successful application of steam power to railroads has always been dated from the trial of Stephenson's Rocket, Ericsson's novelty and the Sans Pareil and Perseverance, in Liverpool, on the 14th of October, 1829. The Stourbridge Lion demonstrated two months before, in a remote and isolated part of America, that the idea was a grand success.

A GOLDEN WEDDING.

Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Oldest House-Keepers in Rondout, and Save one, the Longest Residents.

Just fifty years ago Mr. James S. McEntee, then a young engineer on the Delaware & Hudson Canal, which was under construction, was married to Miss Sarah Jane Goetcheus, the youngest daughter of Dominie Goetcheus, who was a noted Reformed Dutch pastor and had had charge of different churches in this county. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Dr. John Gosman, of the Reformed Dutch Church of Kingston, then the only one in the village, in the parlor if the Ulster County House, which stood on Wall street near the court-house, on what is about now the site of the Argus building. The ceremony was performed before 6 o'clock in the morning (an hour which would cause an expectant bride of to-day to shudder), and all the invited guests of the occasion who were present, only two of whom arrived and both of them being residents of this city, General Joseph S. Smith and Hiram Radcliff, the latter of whom is a step-son of the hostess on the occasion, as the bride of fifty years since is a neice [[niece]]. After the ceremony, there being no Wallkill Valley Railroad, no steamers on the Rondout and no gondolas on the canal, the happy couple with their own horse and wagon, started for Montgomery, Orange county, and breakfasted at the old tavern, now destroyed, that stood just north of that beautiful reach of the Wallkill over which stretches the railroad bridge and which had been kept by Ruloff Hasbrouck from 1772 until 1827, a period of fifty-five years.

Of this union ten children have been born, four boys and six girls, all of whom are married but two, and eleven grand-children. At the celebration to-day at the house on the Weinberg were Mr. and Mrs. Vaux and four children, two young men in active business life, a young lady and little girl; Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis McEntee and child; Mr. and Mrs. Girard L. McEntee; Mr. Maurice W. McEntee, and Miss Sara McEntee. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph T. Tomkins and family, who reside at Hillsborough, Province of New Brunswick, being prevented from being present by the almost immediate marriage of their eldest danghter [[daughter]], and Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs. John N. Andrews and family being at Apache, Arizona, where the colonel commands a post of the Sixth United States infantry among the hostile Indians.

Mr. James S. McEntee, beside being an engineer on the Erie canal during its construction, was one on the Delaware & Hudson from its commencement to its completion, was for three years superintendent of the division from tide-water to the Delaware river and mined in the Lackawanna valley. He constructed all the dock from in front of the Company's old office to its present dock and reconstructed the rest down to the Sleightburgh ferry; also the island dock, the first light-house and dock, the West Point foundry dock at Cold Spring, the first wharf the Government ever built below West Point, and had three contracts on the Hudson River Railroad during its construction, which completed his public work, but he has been interested in many private