We’re putting all kinds of interesting and fun things here. Stories of local history and facts that may not be known to everyone. We’ll try to cover everything from every era…let’s hope we don’t miss anything. Oh, and these are in no particular order. They just happen as I come across them.
AlleghenyMusarium-The future through the past
The Allegheny Musarium…a project to bring the past to meet the future in a display of 3D and Green technology.
How A Railroad Stole A Right-of-Way on Sunday
(1970 WTO article written by Franklin R. Hoff)
“How did it ever happen that the New York Central railroad came right down the middle of Fourth Ave., one of Warren’s finest residential streets?” was the question asked by a newcomer to this city not long ago.
Quick as a wink, I gave him the answer – which “everybody” has known hereabouts since those earlier days: “The track was laid in a hurry one Sunday morning while the good citizens of Warren were in Church, and a train was run over it, which according to a law in that day gave the railroad the right-of-way!”
According to tradition, a group of younger men of the community were so wrought up they were going to prevent this ‘take over’ by mob action. They were dissuaded by cooler heads, who counseled action in court. However, many old-timers in later years insisted there was actually a confrontation.
As a small child this story was heard from my dad, who had been told about it when he arrived in Warren from Iowa at the turn of this century. Over the years variations were told by many leading citizens.
“That ought to be a good story,” the newcomer suggested. I agreed, since such historical episodes have commanded great reader interest in recent years. To get the background, and the complete authentic story, Harold Putnam and Mrs. Frances Ramsey, of the Warren County Historical Society were consulted about the actual contemporary accounts in the Warren Mail back in the 1870′s when the big news was developement of railroads into Warren.
Both agreed this is one of the most persistant legends of this region – but both insist it didn’t happen quite that way at all. Putnam got out the accounts as they appeared in the Warren Mail from 1871 through 1874 when the railroad was constructed.
The Warren Mail dated May 24, 1870, reports the contract for constructing the 53 miles of the Dunkirk, Warren and Pittsburgh Railroad from Dunkirk to Warren had been let to Col. J. C. Smith “…who has already sublet several sections on which the work has been commenced. He hopes to have the cars runningduring the present year.”
More than a year later, in the issue of August 12, 1871, the Warren Mail says; “Since Monday last a passenger train has been run to and from Russellberg (now Russell). The stage connecting with it leaves here at 4 in the morning and returns at 10 or 11 in the evening. Next week probably the cars will run to Warren, when we can say goodbye to old Jamestown Stage.”
“By Saturday they hope to reach the borough line,” the article continues. “they live in the cars which move up as fast as the track is laid.”
Saturday, August 19, 1871: “Railroading has been all the talk this week. Last Saturday the track layers reached the borough line. On Monday they commenced on East St. and turned the corner into High St. (now Fourth Ave.) on Tuesday, connecting the P & E (Philadelphia and Erie) road on Wednesday. Wednesday morning, August 16, 1871, the construction train with 24 cars, some of them heavily laden with iron, swung around the corner where McNitt’s shop used to stand down High St. below the Court House, for the first time.”
“So, the long-talked-of route through town is finally fixed on High St.,” the story continues. “Of course it made considerable talke and stir and some ill feeling. People went again and again to watch the hundred or more men digging and shoveling gravel, hauling ties, carrying rails and spiking them down and doing everything to make a first class railroad. Joe Walkerman, the engineer of the train, looked very happy, and was quite a hero in the boys whom he allowed to ride on his big locomotive.”
To my great satisfaction, the Warren Mail does confirm that a story about a big fight over the laying of the railroad tracks down High St. – today Fourth Ave. – was actually spread all over the region. The editor tells it this way:
“In all this time, we are happy to say everything has been quiet on the Allegheny. The parties opposing this route through town have done so by legal methods alone. We have had no “railroad row”, as reported, and not even a square “jaw” between good natured contractor, Col. Smith, and the parties of the second part. This spoils a first-rate item for us, but we can have our laugh at our neighbors who came to ‘see the fight’.”
“Sugar Grove, where they get up bogus marriages for us to publish in the absence of real ones, was especially excited. They heard of a big railroad fight on Sunday. W.D.Brown, Esq., who came from Sugar Grove, was of course in the hottest of it, and got shot through both legs so he couldn’t run. Col. Smith we suppose was grazed on the scalp, and would have been shot square through the headif he’d been taller! Others got clubbed and stoneed, and as the Englishman says, ‘knocked up hawfully’ in the grand Sunday battle for liberty or death. The railroaders were finally driven out of town by the patriotic citizens, and the colored troops fought nobly, whereat Sugar Grove clapped her hands and shouted for joy.”
“Hosea Harmon, Frank Miller and other heroic non-combative Quaker gunners, actually came down on Monday morning at the break of day to nurse the Sugar Grove wounded and bury the valiant dead. We believe after learning the factsMr. Harmon concluded he came to attend a Sheriff sale, but we guess the sale and sold were up at “Home Sweet Home”, so sweet it’s called SUGAR GROVE. How high ish dat,m anywhay! Pine Grove, too, we hear, had a few brave volunteers in the last war, who expected to follow the soldiers of 1812 on the pension list, but they finally came to the circus on Monday and had a glorious time with the elephant.”
This spoof at the expense of Sugar Grove citizens who believed there was a mob battle over the railroad on that fateful Sunday – which has persisted for nearly a century in local folklore – has some subtle overtones, according to Mrs. Ramsey. The editor’s reference to ‘…the colored troops fought nobly,” probably refers to the active “Underground Railway” station maintained by the Sugar Grove people, which brought runaway slaves from point to point in secret, until they could cross into Canada, to freedom. Many Warren interests were said to have not wanted to become involved in such undertakings.
The Warren Mail observes on September 9, 1871 that, at a temporary depot on the corner of High St. and East St. a Mr. Loucks “…who has no more stage to run, is the baggage master.” The curve at that corner proved too sharp, and was relocated on its present right-of-way.
Items in the October 2, 1871 Warren Mail: “The oil trains are running lively on the DW & P railroad. To see one of the thirty or forty cars go around the curve from High St. and wheeling up the valley is something new and looks like business.” “The cornerstone of the new Catholic church was laid on Beech St, above the old one.” “Work has been suspended a few days on the new ‘suspension’ bridge, because some of the wire and other materials don’t come as it should on the railroad.”
Nov. 14, 1871, grading started at Titusville for the Warren and Venango Railroad. Jan. 31, 1873, DW & P trains are running through to Titusville in connection with the Warren and Venango Railroad. By April 28, 1874, the two lines have been merged and renamed the DAV & P Railroad. (Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley and Pittsburgh)