Part 30

In October, 1863, the road was leased for ninety-nine years to the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, which had already laid a broad gauge upon the track, That company now controls the main line to Youngstown, with the several branches to Hubbard and the coal mines. The narrow gauge is kept up for the use of the Mahoning trains, freight and passenger, while the broad gauge is used by the Atlantic and Great Western through trains. The track has been extended to the shore of the old river bed, an extensive wharfage established, and large facilities obtained for connecting the traffic of the road with the lake commerce.

The Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company was formed by the consolidation of two rival and nearly parallel lines. One of the companies thus united, was incorporated as the Junction Railroad Company, and the other by the name of the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland Railroad Company. The former was incorporated by an act of the legislature of Ohio, passed on the second day of March, 1846; and the latter, by an act of the seventh of March, 1850. The Junction Railroad Company, by its original charter and two amendments, in 1861, was authorized to construct a railroad from the city of Cleveland to the west line of the State by such route as the directors might determine, with power to construct branches to any points within the counties through which the main line might pass. The charter of the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland Railroad Company, authorized the construction of a railroad from Toledo, by the way of Norwalk, in the county of Huron, to a connection with the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad, at some point in the counties of Huron or Lorain. The authorized capital stock of the Junction Company was three millions, and that of the other company, two millions of dollars.

The consolidation was effected, and the new company organized on the first of September, A. D. 1853, under the specific provisions of the twelfth section of the amendment to the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland Railroad charter, passed on the first of March, 1850. Under its charter, the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland Railroad Company constructed a road from the east bank of the Maumee river, opposite the city of Toledo, to Grafton, where it connects with the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad, twenty-five miles south-west from the city of Cleveland, being a distance of eighty-seven and one-half miles, all of which was finished and put into operation in January, 1853. This became known as the Southern Division of the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad.

The Northern Division, or Junction Railroad, was originally intended to run from Cleveland, west side, via Berea and Sandusky, westward to a point on the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad some twenty miles west of Toledo, and crossing the track of the Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland Railroad at a point about eight miles east of the same city. The road was opened between Cleveland and Sandusky and operations commenced upon it in the Fall of 1858, immediately after the consolidation. The original project of a separate line to the west was carried out by the consolidated corporation so far as to construct the road to its intersection with the old Toledo, Norwalk and Cleveland track, from which point both lines approached Toledo over the same right of way. This line was operated over its whole length until the 31st day of December, 1858, on which day the use for regular business of that portion lying west of Sandusky was discontinued, and all the through travel and traffic turned upon the Southern Division. On the 30th of July, 1856, a contract was entered into with the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad Company by which the Cleveland and Toledo Company acquired the right to use the track of the first named company from Grafton to Cleveland, for the Southern Division trains, and from Berea to Cleveland for the Northern Division, and thence forward all trains were run into, and departed from, the Union Depot in Cleveland--a change which soon resulted in the practical abandonment, for the time, of that portion of the Northern Division lying between Berea and Cleveland on the west side of Cuyahoga river. This arrangement, together with the completion, in 1855, of a bridge over the Maumee river at Toledo, enabled the company to receive and discharge its passengers in union depots at each end of its line. During the years 1865 and 1866, about eight miles of new road were constructed between Elyria on the Northern Division, and Oberlin on the Southern Division, for the purpose of allowing all trains to leave and come upon the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Road at Berea, thirteen miles, instead of Grafton, twenty-five miles from Cleveland. This new piece of road was opened for business on the 10th of September, 1866, and the road between Oberlin and Grafton immediately abandoned, The construction of a bridge near the mouth of the Cuyahoga river at Cleveland, brought the Northern Division line between Cleveland and Berea once more into use, and over it the freight trains of the line are now run. In 1869, the company was made part of the Consolidated line between Buffalo and Chicago.

The Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, by its lease of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad, has become an important part of the Cleveland railroad System. The company was organized in 1851, as the Franklin and Warren Railroad Company, to build a road from Franklin Mills (now Kent) in Portage County, to Warren, in Trumbull county, with power to extend to a point in the eastern line of the State, northeast of Warren and southwesterly to Dayton, Ohio. In July, 1853, operations were actively commenced along the whole line, but were soon seriously retarded by financial embarrassments. In 1854, the Franklin and Warren Railroad Company, under authority of an Act of the General Assembly of 1853, changed its name to the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad Company. Two years before, a project had been started to extend the broad gauge of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad through Ohio, northeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New York, to connect with the New York and Erie Railroad. This route would run through Meadville, Pennsylvania, Warren, Kent, Akron and Galion to Dayton, Ohio. In 1858, the Meadville Railroad Company changed their name to the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad Company of Pennsylvania. In 1859, a company was organized in the State of New York, under the name of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad in New York, and purchased in 1860 of the New York and Erie Railroad Company thirty eight miles of their road, from Salamanca to near Ashville. These thirty eight miles with eleven miles of new line, make up the entire length of line of this road in the State of New York. Each of the above companies made contracts for the building of their respective roads.

In the Fall of 1858, negotiations were commenced in London with James McHenry, for the means to carry on the work. T. W. Kennard, a civil engineer, came over as the attorney of Mr. McHenry, and engineer in chief of the whole work. In 1862, the road was opened from Corry to Meadville, Pennsylvania. In 1863, it was extended to Warren, and in the next year to Ravenna and Akron--202 miles from Salamanca.

In October, 1863, the three companies above named, leased for ninety-nine years, the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad, extending from Cleveland southerly to Youngstown, Ohio, sixty-seven miles. This road has a narrow gauge track crossing the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad at Leavittsburgh, Ohio, fifty miles south of Cleveland. The Atlantic and Great Western Company laid a rail on either side of the narrow track, thus carrying the broad gauge into Cleveland, and a broad gauge train from the city of New York entered Cleveland on the evening of November 3rd, 1863. Subsequently the several companies forming the Atlantic and Great Western line were consolidated into one line, and this again was, in 1869, consolidated with the Erie Railway.

Besides opening a new and important thoroughfare to the East, this line has opened up to Cleveland the resources of north-western Pennsylvania, and in the oil product has added an immense and highly profitable trade to the business of the city.

Several lines have been built, connecting with and adding business to the railroads leading to Cleveland, but of these it is not the province of this work to speak. A large number of new railroads have been from time to time projected in various directions. Some of these "paper railroads" have intrinsic merit, and these, or lines aiming at the same objects, will eventually be built.

Jacob Perkins.

Jacob Perkins was born at Warren, Trumbull county, Ohio, September 1st, 1822, being next to the youngest of the children of Gen. Simon Perkins, one of the earliest and most prominent, business men of norther Ohio, a land agent of large business, and the owner of extensive tracts of land. In his early years Jacob Perkins developed a strong inclination for study, acquiring knowledge with unusual facility, and gratifying his intense passion for reading useful works by every means within his power.

He commenced fitting himself for college at the Burton Academy, then under the direction of Mr. H. L. Hitchcock, now president of Western Reserve College, and completed his preparation at Middletown, Connecticut, in the school of Isaac Webb. He entered Yale College in 1837.

While in college he was distinguished for the elegance of his style and the wide range of his literary acquirements. He delivered the philosophic oration at his junior exhibition, and was chosen second editor of "Yale Literary Magazine," a position in which he took great interest, and filled to the satisfaction and pride of his class. His college course was, however, interrupted by a long and severe illness before the close of his junior year, which compelled him to leave his studies and (to his permanent regret) prevented him from graduating with his own class. He returned the following year and was graduated with the class of 1842.

He entered his father's office at Warren, and was occupied with its business until, upon the death of his father, some two years afterwards, he became one of his executors.

During his residence at Warren he appeared occasionally before home audiences as a public speaker, and always with great acceptance.

In politics, he early adopted strong anti-slavery principles, then not the popular doctrine, and they were always freely and openly advocated. Of an address delivered in 1848, which was published and attracted very considerable local attention, the editor of the Chronicle remarked, "We have listened to the best orators of the land, from the Connecticut to the Mississippi, and can truly say, by none have we been so thoroughly delighted in every particular as by this effort of our distinguished townsman." The oration discussed the true theory of human rights and the legitimate powers of human government--and the following extract gives the spirit of his political principles on the subject of slavery:

The object of law is not to make rights, but to define and maintain them; man possesses them before the existence of law, the same as he does afterwards. No matter what government may extend its control over him; no matter how miserable or how sinful the mother in whose arms his eyes opened to the day; no matter in what hovel his infancy is nursed; no matter what complexion--an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him, this may decide the privileges which he is able to assert, but can not affect the existence of his rights. His self-mastery is the gift of his creator, and oppression, only, can take it away.

Without solicitation he was nominated and elected a member of the Convention that framed the present Constitution of Ohio. His associates from the district were Judges Peter Hitchcock and R. P. Ranney, and although "he was the youngest member but one of the Convention--and in the minority, his influence and position were excelled by few."

He was one of the Senatorial Presidential Electors for Ohio on the Fremont ticket in 1856.

In the intellectual progress of the young about him, and the building up of schools and colleges, he took especial interest. He first suggested and urged upon President Pierce to adopt the conditions of the present "Permanent Fund of Western Reserve College," rather than to solicit unconditional contributions, which experience had proved were so easily absorbed by present necessities, and left the future as poor as the past. In connection with his brothers, he made the first subscription to that fund. The embarrassment arising from his railroad enterprise prevented him from increasing that contribution. The wisdom of his suggestions was subsequently shown, when, during the rupture and consequent embarrassment under which the college labored, the income of this fund had a very important, if not vital share in saving it from abandonment, and afterwards proved the nucleus of its present endowment.

He was always efficient in favoring improvements. He was associated with Hon. F. Kinsman and his brother in founding the beautiful Woodland Cemetery at Warren. The land was purchased and the ground laid out by them, and then transferred to the present corporation.

Soon after his return from the Constitutional Convention, he became interested in the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad. He was most influential in obtaining the charter and organizing the company, of which he was elected president, and became the principal, almost sole financial manager.

Owing to prior and conflicting railroad interests, little aid could be obtained for his project in either of the terminal cities, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and the work was commenced in 1853 with a comparatively small stock subscription. A tightening money market prevented any considerable increase of the stock list, or a favorable disposition of the bonds of the road, and the financial crisis a few years afterwards so reduced the value of the securities of this, as of all unfinished railroads, as practically to shut them out of the market. In this emergency the alternative presented itself to Mr. Perkins and his resident directors, either to abandon the enterprise and bankrupt the company, with the entire loss of the amount expended, or to push it forward to completion by the pledge, and at the risk of their private fortunes, credit, and reputations.

In this, the darkest day of the enterprise, Mr. Perkins manifested his confidence in its ultimate success, and his generous willingness to meet fully his share of the hazard to be incurred, by proposing to them, jointly with him, to assume that risk; and agreeing that in case of disaster, he would himself pay the first $100,000 of loss, and thereafter share it equally with them.

With a devotion to the interests entrusted to them, a determination rarely equalled in the history of our railroad enterprises, they unanimously accepted this proposition, and determined to complete the road, at least to a remunerative point in the coal fields of the Mahoning Valley.

The financial storm was so much more severe and longer continued than the wisest had calculated upon, that for years the result was regarded by them and the friends of the enterprise with painful suspense. In the interest of the road Mr. Perkins spent the Spring of 1854 in England, without achieving any important financial results.

At length, in 1856, the road was opened to Youngstown, and its receipts, carefully husbanded, began slowly to lessen the floating debt, by that time grown to frightful proportions, and carried solely by the pledge of the private property and credit of the president and Ohio directors. These directors, consisting of Hon. Frederick Kinsman and Charles Smith, of Warren, Governor David Tod, of Briar Hill, Judge Reuben Hitchcock, of Painesville, and Dudley Baldwin, of Cleveland, by the free use of their widely known and high business credit, without distrust or dissension, sustained the president through that long and severe trial, a trial which can never be realized except by those who shared its burdens. The president and these directors should ever be held in honor by the stockholders of the company, whose investment they saved from utter loss, and by the business men of the entire Mahoning Valley, and not less by the city of Cleveland; for the mining and manufacturing interests developed by their exertions and sacrifices, lie at the very foundation of the present prosperity of both.

Before, however, the road was enabled to free itself from financial embarrassment, so to as commence making a satisfactory return to the stockholders, which Mr. Perkins was exceedingly anxious to see accomplished under his own presidency--his failing health compelled him to leave its active management, and he died before the bright day dawned upon the enterprise.

He said to a friend during his last illness, with characteristic distinctness: "If I die, you may inscribe on my tomb stone, Died of the Mahoning Railroad;" so great had been his devotion to the interests of the road, and so severe the personal exposures which its supervision had required of him, who was characteristically more thoughtful of every interest confided to his care, than of his own health.

He was married October 24th, 1850, to Miss Elizabeth O. Tod, daughter of Dr. J. I. Tod, of Milton, Trumbull county, Ohio, and removed his family to Cleveland in 1856. Of three children, only one, Jacob Bishop, survives him. Mrs. Perkins died of rapid consumption, June 4th, 1857, and his devoted attention at the sick bed of his wife greatly facilitated the development of the same insidious disease, which was gradually to undermine his own naturally vigorous constitution.

The business necessities of his road, embarrassed and pressing as they were, united with his uniform self-forgetfulness, prevented his giving attention to his personal comfort and health, long after his friends saw the shadow of the destroyer falling upon his path. He was finally, in great prostration of health and strength, compelled to leave the active duties of the road and spent the latter part of the Winter of 1857-8 in the Southern States, but returned in the Spring with little or no improvement. He continued to fail; during the Summer and in the Fall of 1858 he again went South in the vain hope of at least physical relief, and died in Havana, Cuba, January 12th, 1859. His remains were embalmed and brought home by his physician who had accompanied him--and were interred at Warren, in Woodland Cemetery, where so many of his family repose around him. A special train from either end of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad brought the board of directors and an unusually large number of business and personal friends to join the long procession which followed "the last of earth" to its resting place.

One of the editorial notices of his death, at the time, very justly remarks of him:

He was a man of mark, and through strength of talent, moral firmness and urbanity of manner, wielded an influence seldom possessed by a man of his years. In addition to his remarkable business capacity, Mr. Perkins was a man of high literary taste, which was constantly improving and enriching his mind. He continued, even amid his pressing-business engagements, his habits of study and general reading. Mr. Perkins belonged to that exceptional class of cases in which great wealth, inherited, does not injure the recipient.

An editorial of a Warren paper, mentioning his death, says:

He was born in this town in 1821, and from his boyhood exhibited a mental capacity and energy which was only the promise of the brilliancy of his manhood. To his exertion, his personal influence and liberal investment of capital the country is indebted for the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad. To his unremitting labor in this enterprise he has sacrificed personal comfort and convenience, and we fear, shortened his days by his labors and exposure in bringing the work to completion. Known widely as Mr. Perkins has been by his active part in public enterprises, his loss will be felt throughout the State, but we who have known him both as boy and man, have a deeper interest in him, and the sympathies of the people of Warren, with his relatives, will have much of the nature of personal grief for one directly connected with them.

Said a classmate in the class meeting of 1862:

Although his name on the catalogue ranks with the class of 1842, his affections were with us, and he always regarded himself of our number. He visited New Haven frequently during the latter part of his life, in connection with a railway enterprise, in which he was interested, and exhibited the same large-heartedness and intellectual superiority which won for him universal respect during his college course.

A gentleman who knew Mr. Perkins intimately, and as a director was associated with him in the construction of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad, and in carrying its debt, wrote of him as follows:

The management and construction of the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad by Mr. Perkins, under circumstances the most difficult and trying, were well calculated to test his powers, and, in that work he proved himself possessed of business capacity rarely equalled, sustained by unquestioned integrity, and remarkable energy. These qualifications, united with his large wealth, gave him the requisite influence with business men and capitalists. His devotion to the interests of the road, his abiding confidence in a favorable result, and his clear and just appreciation of its value, and importance to the community, called forth his best efforts, and were essential conditions of success. To him more than to any other individual are the projection, inauguration, and accomplishment of this enterprise attributable. From its earliest projection, he had a most comprehensive and clear view of its importance to the city of Cleveland and the Mahoning Valley, and confidently anticipated for them, in the event of its completion, a rapidity and extent of development and prosperity, which were then regarded as visionary, but which the result has fully demonstrated.

His life was spared to witness only the commencement of this prosperity, nor can it be doubted, that his close application, and unremitting efforts to forward the work shortened his life materially. His deep and absorbing interest in it, prevented the precautionary measures and relaxations, which in all probability would have prolonged his life for years. His associates in the board saw the danger and urged him to earlier and more decided measures for relief. He too was aware of their importance. But the constant demand upon his time and strength, and the continually recurring necessities of the enterprise, which he had so much at heart, were urgent, and so absorbed his thoughts and energies, that he delayed until it was obvious that relaxation could afford merely temporary relief.

In his intercourse with the board, Mr. Perkins was uniformly courteous and gentlemanly, always giving respectful attention to the suggestions of his associates, but ever proving himself thoroughly posted; readily comprehending the most judicious measures, and clearly demonstrating their wisdom. Entire harmony in the action of the directors was the result, and all had the fullest confidence in him. While his business capacity and integrity commanded their highest admiration, his urbanity, kindness and marked social qualities secured their strong personal attachment, and by them his decease was regarded as a severe personal affliction, as well as a great public loss.