The Road to Montreal
The story goes like this: A railroad was to be built from the Atlantic coast to Montreal. Both Portland and Boston sought to be its southerly terminus, and a race was proposed. Two express teams would, on the same day, from the same ship, receive the latest news from Europe and then race to Montreal. Whichever team delivered the news first would win the railroad for its city. The race was run, the Maine team prevailed, and the railroad was built from Portland through Greenwood to Canada.
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| From Colton's 1855 Railroad & Township Map of the State of Maine |
Variations of this story have been written since the late 1800s. When collected and compared, discrepancies and outright contradictions arise—more than enough to make the careful historian wary.1 The truth lies not in these later accounts but in reports written closer to the events. Contemporary newspaper articles from Maine, Massachusetts, and Quebec reveal that not one but three expresses were run from Portland to Montreal during the planning of the railroad; that not all were successful; and that Boston was never a witting competitor in any "race."
The Father of the Railroad System in Maine
A railroad to Lower Canada had been discussed both in Augusta and in Greenwood long before one was built. The Maine Legislature passed a resolution in March 1835 respecting the construction of a railroad "from the City of Quebec to some point on our Atlantic seaboard." A public meeting was held in early May at William Noyes's house in Greenwood to discuss the matter, and a committee was formed to explore and mark a route "through the towns of Oxford, Norway, Greenwood, Bethel, thence up the Bear river, through Newry and Holmes [later Grafton], and down the Cambridge river to the Umbagog Lake, thence by said lake to the valley of the Magalloway."2 The governor had applied to Washington for assistance, and in July civil engineer Col. Stephen H. Long passed through Greenwood along the Little Androscoggin River scouting a route. Public interest was aroused, but these efforts came to nothing. A different route, surveyed in 1839, would have taken freight and passengers from Portland to Lake Champlain by way of Norway, Waterford, Albany, and Bethel. That plan too was abandoned. A decade more would pass before the rails reached this region.
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| John Alfred Poor (1808–71) |
John Alfred Poor, a native of Andover, had witnessed in 1834 the running of the first locomotive in New England, between Boston and Newton, Massachusetts. Poor would come to be called "the father of the railroad system in Maine," but then, at age 26, he was just a young lawyer in Bangor with a passion for trains. For several years he studied the subject and readied his arguments, and in 1843 he publicly proposed the construction of two railways: one from Portland to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the other from Portland to Montreal, Quebec. A meeting held in Andover on September 16, 1844, rallied support for the latter proposal, and a letter by Poor in the next day's Portland Weekly Advertiser spurred the city to action.
Portland's mayor and aldermen appointed civil engineer James Hall to make a reconnaissance in late 1844 of possible routes through western Maine. Due to the constraints of the season, Hall spent his time in the field examining closely only the more difficult terrain. His report described a route running up the Little Androscoggin valley through the eastern part of Greenwood "to Bryant's pond, near Bacon-hill summit," and thence to Rumford Point and Andover. A suggested western course "from Norway Village to the Androscoggin at Bethel, and thence up Bear river" through Grafton Notch he had no time to examine, but he did investigate a route through Andover and Township Letter B (now Upton) to Dixville Notch in New Hampshire.3 With winter approaching, he could not personally traverse a northerly route from Andover to the headwaters of the Magalloway River, but instead relied upon Col. Long's description from his 1835 reconnaissance and the testimony of local explorers. A more thorough examination would be required to determine which of these routes was best, but Hall declared the project entirely feasible.
Montreal, for its part, was eager for a rail link to the coast, and not just as a vehicle for commerce and travel. The Royal Mail steamships carrying news and postal matter from England stopped then in Halifax and Boston. Montreal was cut off from Halifax in winter when the St. Lawrence River froze, and the telegraph had not yet arrived, so a direct connection to some ice-free port in the United States would be vital for gaining timely intelligence of the outside world in the coldest months. The only question was whose road the Canadians would meet at the border.
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| From Mitchell's New Traveller's Guide Through The United States, 1849 |
We perceive that some of the Maine papers, among them the Norway Advertiser, are drumming up the Maine people to construct a road to command the travel to Montreal. We would just inform the Maine editors that they and their readers have not sufficient enterprise and public spirit to accomplish such an object. While your people are disputing, we of Boston and neighborhood, shall have built a road.4
Boston's derision was returned in kind. The Maine papers began publishing items purportedly from Boston sources asserting their harbor's unsuitability as a winter port, and others with headings such as "Portland Harbor—Not Frozen Over!" A letter published in the Oxford Democrat of July 8, 1845, warned that "the people of Maine will be slow to forget that they have been taunted and sneered at by the 'Big Bugs' of Boston as being poor, destitute of enterprize, that this great matter will end in only 'a nine days wonder.'"
A committee organized in Portland submitted a memorial to the Maine Legislature in January 1845 requesting a charter for the contemplated railroad. The request was urgent, as plans were underway to extend lines from Boston through New Hampshire and Vermont to the Quebec border. Anticipating the granting of the Maine charter, and with knowledge that representatives from Boston had preceded him, John A. Poor set out for Canada on February 5 to plead his road's case. He left Portland just after midnight as a fierce snow storm approached. He would write an account of his trip upon his arrival, and a second account years later. The least of his obstacles were faced in lower Oxford County:
Before daylight, a foot of snow had fallen on a level, and before noon that day, it had reached a depth of eighteen inches. Starting again with the first streak of day, we reached Gray Corner before noon, and Waterhouse's hospitable house at Paris, by dark.The wind had come round to the northwest, and the drifts were higher than the tops of the fences everywhere. Nothing could induce the experienced and daring Waterhouse to move out on that night, but the first dawn found us on our way to Rumford and Andover; through fields, over fences, and everywhere that a track could be forced.5
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| Memorandum of John A. Poor, dated Montreal, February 12, 1845 |
Poor traveled through Andover to Letter B (Upton) and on into New Hampshire. At Dixville Notch a snow drift twenty feet high blocked his team's path and had to be cut through. He arrived in Montreal after a journey of five days, having slept but five hours and changed his clothes but twice. His arrival, he wrote, "bringing information, two days in advance of any other news from the Atlantic coast, was looked upon with surprise."
Poor met with the Montreal Board of Trade after a few hours' sleep and kept them from adopting a hasty resolution in favor of Boston. The Eastern Argus of Portland reported that Poor was "very favorably received," and that the Boston agent was also there, but "we judge had not made much impression upon the Board."6 So persuasive was Poor that, by his own account, the Board "sent in a memorial in favor of our route." Nevertheless, the Provincial Parliament's Provisional Committee of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Grand Junction Railway issued a report in favor of Boston. Portland had not yet won.
The First Express
Back in Portland, the railway's supporters were hatching another scheme to sway opinion in the city's favor. It had been announced that the Canada mails from England would be delivered that winter to Boston rather than Halifax, and from Boston would be transported by rail and sleigh through Concord, New Hampshire, to Montreal. When the steamer Hibernia landed in Boston the morning of February 19, an agent from Portland was there to collect what newspapers he could from the ship. He brought them north by rail and relayed them to Dependance H. Furbish and Ebenezer P. Burbank. The two men left Portland in a light sleigh before noon. Their course took them from Gray Corner to Norway Village, through Greenwood City to Bethel Hill, and thence to Lancaster, New Hampshire, over the path now taken by U.S. Route 2. Their arrival in Montreal was reported in the city's Gazette on February 22:
No incident of a purely peaceable and domestic nature ever excited a greater or more gratified interest in Montreal than the arrival, on Thursday evening, of Messrs. Furbish and Burbank with the European news by the Hibernia, and, up to the moment we write, in advance of the Government express. Those gentlemen were in waiting at Boston, and, on the arrival of the Mail, started via Boston before the bags were opened, with such newspapers as they were able hastily to collect from the passengers and officers. The steamer arrived in Boston at ten o'clock on the morning of the nineteenth, and they reached this city in thirty-three hours by way of Portland and Sherbrooke. Considering the difficulties presented by the state of the roads, particularly on this side of the Province line, the feat is a surprising one, and proves much for the superior advantages of endeavouring to open a rail-road communication with the Atlantic by that route.
Furbish and Burbank had not, in fact, started their trip in Boston. Still, their feat was impressive, and was said to have "clinched the nail" that Poor and his allies had been driving in Montreal. The House of Assembly voted with little dissent for Portland in preference to Boston, and on March 17 "An Act to Incorporate the Saint Lawrence and Atlantic Rail-road Company" was signed into law. The charter provided that the road in Canada be laid out so as to "best connect with The Atlantic and St. Lawrence Rail-road, to be constructed from Portland in the State of Maine to the said Boundary Line."
The Story Goes Off the Track
If this were the whole of the story, it might have been told in later years with greater accuracy. While Furbish and Burbank's accelerated trip was not technically a race with Boston, which had no knowledge of Portland's plans, it had all the elements of a race, and it did influence the decision to locate the railroad through western Maine. What muddled the history of these events was the running of two additional expresses from Portland to Montreal in early 1846. The details of these expresses and those of the 1845 express became confused. Only one of the later accounts mentioned more than one express, most using details from the second or third to describe the first. John A. Poor's own brother Sylvanus gave an account, printed in the Oxford Democrat in 1883, in which he fell prey to this confusion. He told of preparations made for the express through Letter B, although Furbish and Burbank did not take that route:
Teams were provided and stationed along the route from Portland at distances from five to fifteen miles apart, and the right road at different places was marked out by sticking up evergreen bushes on each side of it that there should be no delay by taking the wrong road in the night time and all was in readiness several days before the arrival of the steamer. It was contended at Norway and other places that the shortest and best route was by way of Norway, Greenwood, Bethel, Newry and to connect with the towns of Woodstock, Rumford, Andover, at Letter B, now Upton, and to test the two routes the same arrangements were made on both routes, and Mr. D. H. Furbish of Portland was employed to drive on the Bethel route and on reaching the junction of the two routes in Upton Mr. Furbish found that he was several hours behind the team that went by way of Rumford, Andover, etc.7
Poor stated that G. G. Waterhouse drove the final leg of the journey and "reached Montreal with his coach-and-six decorated for the occasion with the stars and stripes flying from his coach." While a striking description, the event described took place in 1846.
The Second Express
Some in Boston were outraged that the railroad had been snatched away. They complained that Portland had played a dirty trick with its first express ("Would it not have been more fair to give notice to the agents of the Concord route of the intended competition?"), and that the Portland route would pass through "nearly a hundred miles of howling wilderness."8 The lingering animosity between the cities played no small role in the decision to run a second express in January 1846.
Early on Friday, January 23, the Hibernia docked in Boston Harbor with the mail and latest news from Liverpool. An express was dispatched from Boston to Montreal at ten minutes after ten o'clock via the Fitchburg Railroad, and then through Keene to Windsor and Montpelier on the line of the barely begun Vermont Central Railroad. The same news was sent by a special express tram to Portland, where Oren Hobbs waited.
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| From the Eastern Argus of January 26, 1846 |
Waterhouse himself drove the next leg, through Greenwood City. He made the next six miles in nineteen minutes. Dr. Osgood N. Bradbury of Norway would write years later of Waterhouse changing horses in this town:
It is related of him that the horse awaiting him at Greenwood City was a large, powerful, vicious animal, and when his temper was up could not well be held to a trot, or even an ordinary run. Waterhouse knew his horse, and as he sprang to his work with a leap of many feet, he wound the reins around his own body, took a position in the middle of the sleigh seat to prevent upsetting, and let the racer make his own time.10
His route passed through Bethel, Andover, and Letter B. Waterhouse was supposed to proceed the whole distance to Montreal, but at the border a mishap occurred. A Portland writer lamented that, "through some gross blunder or worse, Mr. Waterhouse was displaced, and another person went on."
An individual, who had been sent beforehand, to perfect the arrangements, and to carry letters to an agent in the Province, stopped at the line, entrusted his letters to a chance hand, so that they were delayed and of no service, and gave erroneous information, by which the arrangements were materially altered. By these means it fell out, that for a considerable distance in the Province, the express was in the hands of a drunken driver, instead of the faithful and active individual originally employed to go through.11
The express from Portland arrived hours later than expected, the one from Boston having reached Montreal at twenty minutes past two o'clock, just over twenty-eight hours in transit. Not knowing that it was engaged in a race, Boston had made no special preparations along its route to speed its express's passage, but still it won.
The Portland lobby immediately disclaimed any intention to compete with Boston. The express "was got up for the purpose of tendering their good offices to their Montreal friends," a correspondent to a Boston paper wrote, "without any attempt at very great despatch." The delay was due to obstructions on the railroad between Portsmouth and Portland and to drifting snow beyond Umbagog, rather than to mismanagement at the border. The writer was confident that, had the Portland express "been run over the railroad with a clear track, and found a well trodden road on the residue of the route, the news would have reached Montreal before twelve o'clock of Saturday."12
The Last Express
Boston, although unaware of the contest beforehand, exulted in the failure of Portland's latest express. But by the time this "race" was run, the more southerly city had already lost the larger battle. On January 22, the day before the Hibernia steamed into Boston Harbor, the proprietors of Canada's St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad had met in Montreal. Boston was not discussed, but Halifax was. A railroad from Montreal to that city had been proposed, and its merits relative to Portland were weighed. One point in favor of Halifax was that goods would lose "their British character as respected this Province" when passing through a non-Canadian port. It was hoped that future adjustments to tariff laws would resolve that issue. Halifax was closer to England, but Portland was closer to Montreal, the harbor there was less susceptible to fog in summer and ice in winter, and the line would be paid for with private subscriptions. The proprietors endorsed the pursuit of a Halifax-Montreal railroad, while voting to enter into an agreement with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad Company of Maine for construction of the line to Portland, and to employ a party of engineers to survey its portion of the route.13
To prove once and for all that the news from Europe could be delivered promptly if sent through Portland, a third express was planned. G. G. Waterhouse was again entrusted with the task of arranging the relay, with the assistance of S. T. Corser, later superintendent of the Grand Trunk Railroad in Maine. This time, the news would be intercepted before it reached Boston. It would be brought to Portland by the steamer Kennebec from the RMS Cambria, expected shortly at Halifax. The plan hit a snag when the captain of the Cambria prevented the express agent from obtaining newspapers until the ship had left port—a shocking act that Waterhouse later blamed on "a secret plot got up at Boston."14 The Montreal express would proceed regardless, with what news could be procured. Oren Hobbs again drove the first leg, leaving Portland at fifteen minutes past five o'clock, the evening of February 18, 1846.
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| The RMS Cambria |
In passing over Shaker Hill, the pung was upset and broke both thills. But the driver was not to be blocked. He rode on horseback to Welchville, where he took a fresh team to South Paris, thence to Dunham's, Snow's Falls. His route took him to Mr. Hannaford's at Woodstock, to the Whitmans at North Woodstock, Mr. Virgin's at Rumford, Mr. Howe's at North Rumford, Mr. Crockett's at Andover, thence to Ben Newton's, and lastly to Mr. Bragg's at Upton. This ended Mr. Hobbs' journey of 100 miles from Portland.
A team started from Upton for Colebrook, Sherbrooke, Richmond and thence to Longueuil on this side of the St. Lawrence River. There Grosvenor G. Waterhouse, esq., the veteran stage driver from Portland to Paris Hill, was waiting with four white horses, ready to take the mail over the ice across the St. Lawrence river to Montreal. Mr. Waterhouse presented a striking appearance on that occasion, in his foxskin cap, so fashioned as to preserve the countour of the live animal, and wolfskin overcoat and robes.15
Not all of Dunham's assertions can be confirmed, but a contemporary report does note that "owing to the night [Hobbs] had the misfortune of meeting with a few upsets and accidents" before reaching Andover, having traveled seventy-four miles in four hours and thirty-five minutes. He was spelled at Andover by Almarin Bodge, who "received the package and at 10 o'clock at night, moved forward with unexampled speed to his point at Sherbrooke, Canada, which he reached within four minutes of marked time—Distance 90 miles in 7 hours and 37 minutes."16 Waterhouse took the reins at Sherbrooke, and left that town at 5:47 in the morning. He arrived at Montreal six hours and twelve minutes later, having driven ninety-one miles. The express had covered 255 miles in a remarkable eighteen hours and twenty-four minutes.
Boston, still stinging from its failure to secure the Montreal road, heaped scorn on Portland for this last stunt. The editor of the Daily Evening Traveller spread rumors of "cruelty to horses" and "hazard of limb and life to men."
Of the Montreal [express], we learn that in running the first 7 miles, a fine horse worth $200 was wind-broken and spoiled, and the sleigh broken up and left by the way side, and that other horses had been injured before 30 miles had been run. And if this be a sample of the whole route, we may expect to hear of broken winded horses, if not broken headed men all along the road to Montreal.
Waterhouse and Corser, in an open letter to the editors of the Portland papers, denied the charges:
No horse whatever was injured, much less "was wind broken and spoilt." The statement is an unqualified untruth. As to "the sleighs broken up and left by the way side," it is true, that in consequence of coming in contact with teams in the night, one or two sleighs were injured, and that on the road the horses left behind them two or three shoes: but the public can judge of the extent of the injury, by the whole amount paid for repairs and horse shoeing, which was six dollars and seventy-five cents, and no more.
We may be excused for saying, perhaps, that we suspect we are indebted for the Editor's remarks, more to his chagrin at the success of our undertaking, than his sympathy for our "broken winded horses, and broken headed men."17
Waterhouse would use his celebrity to launch the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Daily Line of stages from Paris to Portland, starting May 4, 1846. Stages would continue to be run for decades in western Maine, to and from stations on the railroad, but Waterhouse soon gave up the work. Both he and Oren Hobbs became conductors on the railway whose creation they had helped to promote.
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| From the Eastern Argus of July 15, 1846 |
The Road to Montreal
The path taken by the railroad through western Maine was determined not by a horse race but by surveys and committees. The legislature had given the railroad's board of directors the authority to lay out the road, but the public would ask to be heard. A meeting was held on March 21, 1845, at Canton Mills, where a route from Auburn through Turner to Rumford was discussed, and another on March 27 at Bethel, where residents of Oxford County and Coös County, New Hampshire, debated the merits of routes farther to the west. At the latter event, chairman Jedediah Burbank spoke in favor of bringing the rails from Norway through Greenwood to Bethel, while Daniel Chaplin of Waterford suggested that they be brought to Bethel by way of Crooked River through his town and Albany. A committee was appointed "to invite a reconnoissance of this part of the State, and to wait on and accompany any engineers or explorers for the purpose."18On June 22, 1845, chief engineer James Hall issued a second report, based on additional surveys and a directive from the company to find a course "more westernly than that by Dixville Notch." He had examined a route that passed through both Norway Village and South Paris (the former passed by in the end) and exited the state at Gilead (but on the north side of the river).From Norway the line curves more Easterly and approaches near the Manufacturing Village of South Paris, and pursues up the valley of the Little Androscoggin, passing Snow's Falls and Bacon's Falls, to Briant's Pond in Woodstock—thence along its Western shore and the border of Lock's Pond to Lock's Mills in Greenwood, 16 1-2 miles.19
The finished road would enter Greenwood first from Paris alongside the Little Androscoggin, and then turn with the river to the north, up Bacon's Grade toward Bryant's Pond. It would not pass along the pond's western shore as Hall had proposed, but to the east, through a village newly born, before running back to the west, into Greenwood and along the edge of South Pond. After a short jog back across the town line into Woodstock, it would head on a westerly course through Locke's Mills and into Bethel. Greenwood City was left stranded, but the town would have a station on the line.
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| From Walling's 1858 Map of Oxford County, Maine |
Regular passenger service from Portland to Locke's Mills and Bethel Hill commenced on March 10, 1851. The Portland Daily Advertiser reported the next day on the opening of the road:
[A]s the cars wound their way through the hills of Oxford, at the stations at North Paris, Bryant's Pond, and Locke's Mills, they were met with large crowds assembled to greet them. The station at Bryant's Pond, is a beautiful spot. The little lake, with a high and rugged mountain dropping into it almost perpendicularly, presents an agreeable feature in the scenery. And, although all was covered in snow, the brilliant sun of yesterday showed somewhat how fine a portion of the route this will be, when the rich farms, ample forests and high hills on the borders of lakes and streams, are clothed in mid-summer green.
Even Bacon's Grade could not discourage the writer from praising the ride:
One would hardly suppose, upon a casual glance at the country through which this road passes, that it could be possible to find a path for a railroad through the many hills and mountains which are presented to view. But the route is one of easy grade, with only one exception on this newly opened section from South Paris to Bethel, where is one grade the heaviest we believe on the whole line. But the steam horse found no difficulty in ascending it at a fair pace, and the whole distance was accomplished in a little over an hour, in the new condition of the road, and without effort.23
Service was extended to Gorham, New Hampshire, in July, to Island Pond, Vermont, in April 1853, and to Montreal in July of that year. The rails never crossed the Androscoggin River and never reached John Alfred Poor's hometown of Andover, which, no doubt, had been his initial hope. Nevertheless, his vision of an international railway in Maine had been brought to life.
Notes
1. The account that best withstands scrutiny, by confining itself to the events of 1845, is "Reminiscences of a Great Enterprise," presented by James Phinney Baxter to the Maine Historical Society in 1890.
2. Oxford Democrat, May 12, 1835.
3. Oxford Democrat, December 17, 1844.
4. Vermont Phoenix, October 18, 1844, citing the Boston Olive Branch.
5. Poor, Laura Elizabeth. The First International Railway and the Colonization of New England: Life and Writings of John Alfred Poor. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1892, pp. 36f.
6. Eastern Argus, February 18, 1845.
7. Oxford Democrat, February 13, 1883. A description of Furbish and Burbank's route was given in the Portland Weekly Advertiser of March 4, 1845. Many of the details in Poor's account bear no resemblance to contemporary reports of any of the expresses. The "Mr. B. Longley" mentioned was undoubtedly expressman Benjamin Longley, who was responsible for expediting the delivery of the news from Boston to Portland for the January 1846 express, but did not drive a team in any of the runs north to Montreal.
8. Eastern Argus, February 24, 1845, and March 17, 1845, both citing the Boston Daily Mail.
9. Eastern Argus, January 26, 1846.
10. Oxford County Advertiser, May 13, 1887. Dr. Bradbury, in his colorful description of this express, was correct in his recollection "that two other races were run," but wrong that the express he described was "the most important and decisive."
11. Portland Weekly Advertiser, February 3, 1846.
12. Boston Courier, Feb. 3, 1846.
13. Eastern Argus, February 3, 1846, citing an article in the Montreal Gazette.
14. Eastern Argus, March 26, 1846. Boston was attempting to thwart a "great express" of news from Halifax through Portland to Boston in advance of the Cambria, and thence to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The Portland expressmen were to obtain the London and Liverpool newspapers from that longer express.
15. Oxford County Advertiser, July 1, 1904. A waybill of the third express, published in the Portland Weekly Advertiser of March 17, 1846, confirms some but not all of the details related by Dunham.
16. Eastern Argus, February 27, 1846.
17. Eastern Argus, March 9, 1846.
18. Oxford Democrat, April 8, 1845.
19. Oxford Democrat, July 1, 1845.
20. Eastern Argus, December 24, 1849.
21. Eastern Argus, November 28, 1850.
