JOHNSONBURG RAILROAD
As a Johnsonburg News carrier my route took me from the Press Office to the alley between the Stackpole Building and the Theater to Center Street and then across Bridge Street heading toward the east end of town. I always wondered why the street was called Bridge as there was no bridge on or near the street. Eventually, I discovered that there was once a bridge on Bridge Street, one that did not span water as most bridges tend to do, but one that spanned a railroad track; the track of the Johnsonburg Railroad.
This is the story of that railroad.
On August 14, 1883 the Warren Mail newspaper of Warren, Pennsylvania reported that an organization had been elected to develop a railroad line from Johnsonburg to Clermont to connect with the coal fields in the McKean County area recently purchased by the Buffalo, New York, and Philadelphia Railroad. The new line would also connect at Johnsonburg with the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad. This would preclude having to surmount the current heavy railroad grade between Port Alleghany and Emporium. Coal was a most valuable commodity from the early 1800’s well into the late 1900’s; industries powered their plants with coal, people heated their homes with coal, and the railroads especially needed coal to operate their vast fleet of steam engines. Transporting coal to where it was needed was a very profitable business if a company could get it to its destination quickly and cheaply.
The Johnsonburg and Clermont Railroad was incorporated in November 1883 with a $200,000 capitalization, James H. Haggerty, President. Directors; D. D. Cook III, A. Parsons, F. W. Morgan, S.A. Rote, A. Thompson, James Penfield. The offices were at Ridgway, Pennsylvania.
James H.. Hagerty was a well-respected Ridgway merchant who dabbled in lumber, general stores, and shoe sales. He was a longtime Postmaster at Ridgway.
Little is known about Daniel D. Cook III except his first name, that he was a resident of Elk County in the 1890’s, and his daughter married a druggist from Williamsport in 1890.
Henry A. Parsons was a Ridgway, Pennsylvania newspaper editor and printer in the 1880’s and acted as St. Marys, Pennsylvania postmaster from 1889-1893. Later he was in the insurance business in St. Marys and ended his career as an employee with a collection agency in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1920.
Nothing is known of F.W. Morgan.
Samuel A. Rote was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1848. He spent most of his life as a bookkeeper for the Elk County Tannery Company.
Albert Thompson may have been a dentist or a doctor.
James Penfield was born in England in 1844. He was a Civil War veteran who lived in Ridgway, Pennsylvania most of his life and worked as a bookkeeper and a water route collector. He was assistant postmaster of Ridgway in 1880.
Although these gentlemen had the foresight to visualize the need for a railroad from Johnsonburg to Clermont they apparently did not have the necessary expertise, money, or political pull to get the railroad built. Their efforts fell by the railroad tracks.
Four years later on March 12, 1887 a charter was granted at $300,000 to an organization in Philadelphia for a Johnsonburg-Clermont Railroad. President of the Corporation was J. N. Dubarry of Philadelphia. Directors of the Company were John P. Green, Edmund (Edward) Smith, J. Price Wetherill and others of Philadelphia, Wistar Morris, N.P. Shortledge, Henry I. Welsh.
J. N. DuBarry was a Civil War veteran born in 1830 and trained as a civil engineer. He was a longtime assistant to the superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a President of many small railroads throughout his career. He died in 1892.
Nothing is known of John P. Green.
Nothing certain is known of Edmund Smith.
John Price Wetherill was a wealthy Philadelphia businessman who was a director of the American Steamship Company and the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1874 to 1888. The Wetherill family were investors with the Armstrong brothers in the Johnsonburg Paper Mill.
Wister Morris was a member of one of the most prominent Quaker Philadelphia families and the founder of Morris, Tasker & Company. He was a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad, President of the Board of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and trustee of Haverford College. An extremely wealthy gentleman he owned the Greenhill Estates mansion and grounds and many other properties in the Philadelphia and Lower Marion area.
Nothing is known of Mr. Shortledge.
Nothing is known of Henry I. Welsh.
As you can read the second Johnsonburg Railroad Charter had backers who were wealthy, well-connected, and had some extensive railroad expertise. They would succeed in their efforts to build the Johnsonburg Railroad.
On November 17, 1887 the charter was increased from $300,000 to $420,000 and mileage of the railroad increased to 42 miles from the original 18. The railroad was to link to the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg Railroad.
In late February 1888 Charles and Robert Cassidy, George Riddle, and George Black, all of Big Shanty, Pennsylvania reported they were at work on the making of the Johnsonburg Railroad. A month later Charles Webster was making a survey of the anticipated railroad and stated he did not know when the railroad would be built but that it would be built.
On June 29, 1888 in Philadelphia the Johnsonburg Railroad charter was revised to $300,000 for 18.4 miles from Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania to Clermont, Pennsylvania.
Work began on the Johnsonburg Railroad on July 10, 1888 from Johnsonburg to Glen Hazel, to Straight, to Clermont. It is anticipated that the clearing of the road and the laying of ties will take 90 days. When completed it will be the shortest railroad line to the McKean County coal region. The Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad will build it.
By December 1888 it was reported that the Johnsonburg Railroad is proceeding slowly and will not open to traffic until January. Late in December 25,000 railroad ties were purchased and delivered for the railroad.
In April 1889 it was reported that the Johnsonburg Railroad track is complete and will be open May 15 or June 1. The new road will shorten the trip to Buffalo by 40 miles and the coal and lumber business will have better access.
All was not a walk in the park in building the railroad; Hungarian and Italian crews working on finishing the road had quite a melee on July 1, 1889. One worker was shot above the eye and killed while seven others were badly injured.
On July 12, 1889 the Johnsonburg Railroad opened for business under Superintendent Roberts. It is leased for use by the Pennsylvania Railroad. By August over 2,000 tons of coal are passed over the Johnsonburg Railroad daily. Very soon it is expected over a million tons a year will be transported.
Why did the Pennsylvania Railroad lease the Johnsonburg Railroad? Why didn’t the Pennsylvania Railroad just build or buy the Johnsonburg Railroad itself? Leases for short line railroads like the Johnsonburg Railroad were very popular after the Civil War for several reasons. In this case the building and owning of the Johnsonburg Railroad would have increased the debt on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s books, leases did not have to be shown as liabilities on the railroad’s financial reports. Additionally, leases did not require shareholder approval as did purchases and building new rail lines did. Lastly, additional stock would have to be sold to raise money for the building of a new road which would dilute current stockholders shares of Pennsylvania Railroad stock. It is interesting to note that at least a couple of the initial directors of the Johnsonburg Railroad were also directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is also interesting to note that the directors of the Johnsonburg Railroad had the road constructed by the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad, a competitor of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This was likely done by the Johnsonburg Railroad board of directors to eliminate any perceived undue or anti-trust connection of its directors to the Pennsylvania Railroad board of directors.
The first stop on the Johnsonburg Railroad is Glen Hazel or “New Flanders” which is booming with oil and timber business. In 1888 Benjamin F. Hazelton built a sawmill at New Flanders, renamed “Glen Hazel” after himself, and had a three-mile railroad built to lumber logs from Johnson Run. Around this time several oil wells were struck in the area but the most massive strike will not occur until 1894. Also, there were four of eventually five chemical plants being constructed at the time of the railroad building that were within two miles of Glen Hazel. These chemical plants used the hardwoods in the area to make various acids, acetone, wood alcohol, and charcoal. They all had small logging crews, railroads, and sawmills.
On November 15, 1889 in Philadelphia, the Johnsonburg Railroad Company elects its new officers: President J. Bayard Henry, Directors: James Bayard, George B. Bonnell, Charles T. Evans, Edgar D. Tares, John J. Henry, and Edward D. Toland. Who were theses gentlemen and why did the board of directors change so drastically? Around 1882 the Henry, Bayard & Company of Philadelphia bought the Rolfe, Pennsylvania sawmill and surrounding timber lands from the Rolfe family. Their business model was to log and saw hemlock planks for sale and sell the hemlock bark to the Wilcox and Kistler (Johnsonburg) tanneries. The Henry and Bayard families were related by marriages and were involved in construction and grocery businesses in Philadelphia. Eventually, they purchased most of the property around Johnsonburg and Wilcox and up the Clarion River to Instanter and Straight. In the 1880’s and early 1900’s they owned 10 sawmills in the area including Whistletown, Daguscahonda, Rocky Run, Instanter, Straight, Quinnwood, Rolfe, Berrgonot, Wilcox, and Burning Well. They did not cut the lumber themselves but jobbed it out. One of their lumber jobbers was George Bowley whose descendants still reside in Johnsonburg. Obviously, with the Johnsonburg Railroad running from Johnsonburg to Instanter, Straight, and Clermont and through or by their lands they purchased controlling shares of the Johnsonburg Railroad for the Henry, Bayard & Company’s benefit.
from the collection of Arthur Martin *Vintage Photo - Straight, Pa. - about 1910*
On April 12, 1890 the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased 1,500 shares of Johnsonburg Railroad stock for $101,000. Three days later new Johnsonburg Railroad officers were elected: J. Bayard Henry, President, J.N. DuBarry, Henry D. Welsh, C.H. Allen, Wistar Morris, Charles W. Henry, and N. Thouron. It seems now that the recent stock purchase had the effect of merging the original board of directors of the Johnsonburg Railroad with the Henry, Bayard Company interests in the road.
The original Johnsonburg Railroad schedule was as follows: North-Leave Johnsonburg 7:30 a.m., Glen Hazel 8:00 a.m., Straight 8:25 a.m., Instanter 8:35 a.m., Smith’s Run 8:55 a.m., Woodvale 9:15 a.m., Clermont 9:30 a.m. South-Leave Clermont 1:15 p.m., Woodvale 1:26 p.m., Smith’s Run 1:46 p.m., Instanter 2:02 p.m., Straight 2:12 p.m., Glen Hazel 2:35 p.m., Johnsonburg 3:10 p.m. Everyday except Sunday, passenger price, two cents a mile.
In February 1891 a new schedule was introduced, the train leaving Johnsonburg at 9:55 a.m. and arriving in Clermont at 10:35 a.m. returning from Clermont at 10:55 a.m. and arriving in Johnsonburg at 11:40 a.m.
On March 27, 1891 it is reported that over 1,000 barrels of oil are being shipped on the Johnsonburg Railroad daily.
Throughout its short history the Johnsonburg Railroad appeared to be well-maintained and unlike other larger rail lines did not suffer many accidents or deaths. On September 18, 1891 Laura Steinhauser 80, of Clermont dies at Instanter. She had been visiting her sister that morning a mile from Instanter and was walking on Schemmelfing’s log railroad when a log car came. She got off the tracks but a log stuck out and hit her on the head. On December 17, 1896 an unknown man was struck and killed by a Johnsonburg Railroad train near Bendigo. On July 31, 1914 a freight car derailed at Glen Hazel causing a two hour delay. No other incidents of Johnsonburg Railroad calamities have been found.
The Johnsonburg Railroad reported in January 1892 that more rail cars were on order. The cars cost between $8,000 to $10,000 and at the fare rate of three cents a mile the railroad is doing enough business that the cars will be paid off in three years. The Johnsonburg Railroad was a booming success.
The economic downturn in the Panic of 1893 causes a shortage of business for the Johnsonburg Railroad; no-one is purchasing building lumber and wood chemical sales are down. The Johnsonburg Paper Mill and surrounding tanneries and sawmills are on short hours. No one seems to have any money. The Henry, Bayard & Company informs its jobbers that they cannot purchase any more lumber as nobody is buying. At Straight, the Quinn Company, a jobber, sawmill, kindling factory, and chemical plant concern gets its employees together and tells them that the Henry, Bayard & Company has made a deal with the Quinn’s that if they keep working the Henry, Bayard & Company will provide the Quinn’s with groceries and other supplies and cover employee medical needs during the downturn. The Quinn’s will issue company store script for wages that can be redeemed for cash in the future. The plan works and Straight is saved! It also helps the Johnsonburg Railroad as the groceries and supplies must be shipped and the railroad and other business entities accept the script. Quinn stockpiled its lumber and wood chemical products and when the depression ended the company honored all outstanding script and paid in full what it owed the Henry, Bayard & Company.
To make matters worse there is a great national coal strike starting in May 1894. All Johnsonburg-Clermont engines and other engines in the coal region are sent to the roundhouse in Kane, Pennsylvania to be guarded against the angry strikers. There is no railroad business. By June the coal owners are employing negroes from the deep south to break the strike. Two hundred are said to be heading for Johnsonburg. On June 23, 1894 180 negroes from Binghamton, Alabama arrive in Johnsonburg to work the local mines and McKean County coal fields. They will work at the .60 cent rate. They are armed with guns, knives, and revolvers to defend themselves. Wages had been cut during the Panic of 1893 and again in 1894 causing labor unrest and the strike. The United Mine Workers strike was successful at first but the coal owners held fast and by the end of June 1894 coal minors began to trickle back to work faced with poverty and scab labor. The United Mine Workers Union went defunct and would not be a force until John L. Lewis took it over a quarter of a century later. By November all coal mines were back to work full force and 22,300 cars of shipped coal travelled over the Johnsonburg Railroad in a month. The mines could not keep up with the coal orders.
The Johnsonburg Railroad announces in January 1895 that it will now travel from Ridgway to Clermont. The Ridgway to Johnsonburg trip will be on Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.
In May 1896, due to new logging in the area, there will now be a stop at Bendigo.
The Johnsonburg Railroad passenger train is identified as train 219 in 1897. Whether or not this has anything to do with the Route 219 roadway is unknown.
On April 9, 1900 it is announced that the stockholders meeting of the Johnsonburg Railroad was held at the Broad Street Station in Philadelphia and that J. Bayard Henry was elected President and J.S. Van Zandt, secretary-treasurer.
Johnsonburg circa 1905
This photograph shows Johnsonburg as seen from the B. R. & P. Railroad. The view is looking generally south with the stacks of wood for the pulp mill on the left and the pulp conveyor system running left to right into the N. Y. and Penn. Paper Mill.
In the lower right portion of the photo are several company houses for the Rolfe Tannery and the steel truss bridge over the Clarion River along current Business Route 219.
-taken from Elk County, A Journey Through Time on Facebook
Around 1909 the wooden bridge over the Johnsonburg Railroad tracks on Bridge Street is changed to iron.
More business is ensured for the Johnsonburg Railroad in February 1910 as it is decided by those concerned that coal from Reynoldsville will now travel over the Johnsonburg Railroad to Clermont to Olean and onto Buffalo. The previous coal route went through Driftwood but the Johnsonburg grade is lower and the new route will be shorter and quicker.
B.E. Wellendorf, 66, civil engineer, died in St. Marys, Pennsylvania on May 11, 1910. His company, Miller and Wellendorf, constructed the Johnsonburg Railroad. Mr. Wellendorf was married to Julia Hall, sister to Senator Hall and Judge Hall of Hall & Kaul. He built several other railroads in Pennsylvania and New York State. B.E. was a wealthy man who was retired and lived at the Franklin House. Due to circulation problems in his later years he had his legs amputated and got around in a wheeled chair.
In November 1914 J.H. Neid of Erie made his headquarters in Johnsonburg while auditing the Johnsonburg Railroad stations from Ridgway to Clermont.
A news article from March 3, 1916 reveals the entanglements of the railroads of the era; the Pennsylvania Railroad now owns 75% of the Johnsonburg Railroad stock, the other 25% is owned by the Buffalo Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. (The Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated in 1887 and ran from Emporium to Olean, Hinsdale, Cuba, Belfast, and Rochester. It did not earn enough revenue from 1895-1899 to pay its bondholders and the Pennsylvania Railroad bought controlling stock in the company in 1900. So, in essence, by 1916 the Pennsylvania Railroad controlled 100% of the Johnsonburg Railroad, leasing the railroad from itself.)
On June 28 and again on August 15, 1917 massive rains flood Johnsonburg and especially the Flats and Centre Street as the iron bridge on Bridge Street acts as a funnel for water coming off the avenues. The Johnsonburg Railroad tracks are closed due to debris and water damage and are not opened until late afternoon.
Henry, Bayard & Company began selling off deforested lots in Rolfe around 1892. Lumbering in Rolfe continued under the company until 1904 when the sawmill was dismantled. The Instanter sawmill had closed in 1902. With the exception of Straight which had a few years left all the Henry, Bayard & Company sawmills were closed and the Company began to look elsewhere in the Country for its wood. In February 1905 the Armstrong Forest Company (Paper Mill) buys land in McKean and Elk Counties from the Henry, Bayard & Company and also purchases from the company the Rolfe Railroad. The mill will begin to harvest the hardwood trees in Big and Little Mill Creeks and Birch Hollow for the production of paper. The closing of the sawmills at Glen Hazel, Quinnwood, Berrgonot, and Instanter reduces lumber and bark traffic on the Johnsonburg Railroad. In 1923 the Quinn’s finished logging all the hemlock and closed their chemical plant in Straight and moved to Glenfield, New York. With most of McKean and Elk County lumbered out the Quinn’s needed new forests for their wood products. The Straight chemical plant was the last in the area to close. With the McKean County coal fields also mostly tapped out and the Glen Hazel oil wells dry, the once extensive freight business of coal, oil, lumber, bark, and wood chemicals that supported the Johnsonburg Railroad was virtually nil. The T. H. Quinn company and the Elk Tanning Company had been providing 95% of the Johnsonburg Railroad freight. Now that these companies were dismantling the books of account were all in red ink.
At the beginning of 1927 the Johnsonburg Railroad ceased its passenger service and only ran freight trains two or three times a week. In reading local papers of the times it is quite amazing the large amount of traffic from the Olean, Clermont, and Smethport Area that once came to Johnsonburg on the Johnsonburg Railroad to visit, shop at the impressive “Brick Block” and to take in entertainment at the Armstrong Opera House. McKean County papers went so far as to chastise its residents for travelling to Johnsonburg instead of spending their money in McKean County. Many families came from that area to settle in Johnsonburg; Johnsonburg cigar store entrepreneur John Mann brought his future wife from Clermont and the Duffy family came from Olean, to name a couple
On April 18, 1927 the Johnsonburg Railroad filed for abandonment of its 18.4 mile railroad with the Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington D.C. There were no reported objections.
On August 22, 1927 the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the abandonment.
On March 28, 1928 the Johnsonburg Railroad sold land it had owned in Sergeant Township to the Manor Real Estate Company for $1.The President of the Manor Real Estate Company was none other than J. Henry Bayard.
On June 11, 1931 the Johnsonburg Railroad sold land in Sergeant Township to the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad for $60.
On August 15, 1932 the Johnsonburg Railroad Corporation is officially dissolved.
The last known activity of the Johnsonburg Railroad occurred on September 16, 1933 when contractors pulled up the last Johnsonburg Railroad track and ties and left town. It was an end of an intriguing era.
NOTES
There are many mysteries surrounding the Johnsonburg Railroad. Newspaper advertisements of the day regarding scheduling and railway fares note that J. B. Hutchinson was the Johnsonburg Railroad’s General Manager and that J. R. Wood was the General Passenger Agent, yet I could find no evidence in the genealogy files that any such persons existed. Likewise with Johnsonburg Railroad Superintendents Roberts and S.A. Hart. Only Van Ebert, Johnsonburg Railroad Trainmaster, who resided in Ridgway and then in Kane, was uncovered. Van Ebert was a longtime Pennsylvania Railroad employee who started out in Renovo.
A further mystery is where did passengers buy tickets and board the train in Johnsonburg? There is no station noted on any Johnsonburg maps of the era. The train intersected with the Pennsylvania Railroad just across East Center Street from the “Piano Box.” It went across East Center Street behind what would be Smith Lumber, Smith Motors, and the Johnsonburg Hotel. The train then proceeded under the Bridge Street bridge to a gully along the east side of Center Street and turned northeast through what would eventually be the current United States Post Office, crossing at the intersection of Cobb and Market Street and heading to Bendigo on what would become the Glen Hazel Road. The natural embarking and debarking spot would seem to be somewhere around Cobb and Market. Who knows?
In an 1895 map of Johnsonburg there is a wooden? stairway over the Johnsonburg Railroad tracks on Centre Street about halfway down the street. Although the train was in a gully on Centre Street the walkway must have been quite tall.
No resident from Johnsonburg ever seemed to be involved in the ownership or management of the Johnsonburg Railroad. The “Robber Barons” of Philadelphia with the exception of the Armstrong family only took and hardly ever gave back. They denuded the mighty forest of Hemlock, stripped the coal mines leaving the water putrid, dumped the refuse of the wood chemicals on the ground so that even today the water from the East Branch Dam is suspect, and spoiled the Clarion River with its tanneries discharge. When the Barons reaped their profits and could glean no more from the land they closed their tanneries, logging operations, sawmills, chemical factories, and railroads, never to be heard from again in Johnsonburg except in stories like this.
Kevin “Reg” Barwin
Kevin Barwin, a Johnsonburg native, who spent his youth peddling newspapers in Johnsonburg and reading the newsprint, while walking his routes, acquired a taste for the past.
THE PAPER BOY FROM THE PAPER CITY, More on his book: here
