Career of the Iron Railroad

MORE OLD TIMES IR Nov. 9, 1893 Submitted by Sharon M. Kouns We copy again from an article on local history in the Jackson Standard, a chapter of the career of the Iron Railroad. It spades up old times delightfully. The promoters of the Iron Railroad failed to push their enterprise and their procrastination proved fatal, as far as Jackson county was concerned. It happened in this way. The boom in Lawrence county had aroused the people of Portsmouth. The result was the incorporation of the “Scioto and Hocking Valley Railroad Company,” February 20th 1849, with a capital stock of $2,000,000. The Portsmouth promoters were B. F. Conway, Joshua V. Robinson, C. A. M. Damarin, Peter Kinney, and John McDowell. The proposed road was to run from Portsmouth to Newark by way of Piketon, Chillicothe, Circleville, and Lancaster. Unfortunately for the enterprise, Scioto and Pike counties refused to subscribe to its capital stock, and the proposed route had to be abandoned. Portsmouth was too anxious for a railroad to let the matter drop, and its capitalists began to covet the $100,000 subscribed by Jackson county to the Iron Railroad. The Scioto & Hocking Valley officials went to work and secured $128,000 from Portsmouth. They then proposed to build the railroad through Jackson, if the county would transfer to them the money subscribed to the Iron Railroad. The proposition was favorably received. Portsmouth was already a town of importance, and immediate communication with it, was more to be desired than deferred communication with Ironton, the terminus of the Iron Railroad, a mere hamlet at that time. Before the transfer could be made, Jackson county had to be relieved of liability to the Iron Railroad. This relief was secured March 20th, 1851, by the repeal of the act, authorizing the Commissioners to subscribe to that road. The Commissioners were assured of the result and had already made the subscription. The following Journal entry tells the story: March 18, 1851. - The Honorable John Callaghan, John S. Stephenson, and Moses Hays, Commissioners of Jackson county present, met for the purpose of a subscription of one hundred thousand dollars to the Hocking and Scioto Rail Road, to be raised by the tax-payers of Jackson County to pay the interest on the loan for 15 years, when the county pays the principal and interest, if any there be. To which a borrow of that was negotiated. The transfer of this subscription had a vital bearing on the after history of Jackson county. It built Oak Hill mostly in Jefferson township instead of in the “flatwoods” of Madison. It gave birth to Berlin and Wellston and deferred the development of Jackson and Washington townships thirty years. It knit a bond, political as well as commercial, between Jackson and Scioto, instead of Jackson and Lawrence. [IR may 21, 1891 - Wellston. - In the laudable effort to raise Wellston in public esteem, the Wellston Republican writes a very interesting editorial, in which we find the following very toothsome morsel of old times: When Harvey Wells inaugurated operations for establishing a town, Wash Poore wanted to have him arrested and taken to the lunatic asylum. He went to Vinton county and reported that Harvey Wells was crazy and was laying out a town down in Bundy’s corn-field. But Harvey’s mind was far-seeing and the corn-field of then is now the site of one of the most prosperous cities of Ohio.] •1852 - Iron Railroad Depot was built in 1852, occupied in December. source IR Aug. 1884.