Canals and Railroads
The Thomas W. Streeter Collection on
transportation forms the
core of the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of materials on
canals and railroads. This outstanding collection was given to AAS
by Thomas Winthrop Streeter, past president of the Society and
preeminent collector of railroadiana. The collection now numbers
over 6,000 pieces.
The first dated entry in Thomas Richard Thomson's Check List
of Publications on American Railroads before 1841 (New York,
1942), is for Oliver Evans's The Abortion of the Young Steam
Engineers Guide (Philadelphia, 1805). A copy of this volume
survives at AAS. In succeeding years, there were many reports and
articles on the possibilities for public roads, canals, and railroads.
Some four thousand miles of canals were built between 1815
and 1860, chiefly in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio;
with the Erie Canal the most successful,
but strong
regional rivalries prevented the development of a national canal
system.
Not until successful trials of the steam locomotive were
reported from England was any concentrated effort made to establish
railroads in America. The first transcontinental railroad was
begun in 1863 and completed in just over five years by the Union
Pacific and the Central Pacific railroad companies. A Union
Pacific baggage car carried a printing press on which Legh Freeman
published the Frontier Index, at twenty-five different locations
along the route. The issues from Julesburg, Colorado, and Fort
Saunders, Wyoming, are in the Society's newspaper collection. A
group of Bostonians made the first transcontinental trip to San
Francisco in 1870 and chronicled the events and scenes in The
Transcontinental, published in twelve numbers, the first at
Niagara Falls on May 24, the last on return to Boston on July 4.
A complete set is in the Society's collection of periodicals.
Many of the western railroad companies received large land
grants along the right-of-way. As the Society's collection
reveals, a flourishing business found land agents with promotional
tracts in Europe as well as in the eastern United States. Graft
was involved as well, and assorted pamphlets tell of embezzlements,
railroad rings, and the Credit Mobilier building company scandal.
Growth of the railroads led to a large service industry, with
trade catalogs for engines, cars, and parts, as well as
broadsides and brochures for freight rates and regulations,
construction specifications, and operator manuals such as The Road-
Master's Assistant and Section Master's Guide, by William S.
Huntington. Many issues of Appletons' Railway & Steam Navigation
Guide and other regional and national timetables and guides are in
the collection, as well as business directories issued by the
railroads that provided information on the towns and businesses
along the routes. The Society's collection includes material on
such groups as the Boston Association of Locomotive Engineers, the
Master Car Builders' Association, the Eastern Railroad Association,
the National Narrow Gauge Railway Convention of 1872, and the New
York Sabbath Committee (whose concern was that the railroads cease
operating on the Sabbath).
Access to the collection requires persistence. All of the primary
source
canal material is cataloged, as are most of the secondary
works on both canals and railroads. A smaller percentage of
primary railroad pieces are cataloged, including a group of official
reports concerning western surveys that were part of the
collection of western Americana given the Society by Donald McKay
Frost. Because so many early references and reports are to be
found in uncataloged government publications, researchers are
urged to read the section on government documents in this guidebook
and to consult the finding aids.
Parts of the railroads collection, those items dated through 1840, and
most items which are concerned with Ohio railroads, have been cataloged
online. Work proceeds
on upgrading existing cataloging of materials from the time period 1801
through 1820 which are cataloged only briefly online.
Still uncataloged are approximately 70 boxes of items which cover
general and specific railroads and two scrapbooks of railroad
passes. The general boxes contain items such as speeches, trade
and commerce reports, route proposals, and convention
proceedings, while the railroad company boxes consist
mainly of corporate and engineers' reports. A few foreign railroad
companies are included. In addition, there are twenty-six boxes of
regional and national timetables and guides, and over fifty
railroad business directories. Checklists available for these items and
also for all canals and railroads represented in the boxed material
are located in the reading room. There is also an incomplete
checklist of articles on the Blackstone Canal that appeared in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island newspapers from 1822 to 1837.
Other canal and railroad material is found in many broadside
advertisements, lithographs, maps and charts, railroad bonds,
passes and tickets, and sheet music, located in the graphic arts
department. Related material may be found in the Society's
collections of Newspapers and Serials, Trade Catalogs, American
Institutions, Stereographs, and Miscellaneous Pamphlets, as well
as the collection of Government Documents.
Thomson's railroad bibliography, Evald Rink's Technical
Americana: A Checklist of Technical Publications Printed before
1831 (New York, 1981), and Lawrence B. Romaine's A Guide To
American Trade Catalogs 1744-1900, (New York, 1960), are annotated
for AAS holdings, and the Society subscribes to the Bulletin of
the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society.
With over a thousand canals and railroads represented, the
collection offers many opportunities for the scholar. Its diversity
and depth illustrates not only the growth of a national
transportation system, but also chronicles the paths of continental
migration and the great influence of canals and railroads upon the
people and institutions of the nineteenth century.
- Carolyn A. Allen, former acquisitions administrator. Updated by
S.J. Wolfe, Senior Cataloger
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Railroad tickets
Sheriff, Carol. Artificial River (1996).
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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