PARDON ME, BOY

(Continued from October 23, 2011)

Those New Yorkers who couldn't afford Manhattan's theaters and dining establishments in 1829 could still find free entertainment around town. On January 15th the ship Columbia arrived in port from Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. Aboard the vessel were a variety of large pieces of formed iron, which were unloaded onto wagons and carted off to the corner of Frankfort Street and Water Street - the northern stretch of the later today renamed Pearl Street, beneath the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. There the iron sections were unloaded at the iron foundry belonging to Garrett Abeel and Edward Dunscomb. When assembled at the plant the local citizens could gawk at one of the first two locomotives in the United States, the Pride of Newcastle.

The other locomotive, the Stourbridge Lion, arrived just about the same time - under separate cover - aboard the packet boat John Jay from Liverpool at the West Point Foundry, across the Hudson from the military academy. When assembled they were both to be shipped off to Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and used to ship coal eastward up over the Moosic Mountains to Honesdale, then shipped out to the Hudson by the new Delaware & Hudson Canal. Philip Hone - who we've met before - a recent mayor of New York, had been a major backer of that canal. He was a also diarist; on May 27th he wrote: " . . . I went to Abell (sic) & Dunscomb's foundry to meet a large party of gentlemen who were assembled by invitation to see one of the new locomotive engines in operation, which was recently imported from England . . .". Ties magazine - as in railroad ties - would later write, " The two locomotives at their separate locations were mounted on blocks with wheels clear of the ground and run under full steam for observation by groups of prominent men and scientists, plus curious passers - by attracted by the show."

The problem was, when the machines arrived at Carbondale they proved to be too puny to do the job and a different kind of railroad, using gravity rather than steam power, had to be employed. The two British imports were put out to pasture and met various fates. Today the Lion is on display at the Smithsonian, where its remains were brought and reassembled in 1888. A replica can be seen at the Wayne County Historical Society’s Museum in Honesdale. The Pride has been lost, perhaps the victim of an explosion.

If you were the sort that considered such contrivances as railroads to be devil's devices, or if your mind was just on more divine matters, you could find other diversions around town in 1829. On January 11th the Episcopal Church at Washington and Prospect streets in Brooklyn opened a large schoolroom adjacent to the church. After a new Manhattan Dutch Reformed Church was dedicated at the end of July; their cousins over in Brooklyn dedicated their new church two months later. About this time the Brooklyn Sunday School Union was formed and members of three or four classes began annual parades around the village. In years to come the emphasis would turn to secular schools and the holiday called Brooklyn Day was born. But no matter what your religious affiliation, you could always participate in some political action this year, petitioning Congress to halt Sunday delivery of the mails. Congress jumped right on it and passed the legislation in 1912.

© 2005 David Minor / Eagles Byte