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'4
BETWEEN THE OCEAN AND THE LAKES
George Morrell of Otsego County was chosen to
the chair left vacant by the resignation of Philip
Church, and the Lord
Committee on Resolutions.
letter was referred to the
If it were not the arguments
of that letter that brought about the result
accomplished it would be difficult to surmise what
the cause of the change in the sentiment of the committee
could have been.
After a long and hotlycontested
struggle in that committee, the resolution
quoted above was adopted, as follows:
Resolved, That it is expedient that application be made to
the Legislature of this State at its ensuing session for the incorporation
of a company with the necessary privileges to
construct a railroad from Lake Erie, commencing at some.
point between the mouth of Cattaraugus Creek and the line
of Pennsylvania and to run from thence to the Southwestern
tier of counties by the way of the village of Owego to the
Hudson River, or to connect with railroads already chartered
or otherwise, as may be deemed advisable, with a view to
reach the city of New York, by the best railroad route, with
a capital of $5,000,000.
This resolution met with a vigorous opposition in
the convention, but was finally accepted as the sense
of the meeting by a substantial majority.
Just why
the outcome did not satisfy Mr. Church and Mr.
Marvin that the Owego Convention was not committed
to the two-corporations plan it is now impossible
to know, but, according to the Marvin reminiscences
of the event in the archives of the Chautauqua
Historical Society, such was the case, and it
was only through strong personal appeals to Church
by Marvin that the former was induced to take any
further interest in the jiroject.
He yielded to these
appeals, and went to New York to confer with
Eleazar Lord and other New York capitalists on the
subject, with the result that Church was named as
one of the incorporators of the company in the
charter presented to the following session of the New
York Legislature; the Church application framed at
the Angelica Convention in October, 1831, being
adopted by the memorialists instead of the one
drafted at the Owego Convention.
The people of Broome County and that part of
New York had been for a long time striving for the
building of the Chenango Canal, and the influence
of the strong feeling in favor of that project figured
prominently in the discussion of the proposed railroad,
especially at Binghamton—so much so, that
on December 23, 1831, three days after the convention
at Owego, at a public meeting held at Binghamton,
one of the resolutions adopted was to the effect
that " we feel a deep interest in the contemplated
railroad, but we feel a deeper interest in the contemplated
Chenango Canal, and consider its construction
of paramount importance."
An interesting reminiscence of those days of the
Erie's origin is contained in a letter from Mrs. John
Barker Church, a daughter-in-law of Philip Church,
who, in the latter part of 1S31, wrote to her father,
Professor Silliman of Yale College, as follows: " Mr.
Church goes to New York for the winter, endeavoring
to make interest for the railroad, which is now a
topic of much feeling throughout the country. If
they get it, it will be indeed ' annihilating all time
and space.' They talk most seriously of being able
to go from Buffalo to New York in twenty-four
hours! You may smile at this, but I assure you,
it's all true."