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336 BETWEEN THE OCEAN AND THE LAKES
state, which had to be filled up, requiring in many cases very
expensive culverts, with long and heavy embankments. The
locomotives, cars, buildings, and machinery in shops were
entirely inadequate to the business. The road between
Goshen and Middletown, seven miles in length, brought into
use in a partly finished state, and belonging to an association
of gentlemen of the latter place, was held by the Company
under an agreement to run it. 'Phis had to be purchased
and put in order, like other portions of the road.
There had been expended for these objects, and deemed
absolutely necessary, the sum of 8695,421. The Company at
that time (and for some time thereafter) were entirely dependent
upon chartering such steamboats and barges as they
could procure to do the business connected with their ferry."
During William Maxwell's administration, legislation was
obtained postponing the sale of the railroad two years—to
April 1, 1845. Horatio Allen succeeded Maxwell as President,
in the fall of 1843, and made strenuous but futile efforts to
lift the Company out of its troubles and resume the work of
construction. (" Administration of Horatio Allen," pages 67
to 73.) In the fall of 1S44 Eleazar Lord was for the third
time called to the Presidency of Erie.
ONE WAY TO COLLECT A DEBT.
The route of the New York and Erie Railroad was located
through several of the finest of Orange County's farms between
Goshen and Middletown. With the exception of
Adrian Holbert, the owners of those farms gave right of way
for the road, some of them also being among the contributors
of money toward insuring the extension of the line to Middletown.
Part of the Holbert farm was a wide stretch of lowlying
meadows, a mile or so west of Goshen. There was no
other course for the railroad to follow, and it was obliged to
pass across the Holbert meadows or have its western terminus
indefinitely at Goshen. The Company, therefore, came
to Farmer Holbert's terms, and agreed to pay him his price
for right of way through his property.
The meadows were fertile, and on the surface fair to view,
but when the contractors came to the making of a road-bed
upon them, they found that the fair surface was but a marsh,
concealing alarming instability of foundation. The land was
so low that to equalize the grade the railroad was to be carried
overit on piles driven in the ground. A contract was
made with Farmer Holbert to furnish the piling necessary to
establish the grade across his meadows. The pile-driving
proceeded satisfactorily until the workmen were well afield,
when suddenly the bottom seemed to drop out of the land,
and the road-building became a repetition, on a small scale,
of the experience the contractors had had on the Chester
meadows. For a time it appeared asif Adrian Holbert
would be unable to fulfil his contract for supplying the piles,
but be was of the pushing and determined sort, and hired
farmers in all the surrounding towns to cut and deliver to him
the necessary timbers. The result was that he put them on
the ground within the required time, and the road was built
across his meadows. This piece of road-bed is to-day a solid
high embankment, apparently as ancient as the hills that rise
on the right of it; but when the rails were placed upon it, in
1843, they rode across the meadows on the tops of piling in
some places several feet above the surface.- These piles are
still there, but were long ago hidden by the present solid
road-bed, which is the artificial fillingin of the space between
the piles and the surface of the meadow.
The railroad was completed to Middletown in June, 1843.
Preliminary to opening it for business-between that place and
Goshen, June 7th, one of the four locomotives then in the
service was attached to a flat car and started from Goshen as
an inspection train. Conductor W. H. Stewart had charge
of the train. John Brandt, Jr., was the engineer. Superintendent
H. C. Seymour, Gen. G. D. Wickham, and others
were on the car. When they reached the Adrian Holbert
place they were surprisetl to see a rail fence, four rails high
and three lengths long, built across the track there, and
Farmer Holbert himself lying on a cross tie, with his arms and
legs tightly clasped about it. The engine stopped, and the
railroad men went forward and demanded an explanation of
this placing of an embargo on pioneer travel over the New
York and Erie Railroad. Farmer Holbert, who is remembered
as a man in whom stubbornness predominated, explained
matters in decided terms.
"This railroad can't run cars through my farm," said he,
" until the Company settles with me ! "
The Railroad Company, it seems, had not paid for the
right of way across the Holbert fields, and there was an unsettled
claim for timber Holbert had furnished. Having
failed to get any satisfactory arrangement with the Company,
Farmer Holbert resolved to take heroic measures as the best
means to bring it to terms. So he had built the fence across
the track as a signal that there was no thoroughfare there,
and, rightly surmising that it would be no obstacle to the
progress of the locomotive, had thrown himself in the way of
it, feeling certain that the engineer would not proceed over
his dead body.
Remonstrance, appeal, threats, had no effect on Farmer
Holbert, as he lay stubbornly clutching the railroad tie ahead
of the locomotive.
" Tell the Company to come here and settle ! " he cried.
"Then I'll let business start up again."
The engineer ran his engine to within a foot or two of
Farmer Holbert, and set it to blowing off steam to the
full extent of its power, with the expectation that this would
frighten him away. "But," as the late W. H. Stewart recalled
the incident for the writer, " he didn't scare worth a
cent." Then the railroad men laid hands on him and essayed
to remove him by force, but it required three of them to do
it, and then only after a severe struggle. " A madder man
you never saw," Mr. Stewart said, " when at last we got him
loose from the tie, put him on board the car, and took him
on to Middletown with us."
It is scarcely probable that the Erie of to-day would recognize
as effective methods of the kind Farmer Holbert adopted