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406 BETWEEN THE OCEAN AND THE LAKES
i, 1S41, having been harbor master under Governor Seward,
before the railroatl was in operation, and continued until 1S44.
He was Alderman from the Fifth Wartl of New York, lie
was afterward in the Government service for many years.
He died at Philadelphia, April 30, 1867.
The winter of 1S43 was one °f tne hardest on record.
Capt. Shultz made his two trips on the Hudson River daily
between New York and Piermont, although the ice was twelve
inches thick, missing but one trip. April 28, 1843, m recognition
of this, the people of Piermont presented him with a
solid silver snuffbox, lined with gold.
THE FIRST FREIGHT SHIPMENT.
The first shipment of freight on the New York and Erie
Railroad to New York, although it was not billed antl brought
no revenue to the Company, was made May 24, 1S41. The
track had been put down as far as Spring Valley, east of
Suffern. Jeremiah S. Pierson had an order for twenty-four
tons of spring steel, to be delivered in New York, from his
works at Ramapo. He sent the steel by teams to Spring
Valley, where it was loaded on the construction cars, which
carried it to Piermont as they made their trips to and fro,
whence it was sent to New York by boats on the Hudson
River. Mr. Pierson was a liberal subscriber to, and largely
interested in, the Company. He remunerated the men who
handled his iron between Spring Valley and Piermont, who,
therefore, were the firstto profit by traffic on the Erie.
ORIGIN OF THE TRANSPORTATION OF MILK BY
RAIL.
Thomas Selleck, of New York, had the contract for driving
the piles across the big swamp at Chester, N. Y., for carrying
the track of the Erie over that then unstable stretch of the
route, in 1840-41. When the railroad was opened to Ooshen
in September, 1841, Selleck was appointed agent of the Erie
at Chester, thus becoming one of the two original station
whether the milk-shipping business was feasible or not, the
Orange County farmers had built up a highly profitable trade
in a certain product of their dairies, and had made a national
reputation for it and themselves, and they were satisfied with
that. This product was butter. The firstbutter made for
the New York market, as a matter of systematic and regular
supply, was manufactured in that portion of Orange County
and in the bordering portions of Sussex County, N. J. As
Ooshen was the centre of that region, the product, in time,
came to have the name of Goshen butter.
The great business in Ooshen butter was built up without
the aitl of railroads. In fact, with the coming of the railroad
came the beginning of the end of Ooshen butter as a factor
in the trade of the country. There were no commission
dealers in New York, either, for many years, and the farmers
were compelled to place their butter on the market themselves
and be their own salesmen. It was transported from
the farms in great covered wagons to Newburgh, where it was
put on barges and towed down the Hudson. Some farmers
carted their butter all the way to New York. All those in the
region lying about Chester, Middletown, Ooshen, Unionville,
Westtown, Ridgebury, and other villages in Orange Countv,
and about Beemerville, Deckertown, Newton, and Clove
Valley, in Sussex County, had an agreement or combination
by which they marketed their product on the same day, which
was the second Tuesday of November in each year. The
long trains of big market wagons, laden with the golden product
of the dairies, passed in almost endless procession over
the roads of Orange and Sussex counties annually on that day,
all bound for Newburgh and the river. That day was known
as " the day of the big trip." The price of butter to the
farmer averaged from 12 J^ to 15 cents a pound. It was
packed down in firkinsduring the winter and summer, and
none was marketed until fall.
When the Erie was opened between Piermont and Goshen,
communication with the New York market became a matter
of only a few hours instead of the best part of two days. For
months the butter trade was the mainstay of the railroad. It
may be set down as an important historical fact in the life of
the Erie that it was the butter of Orange and Sussex counties
that made it possible to keep the road in operation during
the first few months of its existence.
Wedded thus as they were to butter making, the Orange
County farmers were not ready to see any reason for the faith
of Thomas Selleck in the idea that there would be an increased
profit for them in abandoning that branch of the
dairy business for the simple selling of their milk, and those
in control of the railroad were equally indifferent and incredulous.
The railroad had been in operation more than
half a year before the first shipment of milk was made to the
agents, the other being John A. Bailey, at Goshen. The excellence
of Orange County's milk early attracted Selleck's
attention. He was a practical man, and suggested to the
farmers that they send their milk to the New York market as
soon as the railroad was completed. At that time the main
milk supply of New York came from the cows kept by the
brewery and distillery stables. In those days, also, it was no
uncommon thing for truckmen in the city to keep a cow or
two in their stables, which they fed on brewery and distillery
refuse. They had their own customers for the milk thus produced.
Farmers from Long Island and Westchester County
supplied some families with milk from their dairies, but the
great supply of the city was from the swill milk stables. The city. In fact, the trade in butter increased greatly during
Orange County farmers treated Selleck's idea with ridicule. these months, owing to the quicker and more economical
That milk could be shipped more than fifty miles, especially means of transportation the railroad afforded. Selleck at
in hot weather, and subjected to the jolting and jarring of a last interested some of the leading farmers of Chester and
railroad train, and still be fitfor use when it at last arrived at Oxford in his scheme, among them Philo Gregory, James
its destination, was regarded as preposterous. At any rate, Durland, Jonas King, and John M. Bull. He was willing to