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392 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
man of great pluck and energy as the following will show: One day as
Jones Avas going South near Plymouth his train was ditched. It was a
cold stormy day, very muddy, with nearly a foot of snow on top of the
mud. They had but lately begun to carry the mail. There was no
telegraph and no sleigh nor wagon could get through with the mail.
Yet the mail must go. Passengers could wait. So Jones hired a pair
of horses, hitched them to a handcar (they had no cattle guards nor
bridges in those days), put the mail in the hand ear and came on to
Shelby. There lm hired a fresh team and came on to Mansfield. At
another time after he got six miles out of Mansfield he remembered he
had forgotten the mail. He stopped the train, backed to Mansfield, got
the mail and Avent on his Avay all right. C. G. Mack, then a mere lad,
carried the mail from the depot to the post office for which he received
$1.50 a month. Here he received his first lessons in railroading and
afterward rose to the position of Superintendent of an important Indiana
road."
I'pon the ground now occupied by the Wells Fargo Express Company
in 1840 was David Campbell's bookstore and the Clarion office. A little
east of it was a small railroad turntable, the terminus of the old Sandusky
& Monroeville horse railroad. Old Luke Ballard handled the
reins. The whistle was a tin horn and the last signal of departure was
the crack of Luke's whip. The snakeheads and frowning banks and
deep shadows of the deep cut were terrors to the travelers on this great
thoroughfare.
The Sandusky Register of October 26, 1890, describes the railroad
cars oAvnod and operated by The Sandusky & Monroeville Horse Railroad.
They held thirty passengers, and were drawn by two horses,
and the trip took two hours. The freight ears required four hours, and
were square boxes covered with tarpaulin holding 140 bushels.
THE OLD MAD RIVER RAILROAD
The annual report of Hon. E. Lane, president of the Mad River &
Lake Erie Railroad Co., for the year ending June 21, 1853, furnished
a very interesting historical sketch of that, the second pioneer of Ohio
railways in point of operation, but first in organization work of construction.
The company was chartered in January, 1832, and organized February
22d, following, being the only railway corporation then in existence
in Ohio. An experimental line was run and estimates prepared
in the fall of 1832 and spring of '1833, and the first annual meeting
of stockholders held January 8, 1834. July 6, 1835, James II. Bell
commenced his labors as civil engineer and on the Kith of September
reported the line between Sandusky and Tiffin located and the grading
and bridging under construction.
The ceremony of "breaking ground" at the northern commencement
of this road took place at Sandusky, September 17, 1835, and was
attended by demonstrations of interest unusual in such cases, and quite