GENERAL STONE's ELEVATED RAILROAD Portrait of an Inventor Mark Reinsberg
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GENERAL STONE'S ELEVATED RAILROAD Portrait of an Inventor Mark Reinsberg Part III several months after the close of the Philadelphia Centennial and the dismantling of his monorail exhibit, Roy Stone lived an ForA intensely private life, leaving no documentation whatever. One can imagine that the General returned to Cuba, New York, dis- heartened by the debacle and deeply involved in the problems of bankruptcy. There were health problems as well. Towards the end of winter, 1876/77, Stone resolved to cash in an old IOU. On a gloomy and introspective March day, the General traveled to Belmont, the seat of Allegany County, New York.He did so in order to make a legal declaration, an affidavit needed "for the purpose of being placed on the invalid pension role of the United States/' State of New York County of Allegany ss: On this 12th day of March A.D. 1877 personally appeared before me clerk of said County ... Roy Stone aged forty (40) years, a resident of the village of Cuba ... who being duly sworn according to law declares that he is the identical Roy Stone who was ... Colonel of the 149th Regiment Penna. Vols., and was on the 7th day of September, 1864, made a Bvt. Brig. Genl. U.S. Vols., ... That while a member of the organization aforesaid, to wit Colonel, 149th Regt. P.V. in the service and in the line of his duty at Gettysburg in the State of Penna., on or about the first day of July, 1863, he was wounded in the right hip by a musket ball fired by the enemy. That he was in command of the 2nd Brig. 3rd Div.1st Army Corps, Maj. Genl. Doubleday com- manding, and was directed by General Doubleday to advance his position and place his brigade on the Chambersburg Pike. That while holding said pike and in command of said brigade deponent 8 MARK REINSBERG JANUARY was wounded as aforesaid 40 .... That he was treated in no hospital but after being wounded was taken prisoner, paroled on the field and taken to the house of David Wills in Gettysburg 41 where he remained two weeks and was then taken home That prior to his entry into the service above named he was a man of good sound physical health, being when enrolled a manu- facturer. That he is now wholly disabled from obtaining his sub- sistence by manual labor by reason of his injuries above de- scribed received in the service of the United States, and he there- fore makes this declaration for the purpose of being placed on the invalid pension role of the United States. That he has heretofore refused to make such application because he was abundantly able to take care of himself and did not think it right so to do while he had means enough of his own .... Claimant's signature ROY STONE Pension applications, even for well-attested Civil War injuries, usually took many months to process. To compensate for the scanty or missing medical records of that military era, the veteran had to submit affidavits to the Pension Commissioner. He needed the eye- witness testimony of old comrades, of his officers, of regimental surgeons. He needed the corroborating statements of civilian doctors who had known his state of health before and after military service. He often would have to seek out former employers and other towns- folk, preferably people of some standing— in the community,—to vouch for the physical labor he was once but now no longer able to perform. To proud old soldiers, this could be humiliating. Once resolved upon this suppliant act, the General held weighty advantages, and the service his application received was uncommonly swift. For one thing, there was good proof already on file in the form of a letter from Dr. John Dickson of Pittsburgh, dated June 13, 1864, certifying, that on the 1st August 1863 Ioperated on Col. Roy Stone for the removal of a minnie ball from the Iliac Fossae. In conducting the operation it became neces- sary to separate the origin of the iliacus internus from the bone. From this he recovered sufficiently to resume his duties. A fall from his horse [in the Battle of the Wilderness] has broken up the union, and he willnow be unfit for duty ... 40 See Stone's and Doubleday's accounts of the action in Official Records, War of the Rebellion, Series I,Vol. xxvii,pt. 1, 243-331. Also Doubleday's testimony, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 38th Cong. 2d Session, Report No. 142, pt. 1, vol. I, 307. 41 President Lincoln stayed at the Wills house on the eve of the Gettysburg address. 1967 GENERAL STONE'S ELEVATED RAILROAD 9 Now old Dr. Dickson came out of retirement to sign his opinion in palsied hand that "the injury inflicted by said wound was ... an injury from which said Stone would never recover to an extent that he could do bodily labor sufficient to earn his livelihood." An addi- tional medical record was submitted showing "that the officer, during the civilwar, contracted chronic diarrhea, and ... he suffered from a recurrence of this trouble to such an extent as to wholly unfit him for business at times." Major General Abner Doubleday was also living in retirement, in Mendham, New Jersey, finishing his military Reminiscences. As Stone's superior officer at Gettysburg, his statement could be of great assistance. Doubleday obliged. This is to certify that Gen. Roy Stone was colonel of the 149th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers on the 1st day of July, 1863, at the battle of Gettysburg ; that he was then in command of the Second Brigade, Third Division, of the First Army Corps ;that he was desperately wounded in the hip while gallantly holding the center of the corps line against vastly superior numbers, and as his commanding officer on that occasion Itake pleasure in certifying to his great gallantry at that time and to the inestimable service he rendered the country by holding the position assigned to him, for had it been yielded earlier in the day the enemy would have pressed on and have taken possession of Cemetery Hill, which would have caused the battle to have ended in retreat or defeat, instead of victory. His services merit him a special recompense from the Government. Stone filed his pension application on April 7, 1877. About two months later his claim was approved for compensation at the rate of $22.50 a month. The local chronicles of Cuba give us no glimpse of Stone at his nadir. The General still was a representative of the town elite. Ifhis financial reverses were not a complete secret, they did not produce any sudden change in his personal style. By the modest standards of the town, he continued to live in a fine house with elegant furnishings. An aristocratic family was perhaps expected to require extended credit. He was "The General/' and that in itself was something special. Cubans, by their own deference, helped to surround him with an aura. Mrs. Stone evidently maintained the family's rank and social obligations without a sign of weakness in this crisis period. Ninety years later, we hear remembrances not of economic disaster but of genteel aloofness, and of twelve-year-old Romaine's participation in the calling-card etiquette of Cuba's fashionable set. 42 42 Impressions drawn from a conversation held in July 1963, with a resident of Cuba, Richard W. Morgan, whose ancestors were near-neighbors of the Stones. It should be added that the 1875 Census of Cuba lists a French tutor as a member of the Stone household. 10 MARKREINSBERG JANUARY Meanwhile, the head of the household had received some unex- pected encouragement on his invention. The same oil men who had ridden on the Elevated in Fairmount Park were again making in- quiries. They wanted toknow ifitcould be used to haul freight as well as passengers over rugged open country. Stone no longer rejected the idea. Since the summer of 1875, he had heard much about a great new oil field emerging from the wasted timber lands near Bradford in northern McKean County, Pa. The petroleum territory lay only a few miles below the southern boundary of Cattaraugus County, about thirty miles from Cuba. By the spring of 1877, this field was under feverish development, with a dozen oil towns mushrooming east of Bradford, frantically calling for transport facilities. Bradford stood in a sparsely-settled tier, inaccessible by rail or steamboat. Before the boom it had been the center of a substantial lumbering activity along Tunungwant Creek. Now it was burgeoning as a tool shop for the surrounding oil industry, aching to end its physical isolation. What caused the oil operators particular grief were the wagon roads of Bradford township, especially the new trails they themselves had cut cross-lots to the scattered well-sites. 43 In autumn and spring rains these primitive dirt roads became impassable troughs of mud. Oaths and whips and herds of horses were to no avail ;the teamsters under those conditions were unable to deliver the drilling and well equipment desperately wanted in the field. In urgent need of trans- portation, also, were the many oil men living in town who would, if they could, commute daily to their leases. Rumors were circulating of a plan to build a narrow-gauge rail- road linking the oil towns to Olean, New York. The entrepreneurs (supposedly E. W. Coddington and A.I. Wilcox) 44 who approached Roy Stone did not think that was worth worrying about.