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From Turnpikes to Railroads: Antebellum Transportation Improvements and Community Development in Taylor County, Virginia

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From Turnpikes to Railroads: Antebellum Transportation Improvements and Community Development in Taylor County, Virginia CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by The Research Repository @ WVU (West Virginia University) Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 1999 From turnpikes to railroads: Antebellum transportation improvements and community development in Taylor County, Virginia Scott W. Daley West Virginia University Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Daley, Scott W., "From turnpikes to railroads: Antebellum transportation improvements and community development in Taylor County, Virginia" (1999). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 3952. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/3952 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FROM TURNPIKES TO RAILROADS: Antebellum Transportation Improvements and Community Development in Taylor County, Virginia by Scott W. Daley Thesis submitted to the College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History A. Michal McMahon, Ph.D., Chair Barbara J. Howe, Ph.D. Lawrence T. Nichols, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 1999 Keywords: Railroads, Turnpikes, Fetterman, Pruntytown, Grafton, Taylor County, Virginia Copyright 1999 Scott W. Daley UMI Number: 1402827 ______________________________________________________________ UMI Microform 1402827 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. _______________________________________________________________ Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 ABSTRACT FROM TURNPIKES TO RAILROADS: Antebellum Transportation Improvements and Community Development in Taylor County, Virginia Scott W. Daley In the 1820s, a revolution in transportation technology changed forever the shipment of goods, travel, and the process of communication as overland transportation shifted from turnpikes to railroads. This study examines the affect on community formation and development in two turnpike villages and one town along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, America’s first inter-regional commercial railroad line. Between the mid-1830s and 1860, as railroads replaced turnpikes, the villages of Fetterman and Pruntytown, Virginia, came into existence, flourished, and began to decline as railroads passed along the lower Tygart River in 1850, directly competing with turnpikes. The town of Grafton in Taylor County, Virginia, built for the railroad, began in 1850, and was large enough for incorporation by 1856. Emerging railroad technology would make turnpikes obsolete and draw Taylor County, along with much of northern Virginia, into a national transportation system, reducing the isolation of many small communities. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad represented a new technology that shaped communities. Cities, towns, and villages not directly along the railroad began to fall into disuse. Grafton received a further boost in 1856 when it served as the junction point for the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, which connected the Ohio River valley to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. This thesis examines the earliest industrialization of the lower Tygart River valley brought about by railroads. In the 1850s, choices over transportation modes and alignments helped form the town of Grafton and contributed to commercial and community development in Taylor County. In Taylor County, a new form of community came into existence: a railroad town which assumed characteristics of eastern cities, and provided a prototype for railroad towns of the west during post- Civil War expansion. Although still agricultural in 1860, the seeds of industrialization had been sown in Taylor County with the convergence of two railroads which introduced modernized transportation. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to a number of people who assisted in producing this work. The staff and archivists at the West Virginia and Regional History Collection at the West Virginia University Libraries provided a tremendous amount of help, not only in supplying archival materials, but in providing leads to locating some rather obscure sources. Nancy Virginia Fowler and her staff at the Taylor County, West Virginia, County Clerk’s Office in Grafton extended patient guidance in negotiating county records. I am also grateful to Ann Calhoun at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, Hays T. Watkins Research Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Special thanks to Emory L. Kemp, Michael Caplinger, and the staff of the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at the West Virginia University for their advice and inspiration for this project. Lawrence T. Nichols, professor of Sociology and Anthropology, graciously filled a vacancy on my graduate committee, and brought an important depth of knowledge that informed my work. Barbara J. Howe afforded order and a framework previously lacking in this project, and helped me to place a local history into a national context. My advisor, A. Michal McMahon, reviewed innumerable drafts of this project, offering advice, guidance, and moral support, even during the most trying times. The criticism, academic rigor, and help of my graduate committee is greatly appreciated. I wish to thank my parents, William and Barbara, for their unending support. And last, but far from least, I thank my wife Amy, who never wavered from her faith in my work, nor from her support, understanding, and encouragement while attending to our lives. iii CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Broaching the Wilderness 9 Influx 12 The Issue Was Good Roads 19 Turnpike 21 Transition 29 Chapter 2: Politics and Iron Horses 36 Making Tracks 38 The Northwestern Virginia Railroad 62 Recompense 68 Juncture 71 Elbowroom 72 Chapter 3: Railroad Town 80 Grafton 83 The Tie That Binds 88 Riding The Rails 97 Conclusion 105 Bibliography 111 Appendix 124 iv ABBREVIATIONS B&O- Baltimore & Ohio Railroad BORR- Baltimore & Ohio Railroad as used in reference to its annual reports BPW- Virginia Board of Public Works NVRR- Northwestern Virginia Railroad TCCC- Taylor County Clerk of Courts Office WVDAH- West Virginia Division of Archives and History, Charleston, West Virginia WVRHC- West Virginia Regional and History Collection, Morgantown, West Virginia v Introduction In these central solitudes every thing seems to be the property of the wilderness. It is all absolute mountain, absolute forest, absolute solitude. But in Tygart's Valley the landscape softens and becomes more human, with the marks of agriculture and habitation, and the road seems to bound along more gayly, as if exulting in its release from the mountains.1 This is a story about the transformation of a region through successive transportation improvements. In nineteenth century western Virginia, mountainous terrain isolated the population, and the region’s economy rarely kept pace with that of the nation. The land yielded natural resources for national consumption, but even as designs developed over time to extract them, little profit returned to the region. In the case of antebellum Virginia, eastern Virginians profited from western trade, while most westerners could barely make a living.2 The predominant problem was the poor quality of transportation. Effective transportation systems within the Allegheny Mountains came at great expense, and often fell well short of plans and expectations. Grafton, Virginia, in Taylor County, a town built for the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad, represented both a typical and distinctive example of how railroads and industrialization changed the roles of community and commerce in America. The railroad furnished a compelling force for community growth, causing Grafton to look very much like most railroad towns of the antebellum period. But Grafton attained a high level of success as a community due to its position at a vital rail 1 Brantz Mayer, “A June Jaunt,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 14 (June 1857): 609- 10. 2 For an examination of transportation and commercial development in Appalachian America, see Wilma A. Dunaway, The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 136- 52; Robert D. Mitchell, Commercialism and Frontier: Perspectives on the Early Shenandoah Valley. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977), 8-18, 179-86, 261-83. 1 junction between the B&O and Northwestern Virginia (NVRR) railroads, attracting people who established lumber processing mills, glass manufacturing plants, and additional rail lines to the town during the last half of the nineteenth century.3 Indeed, Grafton is still an active railroad
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