A Moore & Richardson Locomotive of about 1855. Road and number unknown. From a colored lithograph. {Courtesy John W. Merten.) SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM B ULLETIN 245 WASHINGTON, D.C. 1965 Cincinnati Locomotive Builders 1845-1868 JOHN H. WHITE Associate Curator of Transportation MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION WASHINGTON • 1965 Publications of the United States National Museum The scholarly and scientific publications of the United States National Museum include two series, Proceedings of the United States National Museum and United States National Museum Bulletin. In these series are published original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of its constituent museums—the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of History and Technology— setting forth newly acquired facts in the fields of Anthropology, Biology, History, Geology, and Technology. Gopies of each publication are distributed to libraries, to cultural and scientific organiza- tions, and to specialists and others interested in the various subjects. The Proceedings, begun in 1878, are intended for the publication, in separate form. of shorter papers from the Museum of Natural History. These are gathered in volumes, octavo in size, with the publication date of each paper recorded in the table of contents of the volume. In the Bulletin series, the first of which was issued in 1875, appear longer, separate publications consisting of monographs (occasionally in several parts) and volumes in which are collected works on related subjects. Bulletins are either octavo or quarto in size, depending on the needs of the presentation. Since 1902 papers relating to the botanical collections of the Museum have been published in the Bulletin series under the sub-series Contributions from the United States National Her- barium. Since 1959, in Bulletins titled "Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology," have been gathered shorter papers relating to the collec- tions and research programs of that museum. This work forms number 245 of the Bulletin series. Frank A. Taylor Director, United States National Museum \ JAN t i For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C., 20402 Price ?2.00 . ^J^ C^c^'i^^:^ Contents Preface vii 1 Toward the Industrial Millennium 3 2. Anthony Harkness and the Cincinnati Locomotive Works 9 3. George Escol Sellers' Grade-Climbing Locomotive 47 4. Niles & Company 91 5. The Covington Locomotive Works 117 Appendix 1. Two 1856 accounts of the Cincinnati Locomotive Works 125 2. Excerpt from Trips in the Life of a Locomotive Engineer 131 3. Excerpt describing Whetstone's radial valve gear 135 4. Two 1856 accounts of Niles & Company locomotives 137 5. 1856 article comparing performances of passenger engines operated by the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad 145 6. List of Locomotives Built in Cincinnati 1845-1868 147 Bibliography 161 Index 163 Preface Although several detailed studies and numerous articles on eastern locomotive builders have been prepared, the early mid- western builders have been largely neglected. To many who profess an interest in locomotive history, their very existence is virtually unknown. The history of the Cincinnati builders might well be viewed as a case study of the industry as practiced west of the Alleghenies before the Civil War. Surely, a better example would be hard to find. Except, perhaps, for McClurg, Wade & Company of Pitts- burgh (a firm which built only five locomotives in the late 1830's and dropped this line of work for more profitable business), Cincin- nati firms were the area's earliest commercial producers of loco- motive engines. The Cincinnati shops, although largely imitators of eastern machines, introduced certain mechanical improvements. Their products, an estimated 500 engines, were to be found on lines from Panama to the western United States and were respected as more than cheap machines hastily fabricated to capture a tem- porary local market. The Cincinnati Locomotive Works (Moore & Richardson) alone survived the Panic of 1857, which closed the early locomotive industry in the Midwest. The industry was not revived until the Pittsburgh (1867) and Lima (1879) shops opened after the Civil War. In Cincinnati itself, there is little question that locomotive building ceased entirely once Robert Moore closed his shop in Vll 1 868. An attempt in 1890 to establish a works for the construction of the Strong patent locomotive was unsuccessful. Still, traces of its locomotive industry are not entirely absent in present-day Cincinnati. In December 1961 I visited Cincinnati in search of any remains of the Niles or Harkness plants. No trace of the former could be found; however, at 506 East Front Street stands an antique brick structure now occupied by the Reliance Foundry Company. While I could not say with complete assurance that the building is the original Harkness foundry, its general appearance is nearly identical to the building shown in the 1848 daguerrotype (fig. 8). I was told by an officer of the Reliance firm that the present company took over the works in about 1921 and that two foundries had previously occupied the same buildings. To the best of his knowledge the buildings had always been a foundry. Apparently, then, a foundry business has been in continuous or nearly continuous operation on this site since Anthony Harkness opened his firm in 1828. The preparation of the history of technological subjects is fre- quently made difficult by the fragmentary and often contradictory information available. Rarely do the records of engineers or com- mercial enterprises survive. This is certainly the case with the Cincinnati locomotive industry. Although I was able to find a sur- prising amount of manuscript material, it was necessary to depend, in greater degree than is desirable, on newspapers and the technical press. There was little choice, however, since the companies in- volved have been out of business for nearly a century and their records lost or destroyed many years ago. This work would have been impossible without the encourage- ment and assistance of a number of persons. My first thanks must go to Thomas Norrell, whose precise and wide knowledge of loco- motive builders was invaluable in the preparation of this study. Others who generously provided information or illustrations were Harry Eddy and John McCloud of the Bureau of Railway Economics Library; Mrs. Alice P. Hook of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio; Charles E. Fisher of the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society; and L. W. Sagle and M. D. Thornburg of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. My thanks also to the following institutions and their staffs: Cincinnati Public Library, Connecticut Historical Society, Ohio Historical Society, American Philosophical viii Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Covington Public Library. Mrs. Richard T. Keys kindly furnished the invaluable William Harkness letters, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Moore con- tributed much useful data on Moore & Richardson. A word of thanks to my former colleague Eugene S. Ferguson for directing me to the Peale-Sellers papers. For their care and interest in preparing the manuscript my thanks to Mary E. Braunagel and Lillian Edwards. Final appreciation is due John S. Lea, Robert C. Reed, Margaret A. Pabst, Thomas C. Witherspoon, and Louise Heskett for their patient and meticulous editing, which did so much to clarify and reform this study. The inspiration for this study ultimately rests with my parents, John and Christine White, whose high regard for their native city stimulated my interest in the industrial beginnings of Cincinnati. JohnH. White April ig6j IX Cincinnati Locomotive Builders 1845-1868 o Chapter Toward The Industrial Millennium By 1830, before any railroads were built west of the Allegheny Mountains, Cincinnati had developed into a prosperous industrial center. The city, founded in 1 788, is located on the Ohio River where the Licking and the Miami and Little Miami Rivers join the Ohio. Taking full advantage of its river connections with the sur- rounding country, especially to the south along the Ohio River, Cincinnati had by 1810 become a center of commerce. Nine years later, with two foundries and the beginnings of what was to become a major industry—steamboat building— this city of nearly 10,000 persons was producing annually several million dollars worth of in- dustrial products. The settlement of the stn-rounding country and the continued development of southern trade stimulated the com- mercial growth of Cincinnati to boom proportions. The city's popu- lation doubled each decade between 1820 and i860. By the middle of the century, Cincinnati had become the largest city west of the Alleghenies and was rivaling Philadelphia's claim of having the third greatest population in the nation. It was the workshop for the South and assumed the title of Queen City, Gateway to the West. By the time of the Civil War, Cincinnati, grown to one-cjuarter mil- lion population, possessed a burgeoning industrial establishment which annually produced 90-million dollars worth of manufactured goods. The industrial arts were further stimulated in 1828 by the found- ing of the Ohio Mechanics Listitute, intended to train young men : — in the handling of tools, in mechanical drawing, and in other skills required by industry. The spirit of enterprise and financial acquisitiveness was candidly portrayed by Frances Trollope in her well-known Domestic Aianners of the Americans (1832) During nearly two years that I resided in Cincinnati [i 828-1 830], or its neighbourhood, I neither saw a beggar, nor a man of sufficient fortune to permit his ceasing his efforts to increase it; thus every bee in the hive is actively employed in search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly called money; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit. This unity of purpose, backed by the spirit of enter- prise, and joined with an acuteness and total absence of probability .