General Roy Stone and The New York Times By The Rambler In 2007, the New York Times made its archives available online from 1851 to 1980 with the early years for free. The Highway History page immediately thought of The Rambler, who always prefers to do his research on the cheap. He agreed to research the life of General Roy Stone as revealed in the Times, stressing that he was agreeing to do so only because it was free and he could work in his pajamas. On October 3, 1893, General Roy Stone opened the Office of Road Inquiry (ORI) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He had a $10,000 budget and one employee, a stenographer. His modest agency grew into the Federal Highway Administration, while his work to convince America that it needed good roads led, after many a twist and turn, to the Eisenhower Interstate System. Even so, General Stone is best known today because of his important role in the Civil War. Many Civil War histories mention him, often in considerable detail. Visitors to Gettysburg National Military Park can walk along Stone Avenue, named after Major Roy Stone to commemorate his heroic efforts on the first day of battle, July 1, 1863, when he and his new Pennsylvania Bucktails held off the oncoming Confederates while Union reinforcements rushed to the battlefield. After the war, General Stone lived in western New York with his wife Mary and two children before moving to New York City. He became a prominent New Yorker who often was called on for challenging assignments and big projects. As a result, his name appeared often in The New York Times. These references provide a unique look at General Stone’s life, particularly his life between the Civil War and the ORI, to supplement the biographical information in the Highway History page’s “Portrait of a General” at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/stone.cfm During the Civil War As best the Rambler can determine, Roy Stone first appeared in the Times on August 5, 1862. In a list of wounded and killed from General Truman Seymour’s Division, Major Roy Stone of the First Pennsylvania Rifles is listed as wounded. This apparently is a reference to his actions on June 30 at New Market, Virginia. Under attack from forces led by General Robert E. Lee, Major Stone’s Bucktail Brigade fired volley after volley before retreating to a position where the Union forces could reunite. He moved his forces along Long Bridge Road to join General George A. McCall. Moving ahead to locate the enemy, General McCall and Major Stone ran into a column of Confederate soldiers who captured the General. Major Stone turned his horse around and escaped, but a bullet struck his hand as his horse reversed course. General Stone’s Civil War activities would be referenced in the Times on December 10, 1893, in an article about the work of the War Department’s War Records Office. To that date, the office had published 49 volumes, each nearly 1,000 pages long, of documents from the war. The occasion of the article was the pending publication of “an exhaustive compilation from official records of the casualties on both sides of the war.” Based on facts rather than opinions, the volume would show beyond controversy, “that much of the hardest fighting of the war was between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia”: One thing clearly shown is the overshadowing importance of the battles of Gettysburg and Chickamauga, the greatest battles the Confederate and Union Armies, east and west, ever fought. Stating that the Pennsylvania reserves “was the only division in the Union armies composed entirely of troops from one State,” the article listed the Pennsylvania regiments, including “the One Hundred and Forty-ninth (Col. Roy Stone).” At Gettysburg, the article continued, the Pennsylvania regiments that suffered the greatest losses were the 101st (335) and Colonel Stone’s 149th (336). For more information on General Stone’s Civil War activities, see the footnotes accompanying “Portrait of a General” for references to books and articles recounting his exploits. [“Brig.-Gen. Seymour’s Division,” August 5, 1862 “A Book of War Revelations,” December 10, 1893] Staunch Grant Man General Stone next appeared in the Times on May 14, 1872, if the Rambler’s search skills can be trusted. [Editor’s note: They can’t.] He was listed as the second district delegate from Cattaraugus County to the Republican State Convention that was to be held in Elmira the following day. The convention would decide whether to support reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant, who had taken office in March 1869, or the liberal Republican Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. On May 15, the Times carried an item datelined May 11 in Cattaraugus County indicating that Greeley “receives but little sympathy in this county.” General Stone is among the six “stanch [sic] Grant men” the county had chosen as delegates. The brief article added that the second district convention unanimously supported President Grant, “instructing its delegates to use every effort to secure his renomination, and unqualifiedly condemning all attempts to break up the Republican Party by the nomination of so-called Liberal Republicans.” With Grant representing the Radical Republicans, the Democratic Party joined with the Liberal Republicans to choose Greeley as their nominee. Grant, despite concerns about corruption among the men he appointed to government positions, won reelection by a popular vote of 56 percent to 44 percent. In October 1874, General Stone was a rival, at least briefly, for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives held by Congressman Walter L. Sessions. The Republican Convention for the 33rd District, meeting in Salamanca, gave Sessions 66 votes out of 100, with General Stone receiving 17 and a third candidate, 13. According to a brief article in the Times on October 3, 1874, “The nomination was then made unanimous.” General Stone was among those addressing the convention, but the Times did not quote his remarks. Sessions, who had won his seat in November 1870, lost his reelection bid in 1874, and returned to private life as a lawyer, with a brief return to the House (1885- 1887). [“Additional Delegates to the Republican State Convention,” May 14, 1872 “Cincinnati Candidates at a Discount—Gen. Grant Sustained by the Masses,” May 15, 1872 “Republican Nominations,” October 3, 1874] Polar Hayes Later that year, the Times reported on November 23, 1874, that General Stone was one of the speakers at a reception for Dr. Isaac I. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, at the Arcadian Club. Nicknamed “Polar Hayes,” Dr. Hayes was a young surgeon from Pennsylvania when he participated in his first polar exploration via Greenland, known as the Second Grinnell Expedition under Dr. Elisha Kent Kane (1853-1855). In 1861, Dr. Hayes led an expedition in search of the Open Polar Sea—an ice free zone across the North Pole that ships would be able to navigate between Europe and Asia. He claimed to have seen it, but could not prove his sighting of a navigation route that, as we now know, did not exist. He was an author, a surgeon during the Civil War, a lecturer, and from 1875 to his death of heart disease on December 19, 1881, at the age of 49, a member of the State Assembly representing New York City. [“Reception to Dr. Hayes by the Arcadian Club,” November 23, 1874] The Saddle Back Plan In the years before the New York Subway, New York City’s growing population required more than the street-cars and omnibuses providing transit service. The idea of a subway, similar to London’s subway, was considered, but proved controversial. While the subway concept was under debate in the State legislature, an entrepreneur named Charles T. Harvey convinced the 1866 legislature to pass an amendment allowing him to build a railroad to be operated “by means of a propelling rope or cable attached to stationary power.” Harvey’s West Side & Yonkers Patent Railway Company built an experimental elevated railway line using Harvey’s invention for cable operation. It was one-half mile long, along Greenwich Street from Battery Place to Cortlandt Street. The advantage of an elevated rail line was that it provided public transit service with minimal disturbance to existing buildings, sidewalks, and streets, while freeing the vehicles from ground traffic that was limited by the speed of horses moving in a heavily congested environment. The official demonstration on July 3, 1868, was successful, and the company planned to extend the line from the Battery to Kingsbridge in Yonkers. However, financial and legal difficulties halted expansion of the “Patent Railway.” The difficulties led to Harvey’s departure from the company, a switch to steam locomotives, and reorganization of Harvey’s company, which became the New York Elevated Railway. A rival company founded by Dr. Rufus H. Gilbert obtained a franchise for his design. John Anderson Miller described the concept in his book Fares, Please! A Popular History of Trolleys, Horsecars, Streetcars, Buses, Elevateds, and Subways” (Dover Publications, 1960): His plan provided for tubular iron roadways suspended above the streets by Gothic arches springing from the curb lines. Cars were to be propelled through the tubular passageways by atmospheric or other power. [Miller, p. 74-75] The financial panic of 1873 halted the Gilbert proposal. With progress limited on the new elevated service, the city’s Common Council approved Section 606 of the Laws of 1875 to establish a Rapid-Transit Commission to select the routes of additional lines beyond those chartered to the two existing companies, the Gilbert Elevated Railway Company and the New York Elevated Railroad Company.