The Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road. 



275 



were taken to the train by stage coaches. The other 

 terminus of the road was still at the bluff overlooking 

 Schenectady, where passengers were again transferred to 

 stages. The distance traversed was less than thirteen 

 miles. From this small beginning, however, it has been 

 claimed, ignoring the South Carolina and the Baltimore 

 and Ohio roads, that this was the first passenger rail 

 road on the American continent operated by a locomotive, 

 entitled to consideration as a success. It was (indis- 

 putably the first in the state of New York. 



The precise time when the directors of the road felt 

 prepared to crown the complete success of their labors by 

 a grand excursion, to which were invited the state and 

 city officials, and a number of eminent citizens of New 

 York, was the i24th of September, 1831. There are so 

 many different accounts of this affair, and it is involved in 

 so much doubt and uncertainty that it has been suggested 

 whether, after all, it was not an imaginary event. But 

 we have the truthful portraiture of a portion of the train, 

 the handiwork of Mr. Wm. H. Brown, a remarkable 

 artist, who wrought with a pair of scissors, after the style 

 of the Silhouettes, graphic representations of persons, and 

 of things occurring at that time. This train was so vividly 

 represented by Mr. Brown, that many persons have been 

 led to imagine that they can identify the passengers from 

 his cutting, as we may term it. A lithographic copy of 

 this picture has been made, and extensively circulated, in 

 which certain figures of persons in the cars are designated 

 by numbers and names. 



More inquiry has been made than the importance of the 

 subject demands to verify the names of the persons claimed 

 to have been present; but as five new cars, or coaches, had 

 been put on the road for this occasion, there were not less 

 than eighty passengers in all, and a crowd that could not 

 obtain seats; therefore the efforts that have been made by 

 several ardent antiquaries through personal inquiry and by 



