The Delaware railroad, 1836-1857
Date
1965
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The patterns of transportation development in Delaware differed little from those of other eastern seaboard states, but the rate of progress for most of the state fell consistently behind that of its neighbors. New Castle County, with its geographical affinity for Pennsylvania, was hardly to be differentiated from its ''big brother." The lower counties of Kent and Sussex, in fact all of the state south of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, still reflected the eighteenth century. ☐ In those promising years before the blight of 1837 descended upon the land, a handful of Delaware citizenry, led by John Middleton Clayton, the state's most distinguished son, endeavored to put an end to the peninsular isolation. Enthusiasm was engendered for a railroad, but this was not translated into funds, and the onslaught of the depression delayed the program for over a decade. ☐ Thinking men, however, had not given up hope, and in 1849 Samuel Maxwell Harrington picked up the torch and devoted the sixteen years remaining to him to the service of Delaware transportation and jurisprudence. His efforts in securing a revival of the dormant charter proved that legislatures had not changed in the interim. It was easy to extract legal papers from them but money was doled out reluctantly. Subsequent sessions at Dover would find the lawmakers becoming more amenable, but the credit of the State was loaned more readily than hard cash. ☐ Harrington envisioned the Delaware Railroad as a major trunk line connecting the port of Norfolk with Wilmington and the north but was willing, at the outset, to settle for its role as a short portage between two steamboat routes. He eventually broke through these bonds, but it was at the price of losing independence to a more powerful connecting line. Actually, the lease to the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Rail Road Company proved to be a godsend. The larger road provided the funds and the technical knowledge necessary to complete constructions and to operate the junior partner. The team of Samuel Felton and Samuel Harrington would work well in harness. With the inauguration of through service from Philadelphia to Seaford in December of 1856, Harrington had achieved his short range goal; he was not to see the fulfillment of his greater scheme. 0ur narrative terminates on what may appear to be an anticlimactic note. It is, however, the point at which Delaware stands on the threshold of a wider economic life. The door is open and one can peer into the promised land. It is, moreover, Samuel Maxwell Harrington's finest hour.