A Pioneer Railway of the West — A Reader’s Guide

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In Category - Inventions Industry

Authors: Lafferty, Maude Ward, 1869-1962 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Lexington and Ohio Rail Road Company -- History; Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company -- History Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 13,825

Reading time 61 min

Text sections 2

The source record for A Pioneer Railway of the West — A Reader’s Guide measures this digital text at 13,825 words, 1 hr 1 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 24.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Lexington and Ohio Rail Road Company -- History,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #27256

Maude Ward Lafferty recounts the early days of the Lexington and Ohio Railroad through personal memory, newspaper clippings, and a dedication ceremony, blending a daughter's reminiscence with primary sources to capture the railway's pioneering spirit in the West.

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Louisville were represented by Messrs. J. S. Snead, B. Lawrence, S. S. Nicholas, J. I. Jacob and George Keats.

Mr. E. I. Winter (President of the Company) addressed the meeting an hour and a half. He described the route as surveyed by Mr. Kneass, the Engineer, entered into explanations respecting the estimates and made various calculations as to the probable cost of the work. He presented a very satisfactory and clear view of the means of the Company--its flattering prospects--the great resources of this section of the country &c.

After much discussion it was

_Resolved_--That the Directors of the Lexington and Ohio Rail Road Company be requested to take measures to put a proportion of the road under contract, not exceeding eight miles at Louisville and seven at Lexington, provided the same can be done at a cost not exceeding by 10 per cent the estimate made by Mr. Kneass, Engineer.

_Resolved_--That the Directors be authorized to call from the Stockholders a sum not exceeding $150,000 pro rata. for the completion of the 15 miles of Road named in the foregoing resolution, in such proportion and at such times as the exigencies of the Company may require, and that they are not authorized to extend their expenditures beyond the said $150,000 until after the Stockholders shall have been legally convened and a report laid before them of the progress made in the work."

"The meeting then adjourned, but before the Company dispersed a number of persons came forward and entered their names for stock. The Stockholders dined together with the Louisville delegation at Postlethwaite's Inn. We congratulate the friends of this noble enterprise on the results of the meeting. We especially congratulate the citizens of Lexington on the bright prospects ahead--the '_Winter_ of their discontent being made glorious summer'--by the proceedings of this glorious day."

The Trustees of the town of Lexington later took $25,000 worth of stock.

At last the great day arrived for the laying of the first rail stone, and the Lexington Observer of October 28th, 1831, gives a brilliant description of this most momentous occurrence. Gives it with a vividness which brings the picture so clearly before the reader that in spite of himself he joins the merry throng and takes his place in the spectacular parade which marks a new epoch in the history of Lexington. The Observer says:

LAYING FIRST RAIL STONE.

"Agreeable to the arrangements published in our last paper the ceremony of Laying the First Rail Stone of the Lexington and Ohio Rail Road, was performed in the presence of a large concourse of citizens and strangers on Saturday last.

At 11 o'clock the three Military Companies which formed the escort marched from their place of rendezvous to the College lawn, where they were met by the various societies and individuals named in the order of the Marshal. The procession was then formed in the following order--

Col. Leslie Combs, Marshall, with J. B. Coleman, Esq., (his aid) on horseback.

Maj. Gen. Pendleton and Staff, on horseback.

Field Officers and Staff, on horseback.

Officers of the Line--on foot.

Capt. Hunt's Artillery, in Platoons.

Gov. Metcalfe, supported by Prof. Caldwell, Orator of the Day, and Rev. N. H. Hall--Officiating Clergyman.

Judges Underwood and Buckner--Court of Appeals.

Judge Hickey, Fayette Circuit Court.

Hon. R. M. Johnson, R. P. Letcher, T. A. Marshall, Members of Congress.

Several Members of the Kentucky Legislature.

Capt. T. A. Russell--Ass't. Marshal.

President and Directors Lexington and Ohio R. R. Co.

Samuel H. Kneass, Chief Engineer--His Assistants and Treasurer of the Co.

Contractors and Pioneers with their implements of Labor.

State Board of Internal Improvement.

President, Engineers and Directors of Lexington and Maysville Turnpike Road.

Mayor and Aldermen of Louisville (who did not come).

Capt. Neet's Rifle Guards--in Platoons.

Military Band of Music.

Trustees of the Town of Lexington and Clerk.

Justices of Fayette County Court and Clerk.

Trustees and Professors of Transylvania University.

Surgeons and Physicians.

Members of the Bar and Officers of Fayette County Court.

Union Philosophical Society of Transylvania University.

Medical and Law Students.

Tutors and Students of Transylvania University.

Principal of Preparatory Department and Pupils.

Principal and Pupils of Wentworth Seminary.

Principal and Tutors of Shelby Female Academy and Pupils.

Principal and Professors of Eclectic Institute and Pupils.

Stockholders of Lexington and Ohio R. R. Co.

Capt. Postlethwaite's Light Infantry Company--in Platoons.

Lieut.-Col. A. Stevens--Ass't. Marshal.

Continue Reading →

Maude Ward Lafferty opens her account not with a dry historical thesis but with a personal artifact: a rusty bar of iron and a single bent spike unearthed in 1915. Standing before these relics in a Louisville & Nashville Railroad office, she is transported to a childhood sickroom where her father, born in 1814, soothed her with stories of the first railroad's departure. This framing device—a memory triggered by a physical object—establishes a narrative voice that is both intimate and historically curious. The author does not pose as a detached scholar; she is a daughter preserving a father's eyewitness tale, and the text retains the warmth of that oral transmission.

A Father's Recollection and the First Run

Lafferty’s father, a medical student at Transylvania University, joined fellow students on horseback to chase the inaugural train. The excerpt captures his terror: the engine “thundering along, puffing out clouds of black smoke,” the whistle incessantly blowing, his horse nearly bolting. This is not a dry engineering report but a sensory memory—noise, smoke, speed, fear. The author lets the father’s voice dominate, using direct phrasing like “to see if the Wonderful Thing could round the curve without running off the track.” The passage conveys the public’s mixture of awe and alarm, a response that later newspaper accounts confirm. Lafferty does not analyze; she presents the scene as a living anecdote, trusting the reader to feel the moment.

Newspaper Voices and the Pace of Progress

The narrative shifts pace when Lafferty turns to contemporary newspapers. She quotes the Observer and Reporter of March 2, 1833: “The first six miles of the Rail Road is now in successful operation. The Car for some time past has run regularly three times a day and is usually filled with passengers.” The language is brisk, factual, and commercial—a sharp contrast to the father’s dramatic recollection. Lafferty juxtaposes these clipped announcements with a later, more florid description of the Frankfort celebration ball, where “earth and sky and sea” had been plundered for sweets. The effect is a deliberate change in tempo: from the father’s breathless chase, to the railroad’s mundane regularity, to the gala’s extravagant relief. The author uses these shifts to mirror the railroad’s own uneven progress—stopped by cholera, delayed by miscalculations, yet finally celebrated.

Relics, Dedication, and the Weight of Time

The book’s structure is itself a relic: it begins with a 1916 dedication ceremony for a restored section of original track, then loops back to 1831. Lafferty’s voice in the dedication is formal—“dedicated to those men of forethought and courage”—but the body of the text returns to the intimate. She notes the “quaint and interesting relics” dug up by workmen, the “worn and rusty bar of iron.” These objects anchor her narrative, giving it a tangible center. The author does not claim completeness; she admits the railroad “stopped to rest at Frankfort and stopped so long it became known as the ‘Lexington and Frankfort Rail Road.’” This honesty about failure and delay prevents the account from becoming mere boosterism. Instead, the reader senses the slow, human pace of early infrastructure—a pace that the book’s own digressions and quoted documents faithfully reproduce.

Lafferty’s narrative is best approached as a layered document: a daughter’s memoir, a scrapbook of newspaper extracts, and a commemorative pamphlet. Readers should attend to the shifts in register—from the father’s colloquial terror to the newspaper’s bureaucratic tone to the ball’s poetic excess. These changes in pace are not flaws but evidence of the author’s method: she lets the sources speak in their own rhythms. The result is a history that feels lived, not compiled.

There’s something tender in how Maude Lafferty holds onto her father’s railway through clippings and memory, as if preserving a voice rather than a timeline. That same quiet ache for a vanished mechanical age lingers in The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest — Context and Discussion. I found myself thinking how both books are really about the people who believed in the machines before they worked.