would fall off largely. My correspondents in England and France, as well as in New York, were old and experienced merchants with whom I was generally jointly interested in shipments. Those abroad relied much on my obtaining early and as far as practicable, correct estimates of the incoming crops; which my long residence in the south enabled me to do; while, on my part I was very much influenced by their early knowledge of the harvests in England and France, and of other causes likely to increase or diminish consumption; so with this combined information, we were moving with tolerable degree of safety and prudence; and in the course of more than twenty consecutive years in which I was generally the largest shipper from Mobile, (one year over 20,000 Bales) we were unsuccessful only two years! and then from causes hardly to have been forseen, political troubles," etc. And yet money making was not his only or even his chief aim.

(2) "In all this long course of commercial business," he continues “I, of course, expected to make money, but I distinctly recollect that my pride of opinion and great desire to be found correct in my estimates and statistics, were paramount to all other considerations.

So, also, when I retired from business, and at New Haven first advanced money to renovate and sustain the canal, and afterwards furnished money to build the railroad by which [ have lost so much money, my desire (was) to accomplish what was, in that day, a great work for the benefit of the city in which I was to spend my days, and from whose citizens I expected to receive, at least, the poor compliment of unselfish public spirit and enterprise: these feelings were my leading ones, and far more intense than any hope of making money."

This subordination of pecuniary considerations to the higher interests of life showed itself in the move which led to the next period of his career. He had lived long enough in the south to establish a large business, and yet he was not satisfied to live permanently in a slave-holding community. The country was, moreover, unhealthy. He therefore, "considered it a duty if he ever removed, to remove before the constitutions, habits, and

feelings of the children were formed (as they were being formed) in a sickly, slave-holding country. He accordingly moved north in 1835, and took up his residence in New Haven, purchasing the house on Elm Street which he occupied for many years, and where several of his children were born." For many years after moving to New Haven he retained his investment in the South, and made yearly trips to Mobile in order to protect his interests, but he soon became engaged in other enterprises which engrossed his mind during the next period of his life.

This period covered twenty years, and was devoted in the main to developing the transportation agencies of the country. The first of these to attract his attention was the Farmington Canal which, first chartered in 1822, had, after many difficulties and reorganizations, been slowly extended into Massachusetts. In 1840 the sum sunk by the several companies in the undertaking was estimated at over $1,300,000. Mr. Sheffield had now lived in New Haven for five years and having faith in the canal, combined with Mr. Seth P. Staples of New York, Isaac H. Townsend, Henry Farnam, and others to buy a majority of the stock, and make the necessary advances to build the canal as far as Northampton. Mr. Sheffield made most of the advances, while Mr. Farnam managed the practical engineering work. But the old canal was an unfortunate undertaking. It was not possible to make it profitable, and in 1844 Mr. Sheffield, being obliged to make a visit to England and France in the interest of his commercial operations, sold out his stock. Before embarking he had written a letter to the Morning Courier of New Haven advocating an idea which had, according to his own statement, first been broached by Mr. Farnam; this was to substitute a railroad for the canal. When he returned, six months later, he found that the suggestion had been acted upon. Surveys had been made, and the friends of the enterprise were only awaiting his return to carry it into effect. He, therefore, bought back at a greatly enhanced price the stock that he had sold, applied for a charter, and made the necessary advances so that eighteen months after the charter had been granted the road was open to Plainville. This was the

beginning of Mr. Sheffield's business relations with Mr. Farnam, relations in which the accumulated wealth, financial skill, and commercial experience of Mr. Sheffield found an admirable complement in the energy, engineering talent, and practical knowledge of Mr. Farnam.

The Old Canal and the Canal Railroad were for both men, however, a school of experience rather than a source of profit. It is unnecessary in a paper of this kind to follow out the annoying and vexatious history of the Canal Railroad. Its efforts to combine with other interests were thwarted by the bad faith or indifference of those upon whom its chief supporter had relied. For years, at a later period, Mr. Sheffield served, to use his own phrase, as the "wet nurse" of an unprofitable company, paying most generously out of his own pockets the dividends on the stock which he had given to the Sheffield Scientific School, and it was not until five years after his death that a favorable lease of the road was made to the New York, New Haven and Hartford system, which finally put the stock on a dividend-paying basis.

Mr. Farnam, while his pecuniary interests were much smaller than those of Mr. Sheffield, had given up twenty-five years of his life to the canal and the railroad, and even in old age, if his usually sound sleep chanced to be disturbed by a troublesome dream, the worries of those early days came back to him and, as he expressed it, he would spend the whole night repairing a breach in the old canal.

In the same year in which Mr. Sheffield brought before the public the idea of the Northampton Railroad, he also suggested the idea of a railway to New York. It is difficult to realize at the present day the boldness of this enterprise, and few of the millions who are carried annually at the rate of fifty miles an hour over this four-track thoroughfare know that those who first projected it were greeted with derision by the bulk of the people of New Haven. There were two objections which, at that time, seemed to the majority conclusive. One was that New York and New Haven were already connected by a steamship line, with which no railroad could compete. The other was

that there were too many rivers, bays, and estuaries to cross. The road would be obliged, if it ran near the coast, to build expensive bridges, or, if it went further inland, to deal with heavy rock cuttings. In spite of these objections Mr. Sheffield instructed Judge Hitchcock to procure a charter (May 1844), and, on returning from Europe, employed at his own expense Prof. Alexander Twining of Middlebury College to make the surveys. When the books were opened for subscriptions, only three men had faith enough in the enterprise to take any stock, Mr. Sheffield subscribing for one hundred shares, Judge Hitchcock for ten, and Mr. Farnam for twenty.

The winter of 1844-5 was spent by Mr. Sheffield in Mobile, but before going, in order to prevent the control from falling into the hands of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, as the owner of the steamboat line, was opposed to the railroad, Mr. Sheffield subscribed to twelve thousand of the twenty thousand shares authorized, and an assessment was laid on the shares to pay the expenses of surveying, etc., all of which had been previously borne by him. The people still failing to respond, in the spring of 1845 Mr. Sheffield went to Europe in order to interest his English friends. During his absence Mr. Farnam went over the entire route from West River to the State line and successfully negotiated for the right of way on some three hundred out of four hundred and twenty claims involved. The death of Judge Hitchcock, which occurred during Mr. Sheffield's absence, blocked his efforts to secure more capital abroad, but on his return he held meetings with a number of New York capitalists, Mr. Anson G. Phelps, Mr. Townsend, Mr. Morris Ketchum, Mr. Robert Schuyler and others. Mr. Sheffield distributed his twelve thousand shares among these gentlemen, taking for them only about what he had advanced, and Mr. Schuyler agreed to take the presidency. Subscription books were now opened at New York, New Haven, and Boston, but even after the assurance that the road would be built, great difficulty was found in placing the shares. Mr. Sheffield himself took a large block and finally worked New Haven up to $92,000 or $93,000. then took the book down to Mr. Trowbridge, Sr., who as Mr.

He

Sheffield says, "very promptly, for the credit of New Haven, took the seventy or eighty shares to make up the $100,000."* After many trying experiences the road was finally put under construction, and Mr. Sheffield did the bulk of the work as director at the New Haven end of the line, negotiating for the right of way through the city, for the depot grounds, etc. As chief owner of the Canal Railroad, he was naturally anxious to connect it with the New York Road. It was his failure to accomplish this which induced him to sell out all of his interests in the New York Road and to resign his seat as a director.

As in his earlier career in the South he had known how to turn an unfavorable business situation to advantage, so now the disappointment and loss which he experienced in connection. with eastern railroads were perhaps indirectly the means of directing his attention to larger enterprises in the West. Mr. Sheffield owned a large farm, known as the Clyburne farm, near Chicago, and in October, 1850, visited the West with Mr. Farnam. Mr. Farnam had already in the previous August made a tour through that part of the country with reference to railroad enterprises, going from Chicago in a carriage across the prairie to Rock Island. Both were so convinced of the importance of a road connecting the commerce of the lakes with that of the great river and the great country to the west of it, that they held a meeting with some of the principal citizens of Rock Island and Davenport and urged them to obtain a charter, promising, in case it were obtained, to make proposals to build and equip the entire road.

This trip to the west was the beginning of important undertakings. Chicago was at that time a town of less than thirty thousand inhabitants. There was but one railroad entering it, a fragment of the Galena & Chicago Union, forty-two miles long. People who came from the East could go no further by rail than New Buffalo on Lake Michigan, which was about forty-eight miles distant across the lake, and the terminus of the Michigan Central Railroad.

The Michigan Southern was under construction but had gone no further west than Hillsdale, about one hundred and seventy* Page 5 of Recollections dated Old Point Comfort, April, 1880.