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B&O
BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD
Pioneers to West Virginia and Beyond
In searching through family ancestry records, I discovered several births
and deaths on the German side of the family recorded as Parkers Wood,
Virginia, in the early to mid 1800’s, then some others in Ohio,
in a town called Carrollton. For some time, I was a bit confused about
the location of Parkers Wood Virginia, but came across some history of
the western pioneer expansion which brought much of the story in a sharp
clarity, once realizing the records were referring to what is today,
Parkersburg, Wood County, West Virginia, on the Ohio River and making
the connection.
Anyone who has played the board game of monopoly, based on the industrial
robber baron days of the “gilded age” has coveted owning
the railroads, beginning with the “B&O”. Though players
of the game may have no clue as to the history of one of the country’s
earliest cross-country railways. The Baltimore and Ohio was chartered
in 1827 to carry passengers and freight from the urban center of Baltimore
to the pioneer west as far as the Ohio River. The B&O Railroad wasn’t
the first railway in America, but was the first to offer scheduled passenger
service to the public.
The
Erie Canal had just opened in 1825 making easier navigation from New
York to the expanding inland, threatening to leave the mid-Atlantic
south behind in the race for expanding commerce in the settling of the
open spaces. Baltimore saw the opportunity to beat out competing port
harbors of the north with the coming of steam rail technology from England
(see Locomotion
Rail History). The steel rails seemed the way to beat the
canal boats. The cornerstone of the B&O laid on the 4th of July 4
in1828 by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland. There are a number
of towns
now named
for the Carroll, an important statesman from Maryland, and at the time
the last surviving of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The route of the B&O opened as far as Frederick, Mayland by 1831. In 1833, a bridge was completed across the Potomac River to Harper’s Ferry, then Virginia, but becoming West Virginia in 1863. At Harper’s Ferry, the B&O connected to the Winchester and Potomac, forming the first junction between two railroad lines in the U.S. The line continued west through Cumberland, Maryland to Grafton, then to Wheeling by 1853. The Ohio River was finally reached in 1856 at Parkersburg, (West) Virginia. The B&O suffered during the Civil War, which effectively began at Harpers Ferry with John Brown's famous raid..
Later generations of the family had been noted in census records as
working for railroads (see Frisco
Railroad) and perhaps the tradition
had begun with the B&O.
I’ll never play Monopoly again without thinking “hey, we
built that”.
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