How Do I Get There: 1840s Travel to Elk County
We are so used to taking a car to where we need to go that we can’t fathom the logistics required to get to someplace as remote as St Mays in the 1840s from the coastal cities of an infant country.
Traveling to a remote area like St Mary’s in the 1840s and 1850s was difficult and slow. Getting there required multiple forms of transportation, including trains, boats, canals, horse and buggy and even by foot. Despite all the settlements advancing into the Midwest by men like Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clark, Elk County remained an untamed wilderness, because the terrain created difficulty for travel at the time.
Baptist traveled south to get to St Mary’s through the southern tier of New York State into the northern tier of Pennsylvania. Wilhelm traveled north and west from Philadelphia. This would normally take several hours for us by car. However, it took them days by different forms of transport. At the end of this article is a link to the video of what I call my Brick Walls. I am slowly learning more about these men, who are my brick walls. They lived so long ago that information on them can be hard to find.
It took five days to travel between Philadelphia and St Marys.. First, Wilhelm took a train to Columbia, PA. He had to take a canal from Columbia to Freeport, which included a portage railroad to carry the boats up the mountain. One would not think the Appalachians were that steep, but they would be mistaken. Shay railroad lines and locomotives were used in Elk County because the mountains were steep and required a third rail to pull the cars up the hills. The canals used back then were quite primitive and were unable to move the boats up the mountains efficiently, that is why a portage railroad was used. Then, from Freeport on, they traveled on a stagecoach.
Then, because the roads to Centreville (now Kersey) were so primitive, they traveled by foot. Centerville was used as a base camp, when the men were exploring and clearing the land for the town of St Marys. The women and children remained at John Green's farm until the men finished their work. At Centreville, Wilhelm would have stopped and rested at the farm before continuing on foot to St Marys.
John Walker, one of the earliest settlers from 1842, built a small boarding house for the early pioneers until their house and farm were ready. Wilhelm was here early enough to be granted a house lot and twenty-five acres of farmland. His farmland was situated on Benzinger Road in St. Marys. Their farming operations grew to a three-hundred-acre lot, on both sides of the road, producing produce, grains, dairy and meat products. This was why their involvement in both the Summit Grange and the Farmer’s and Merchant’s Bank was so vital to the family. In an old 1830s county directory, their business was referred to as the Gausman Brothers Farm, The old homestead is still standing. It is abandoned, but not many families can claim their original homestead is still standing over one hundred years later.
Baptist would have taken a very different route to St Marys. The settlement was still new in 1849, so there were no official roads or even a railroad into the area. Either one of two things happened. Baptist either stayed in New York until 1850, earning more money or finding a land agent for St Marys. There were chartible organizations through local churches, who assisted different ethicities as they took their first steps on American soil.
In the mid 1840s, a pamphlet was being circulated throughout the western German kingdoms, telling the story of St Marys. The goal was to bring as many persecuted Catholic Germans to St Marys as possible. In that pamphlet was a list of requirements including the amount of money required to buy all of your supplies before movies to the settlement. It is quite possible that not only did both men have to find a land agent to buy their property, but also gather all of their supplies before moving to the area.
Even though the New Jersey train stations were across the harbor from Castle Garden in Manhattan, it is possible Baptist settled into the German community there temporarily to fortify himself for the long journey to St Marys. The Pennsylvania railroad ran through Dubois in Clearfield County, but I don’t think it had made it that far. The railroad didn’t come to the St Mary’s area until the 1860s. The Erie Canal flowed north and west from New York City, so he would not have used it.
John Baptist Bauer would have left New York by the train station in New Jersey. He would have taken a primitive train to Easton Pennsylvania. From there, two options are open. First, he can take the train all the way to Philadelphia and take the stagecoach to Brookville. That is a 226-mile trip with many stops and overnight stays. He could have also taken a train to Reading or the canal boat to Jim Thorpe Pa, but since there were already settlers here from Philadelphia. He could very well have met a few of them coming to the area. In Brookville there was a local stagecoach company. John Baptist Bauer either arrived by stagecoach or on foot. Remember this area was a wilderness back then, blanketed in large virgin growth timber.
This was one of the hardest articles to write and research. No one really thought to record their method and route of travel for future generations. Just like Baptist and Wilhelm, I am so glad the trip is over.
This is a great study! Elk County is still wilderness today with a population of less than 50,000 people and an area larger than Philadelphia. I can picture the entire trip and shudder to think of what it was like. I also have two sets of German Catholics who came over in 1844/5 - one landed and stayed in Philadelphia, the other landed in NY and went to Schuylkill County to work in the mines.
Rainey- It's been a minute since I read all things Lewis-Clark, so this is a pleasant find. Thanks for sharing. Hope you're well this week. Cheers, -Thalia