Cleveland and Mahoning Rail Road Company

Product Details

$15 to $25

Historical Context

Jacob Perkins, a prominent attorney in the city of Warren in Trumbull County, Ohio, was the leader in the movement to build a railroad between Cleveland (a fast-growing industrial center and port on the shores of Lake Erie) and the coal fields of east-central Ohio. A previous road to that area, the Ohio and Erie Railroad, was proposed earlier but nothing came of this project. Perkins helped incorporate the Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad, which was chartered by the state of Ohio on February 22, 1848. It was authorized to build a rail line from Cleveland to an unspecified point near Warren. Initially, Perkins attempted to interest the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad (O&P) into building the line, but that company declined. He then offered the charter to the Pittsburgh and Erie Railroad, but it was uninterested as well.

The state reissued the charter, with minor amendments, on March 20, 1851. One of these changes allowed the road to build its line into Pennsylvania, if that state permitted it. The Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad was organized on September 20, 1851. The incorporators included Perkins; Dudley Baldwin, Cleveland investment banker; Robert Cunningham, businessman in New Castle, Pennsylvania; Frederick Kinsman, a Trumbull County judge and land agent; James Magee, a wealthy Philadelphia tack manufacturer and one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Railroad; Charles Smith, a Warren businessman and banker; and David Tod, Mahoning County attorney and former U.S. ambassador to Brazil. The initial board of directors included Perkins, Baldwin, Kinsman, Smith, Tod, and Reuben Hitchcock, a judge from Painesville in Lake County, Ohio. Cleveland was chosen as the corporate headquarters.

Construction of the line began in 1853 and was completed in 1857. After an 1872 merger with two small railroads, the corporate name was changed to Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railroad. The railroad leased itself to the Atlantic and Great Western Railway in 1863. The C&MV suffered financial instability, and in 1880 its stock was sold to a company based in London in the United Kingdom. A series of leases and ownership changes left the C&MV in the hands of the Erie Railroad in 1896. The CM&V's corporate identity ended in 1942 after the Erie Railroad completed purchasing the railroad's outstanding stock from the British investors.

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