Chicago and Rock Island Rail Road Company (Signed by John B. Jervis)

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Historical Context

This line's predecessor, the Rock Island and La Salle Railroad Company, was incorporated in Illinois on February 27, 1847, and an amended charter was approved on February 7, 1851, as the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. Construction began in Chicago on October 1, 1851, and the first train was operated on October 10, 1852, between Chicago and Joliet. Construction continued on through La Salle, and Rock Island was reached on February 22, 1854, becoming the first railroad to connect Chicago with the Mississippi River.

In Iowa, the C&RI's incorporators created (on February 5, 1853) the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad Company (M&M), to run from Davenport to Council Bluffs, and on November 20, 1855, the first train to operate in Iowa steamed from Davenport to Muscatine. The Mississippi River bridge between Rock Island and Davenport was completed on April 22, 1856.

In 1857, the steamboat Effie Afton ran into the Rock Island's Mississippi River Bridge. The steamboat was overcome by a fire, which also destroyed a span of the bridge. This accident caused a series of court cases. In one of the cases, Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer at the time, represented the Rock Island. Lincoln argued that not only was the steamboat at fault in striking the bridge, but that bridges across navigable rivers were to the advantage of the country.

The M&M was acquired by the C&RI on July 9, 1866, to form the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company.

John B. Jervis

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John Bloomfield Jervis was born in 1795 at Huntington, New York, on Long Island, the son of Timothy Jervis, a carpenter, and Phoebe Bloomfield, the eldest of seven children. Jervis moved with his family to Fort Stanwix (later known as Rome) in upstate New York in 1798 when his father purchased a farm and ran a lumber business.

In October 1817 at the age of 22, Jervis was hired by Chief Engineer Benjamin Wright of the Erie Canal as an axeman in a survey party to locate the canal west of Rome, New York. The role of the axemen was to clear away brush and trees along a "trace" four feet wide. In the spring of 1818, Jervis became a rodman until the canal was located from Rome to Montezuma on July 10, 1818. By the end of 1818, Jervis was promoted to resident engineer in charge of a canal section seventeen miles long and promoted to General Superintendent of the Eastern Division in 1824.

Jervis left the Erie Canal in early 1825 to again work with Benjamin Wright on the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. In 1827, Jervis became the chief engineer for the Delaware and Hudson. In this position, he convinced the board of directors to test locomotives for the gravity railroad feeding coal to the canal terminal. Among the four engines imported for the experiment was the famous Stourbridge Lion, and the less-known "America", lighter locomotive which was delivered 5 months before the Stourbridge Lion and which was demonstrated for the public the day before the Lion. Both locomotives were ordered from Robert the Robert Stephenson & Co., the Lion being built by Foster, Rastrick and Company of England and becoming the second commercial locomotive to run in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1831, he became the chief engineer for the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, a predecessor of the New York Central, and two years later he was appointed chief engineer of upstate New York's Chenango Canal project and helped in its design and construction. In 1836, Jervis was chosen as the chief engineer on the 41-mile long Croton Aqueduct. After his work on the aqueduct, Jervis served as a consulting engineer for the Boston water system from 1846 to 1848.

In the 1850s and into the early 1860s he worked on railroads in the midwestern United States, serving as chief engineer for both the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad, Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, also serving as President of the latter from 1851 to 1854, and finally the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway.

Jervis retired in 1864 to his homestead in Rome, but he continued to work actively in the area. In 1869, he helped form the Merchants Iron Mill, known today as the Rome Iron Mill in upstate New York. He was also the founder of the Rome public library, named for him. Much of the remainder of Jervis's life was spent writing. He published The Question of Labor and Capital on Economics in 1877.

Jervis died on January 12, 1885. The city of Port Jervis, New York, is named in his honor. The city was a port on the former Delaware and Hudson Canal, which he designed, and is located at the adjoining borders of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

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