Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1875-12-16
"The Father Of Railways

GEO. STEPHENSON, who is now justly
called the "father of railways" was the
child of poor parents in England. In
able to send him to school, they employed
him at home as a nurse for the younger
children until be was eight years old. His
chief duty as nurse was to keep his little
brothers and sisters from under the hoots
OF the horses which drew the coal-cars on
the tram ay''-a wooden railroad lead
Ing from d coal-mine-which ran near his
fathers door. At this early age, while
watching the coal-trains passing, he con-
ceived the idea that iron would make bet
ter rails than wood and that il he could
put upon wheels the s~team-engine which
his father tended as fireman at the coal
pit it could be made to draw as heavy a
train of coal-cars as could be moved by a
great team of fifty horses.
The idea did not pass away from the
brain of George Stephenson when he was
removed from his home at nine years of
age and hired out at four cents a day to
tend the COWS of a neighboring farmer.
He had enough of leisure while watching
the herd in the field to think over the sub
ject. He even built him an engine of
clay with hemlock branches for steam
pipes. l suspect that, like Little Boy
Blue, he sometimes let the COWS stray into
forbidden meadows while he sat thinking
about engines on wheels and roads of
iron. He could not study about them in
books Tor two very good reasons. In the
FIRST place no books about railroads and
locomotives had been printed, since
neither had been built. The other reason
was that George Stephenson couldn't read
at all. He did not know his alphabet
until he was nineteen years old.
Little George, or "Geordy," as the COM
mon people nicknamed him, was next en-
ployed to drive the horse which turned
the winding machine, or gin" as the
Golfers called it, at the cOal-pit where his
father worked. He then began to think
OF a plan for making the steam do the
work of the horse, and one day astonished
the golfers by building on q bench, in
front OF his fathers cottage, a model in
clay of an engine which turned the gin"
and lifted the coal. He was at this time
so young and small that his father made
him hide when the owner of the coal
mine went "the rounds" to pay his hands,
tor fear he should think him too small TO
receive sixteen cents a day wages!
1t was not until he was nineteen year.
old, and was set to watch an engine, that
he found time to attend school and learn
to read and write. He worked steadily at
his old idea for twenty-five years. He
made the first locomotive with smooth
driving-wheels. 1t had been thought
necessary by some engineers to construct
locomotives with cogged driving-wheels,
and a corresponding rack on the rail, to
prevent the wheels from Shipping. But
Stephenson successfully set aside all these
eontrivances. He was nearly fifty years
old before he found men willing to risk
their money in constructing an iron rail
road to test his locomotive. When. at
length, the first railroad was completed.
between Stockton and Darlington two
English towns only twelve miles apartl.
the procession with which the day was
celebrated was headed by a man on horse
back, to keep the road clear for Stephen
sons locomotive and car, and ladies and
gentlemen on horseback and in carriages
kept pace with the train by riding by the
side OF the track. But after the procession
had proceeded a short distance Stephen
son, h was running his own engine,
impatiently called to the horseman to get
out OF the way, and, putting steam on, he
ran his locomotive the rest Of the distance
at the terrible pace of twelve miles an
hour!-St. Nicholas for December.