page_title: Henry B Bolster
section_title: Stage coach/Omnibus business
hierarchical_section_title: Henry B Bolster / New York City / Stage coach/Omnibus business
caption_attribution_description: English: An Omnibus of the Fifth Avenue Stage Line, mid 1800s.
context_page_description: Henry B Bolster was a politically active entrepreneur in Manhattan New York during the early to mid 19th century. He was born in New Hampshire to an American family with roots back to the 17th century. His father was a Revolutionary War and The War of 1812 Veteran rising to the rank of Captain. Henry served as the Superintendent of Paving for the City of New York as well as was elected in two different Wards of Manhattan to the office of Assistant Alderman therefore served on the Common Council. Henry also was the original founder of a stage coach line that made him a wealthy man. Because of his wealth, he was an investor in several other business adventures including Insurance and Banking.
context_section_description: Henry B. Bolster, along with his son Henry Clay Bolster, and his son-in-law, Samuel Wakeman Andrews, started his  Stage Coach business in 1846. In the 1850 census, the Bolsters are both listed as Stage Proprietors. It looks like Samuel didn't work for the business directly until the early 1850s (according to his obit and the 1850 census that lists his occupation as Dry Goods). Henry Clay Bolster died in 1854. The business was called Bolster & Andrews and referred to as the Empire Line.
  Simeon Mace Andrews  returned from San Francisco after obtaining a small fortune from the gold rush in the 1850s. He bought into the business along with his two other brothers Benjamin Clark Andrews and Charles Simeon Andrews and the business was called Bolster, Andrews, & McDonald.
  After Henry Bolster's death in 1859, the firm was called S.W. & S.M. Andrews & McDonald. Simeon and Samuel Andrews were the majority owners along with Grant McDonald (New York City Directory, 1869: McDonald John Grant, stages, 23 W. 43d, h 41 W. 42d). Grant McDonald dies in the 1871 and the name of the business was then S.W. & S.M. Andrews. In the 1880 census, all four Andrews brothers occupations were listed as Stage Proprietors.
  On Ancestry.com, the following was documented about this stage line:
  Henry Bolster business is Omnibus business @ 23 W. 43rd St N.Y. Route from there to Fulton Ferry. Omnibus firm in 1852 was Bolster, Andrews & McDonald, changed to S.W. & S.M. Andrews & McDonald, latter died in 1871 leaving it S.W. & S.M. Andrews. They had 450 horses on this line.
  The business and stables were located at 23 west 43rd Street, Manhattan.
  The business was sold in 1885 to the Broadway Surface Railroad Company as were all of the stage lines in New York City. Here is a story from the New York Times July 11, 1885 telling of the auctioning of the old equipment:
  After this business was sold, another enterprise was started by unrelated individuals that was called the Fifth Avenue Stage Line which was a corporation. This business was eventually taken over by the City of New York.
  Their route lay from Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, through Ninth to and down Broadway.
  On The EarlyRepublic.net website, a reference to this business was written as follows - which documents the initial purchase of the stage line by Samuel Andrews and "another": 
  Before closing these "Reminiscences," it is pertinent to them to put on record a few illustrations of the passenger street travel of the preceding period. In connection, then, with the notices of the primitive stage routes given in the early chapters, the following are added: In 1830 there was established an irregular line of stages (omnibuses) between Bleecker Street and the Bowling Green, and occasionally a passenger could have himself carried some distance above Bleecker Street. In like manner, so late as 1836, Asa Hall and Kipp & Brown, of the Greenwich lines, had small stages ("carryalls" they were termed), in which passengers were transferred from Charles Street to their destination within the limit of Twentythird Street and Seventh Avenue. In 1845 this Broadway line was purchased by John Marshall, who extended the service from Corporal Thompson's (Twentythird Street and Fifth Avenue) through Fifth Avenue to Thirteenth Street, thence through University Place to Eleventh Street, then to Broadway, through Broadway to Fulton Street, and then to the Brooklyn Ferry. 'In 1846 Samuel NV.[sic.] Andrews, in company with another, bought the line, consisting of less than twenty stages, increased soon after to thirty.'
caption: The Fifth Avenue Stage Line
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