340
��Hon. JosiaJi Quincy.
��was appointed to select a board of managers, and present their names to the meeting. Mr. Quincy's name was presented as first on the Hst, but he declined to serve ; it being business to which he was wholly unaccustomed, and not congenial to his feelings and habits of business. The committee retired again, and reported in the same way ; but he still declining, they retired the third time, and after long discussion reported in the same way again, at the same time announcing that they could not agree upon any other man to head the list, and that, unless he would accept, the meeting must dissolve without effecting an organization. Under these circumstances he was pressed by his friends to accept, and finally yielded very reluctantly to their wishes.
The Northern Railroad was chartered about the same time, as was also the Passumpsic Road in Vermont. For some time there was an impression in this State, that but one route could be built from Concord northerly to Connecticut River, and the Passumpsic was for a time in a quandary as to which of the two it had better unite with ; that is, which of the two was most likely to be built so as to give them a good connection. They were at first inclined to favor the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Road, and gave them great encouragerrient. But the first that Mr. Quincy knew, they had formed a union with the Northern Road, and were just closing up their contract with that road.
The competition was very sharp be- tween the Northern and the Montreal, and this decision of the Passumpsic for a time turned the balance in favor of the Northern. They succeeded in getting their stock subscribed more readily, and made more rapid progress
��with their road, than the other ; and, l)ut for the great energy and perseverance of Mr. Quincy, it is doubtful if the Montreal Road had not failed of com- pletion. There was an attempt on the part of some of the friends of the Concord and Passumpsic roads to give currency to the impression that the Montreal could not raise the funds to build their road. Mr. Quincy had ar- ranged with a firm in Boston to pro- cure the rails of a particular pattern in England, to put upon the track from Concord to Sanbornton. But this firm heard so much of the bankruptcy of the road, and of their utter inability to pay, and the pattern not being such as the other roads used, that they omitted to send the order by the steamer that was to have carried it. As soon as this was known, Mr. Quincy went at once to Boston, notified the firm that their ser- vices were no longer desired on behalf of the road, employed an agent, and sent him to England by the very next steamer, who purchased the iron there, and forwarded it, by which a saving was made to the road of some twenty thousand dollars.
He was indefatigable in his efforts to get up subscriptions, and to interest the public in the enterprise, until he finally got the road to Plymouth, where the opponents of the road proclaimed it would stop and go no farther. But he had fully enlisted in the cause, and he was bound to see it through ; and so it went to Wentworth, and then to Warren, and then to East Haverhill, and so on to Connecticut River. At this point the Passumpsic Road op- posed their making connections on the Vermont side ; but, after a sharp litiga- tion in that State, that point was car- ried, and the Montreal Road was finally completed.
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