1/7/2024 0 Comments Stanton pa railroad storywere leasing their first oil lands, 38-acres from one Nancy Griffin. Drake was the first to discover a major oil field in Pennsylvania in 1859. He liked the possibilities of what was on top of the ground, and while he would invest in oil most of his life, it was always secondary to trees.Ĭolonel Edwin L. In Teddy's time, Pennsylvania was virtually floating in undiscovered oil. It certainly was a temptation that many a man succumbed to and from which few made a fortune. Now oil could have been Teddy's unmaking. Oilįor a man with the gumption of a Teddy Collins, timber, mills, and railroads were not quite enough. He had started out by driving stakes for the Binghampton and Syracuse Railroad, and by the end of his life, he owned over 100 miles of logging railroad, 41 miles of main line, and 25 locomotives. And there was no doubt that railroads were in Teddy's blood. The creeks and rivers that used to be jammed with timber gave way to the rails. Railroadsīut a man couldn't run all these timber operations in the late 1800s, early 1900s without the rails. The Heisler locomotive #4 worked its daysįor Collins' Salmon Creek Lumber Company. Add to that mix the Tionesta Manufacturing Company, the Nebraska Box Mill, the Mayburg Chemical Plant, and the Clough Lands in Pennsylvania timberland in Tehama and Plumas Counties, California, (known as the Curtis, Collins & Holbrook lands) redwood property in California and timberlands and mills in Washington and timber in Oregon. Holbrook, in a sawmill, grist mill, and store.īefore Teddy Collins died in 1914, he would own, along with others, a handful of sawmills in the Tionesta Valley, including: Nebraska (originally called Lacy's Mill), Beaver Valley, Pine Hollow, Bucks Mill, Old Salmon Creek Mill, New Salmon Creek Mill, and the Mayburg Mill. But even before that deal was completed, Teddy had extended his operations over to Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, where in 1860, he bought an interest, along with Sanford S. Collins, held full title to the original 1,480 acres and mill at Turkey Run. Nine years after his first mortgage at Turkey Run, Teddy bought out Rodgers, Scovil, and Fullager, and with his brother, J.V. On July 28, 1858, three years later, they paid the remaining $17,000 to John Alexander. The five scrabbled together $3,000 as a down payment, with a mortgage of $17,000 to be paid in three years. It also held white pine, the "King of Kings," the source of the mighty ship masts of the great British fleet. The land held the giant hemlock, thought to be useless as lumber, but whose bark was valued by tanners. They all took jobs as laborers in the woods at 60 cents a day, twelve hours a day.īy July 28, 1855, Teddy had saved enough money, probably from his railroad work and the meager amount he made in the woods, to join his brother and the other three in a partnership to buy John Alexander's steam mill and timber at Turkey Run near Whig Hill, Pennsylvania. Scovil Walker, the five ended up in Hickory, Pennsylvania, located on the Allegheny River. With his brother, Joseph Van Halen (J.V.) Collins, and friends John B. Teddy left railroading for the dense forests of northwestern Pennsylvania, specifically the Tionesta Valley. For most men in 1854, that would have been a plenty good start to a lifetime of railroading, but Teddy Collins was not "most men."Ĭollins employees pause before the Salmon Creek Within three years, he became an engineer of a division in Broome County. With a natural talent for mathematics and engineering, Teddy was soon running a transit line. It was 1851, he was 20 years old, and he started out driving stakes for the survey. Whatever the truth may be, Teddy Collins grew into a man with enough gumption, guts, and God-fearing to build what became known as the "Teddy Collins Empire."īefore all the "empire building" began, Teddy left the family farm in Cortland, and with the help of a local judge, took a job with the engineer corps constructing the Binghampton and Syracuse Railroad. And some tell the story of a young entrepreneur who was earning money by traveling to neighboring farms buying butter, eggs, and farm produce and shipping them to a buyer in New York City. Some say he was in poor health as a child, but as that began to improve, he was able to complete a course of study in the Cortland Academy. Some say he was plowing a furrow at eight, although that seems a bit far fetched, as he was still living in the village of Cortlandville. Teddy was one of six children, two boys and four girls, and his youth was full of stories and myths. He was nine years old when his parents moved from the village of Cortlandville to a small farm nearby. His parents were Jabez Collins and Adaline Doud Collins. or Teddy Collins, was born in Cortlandville, New York on March 7, 1831. Truman Doud Collins, better known as T.D.
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