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NOMINATED AS JUDGE.

at the bar was better able to fill it. His great-uncle had been Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, as well as Attorney-General of this State, and of the United States. The judicial robes naturally fell upon his shoulders, had the lot fallen into his lap. He was placed in most honorable company. No better men could be found in any community, "who feared God and honored the king," than the Hon. Joel Jones and James F. Johnson, Esq., his fellows on the same ticket. But the entire Democratic ticket in Philadelphia, however, was defeated at the October election of 1851. The honors of the bench were reserved for his nephew, Hon. Thomas Bradford Dwight, A. M., the second son of his only sister, Mrs. Eliza Loockerman Dwight, who, after serving seven years as First Assistant District Attorney of the Pleas, with marked ability, was elevated to the bench of the new Orphans' Court at the early age of thirty-seven,-the youngest judge in the State,-by the largest majority on the ticket. Vincent L. Bradford was needed elsewhere, in a wider sphere, where he could be of more service to his beloved city, State and country-than as judge of the District Court.

In 1855, he left the old homestead, which, for forty years, the family had occupied, and which had been his own residence since 1848, for a large and elegant mansion, with grounds, in the Twenty-second Ward (Germantown). Few more eligible or more salubrious residences exist, so near Philadelphia. Embowered with trees, in the midst of well-cultivated gardens, on a broad and capacious avenue, the house is filled with all that is pleasant to the eye and good for food. Here, for thirty years, at No. 151 West Chelten Avenue, he

name.

66 PURCHASES THE ROORST."

81

enjoyed the comforts of home, surrounded by friends and relatives, entertaining the great and good from all parts of the Union, and from both Continents, who loved to make a pilgrimage to the "Roorst," as the old Hollanders called it, and as he adopted the surThis change from city to country was made for his health, which was benefited by it. He never possessed a vigorous constitution. By inheritance from his mother, he not only received a handsome patrimony, but certain other "hereditaments," gout and rheumatism. His active life in Michigan exposed him to the peculiarities of that climate, and he brought back to Philadelphia its malaria. A severe bronchial catarrh, affecting the whole mucous membrane, would, at intervals, include the nasal and aural passages. Especially in the months of August and September, this malady, commonly called "hay fever," afflicted him so severely that he was forced to flee to higher latitudes than those of Germantown. In the White Mountains, and in the bracing air of Richfield Springs, he found the relief he so much desired. For nine years, he was an habitué at the "Springs," where, in the intervals of convalescence, he was the centre of admiring interest to the select circle in which he moved "glittering like a star, full of life and splendor and joy."

CHAPTER VI.

Development in Railways.-Steamships Equally Active.-Lawyers and Merchants Aroused.-Accepts the Presidency of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad Company. Influence of his Position.-Extent and Value of the United Companies.-Prepares the Road for the Civil War. -Foresees the Storm and Rides out the Gale.-Vice-President at a Mass Meeting of Thirty Thousand Citizens.-Inclined to Conservative Views. -In Constant and Cordial Communication with Colonel Thomas Scott, Assistant Secretary of War.-The Lease of the United Companies of New Jersey to the Pennsylvania Railroad.-Energy and Ability as a Railway Executive.-Sir Roundell Palmer.-The Chancellor's Opinion. -His Brief in Great Britain and on the Continent.-Elements of Power as a Lawyer.-Trip to Europe.-Civilities Abroad.-Homeward Bound.

THE period between 1843 and 1854-the year of consolidation-was remarkable for the number of railroads and transportation companies undertaken in Pennsylvania. The year 1846 (April 13) witnessed the incorporation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The route to be completed was from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. At the same time (July 30), a charter was granted to the Baltimore and Ohio Company, stipulating that unless the Pennsylvania Railroad Company paid in $1,000,000 of its capital, and had thirty miles of its roadway under contract, its advantages would be granted to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The liberal subscription by the City of Philadelphia, and the districts, for $5,000,000, secured the charter to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In 1849, the tracks of the Columbia Railroad were brought to Market Street from Belmont, a permanent bridge constructed, and thus connected with Broad Street. In 1852, the railroad from Philadelphia to Easton and the

PROGRESS IN RAILWAYS AND STEAMSHIPS.

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Water Gap was chartered, to secure the rich trade of Bucks and Northampton counties, and by extension to divert the coal from the Lehigh to the city of Philadelphia. This corporation in the following year became the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In 1853 the Sunbury and Erie Railroad received fresh impetus by a subscription of $1,500,000 from the City of Philadelphia and the District of Richmond. In 1854, the Belvidere Delaware Railroad, which, by its connection with the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad Company, insured a communication with eastern Pennsylvania, was formally opened and subsequently extended to the Delaware Water Gap. In July, of the same year, the Camden and Atlantic Railroad was finished for travel across the State of New Jersey. Activity in railway construction was only equalled by the establishment of successive steamship lines between Philadelphia and Boston, Providence and New York (March, 1850), between Philadelphia and Savannah (March, 1851), and between Philadelphia and Europe (January, 1852). All these opened new channels for trade, and greatly increased the business facilities for lawyers and merchants.

Mr. Bradford who had early shown (1834) great ability as a railroad lawyer, among others, in the celebrated case of Levering vs. The Germantown and Norristown Railroad-which he subsequently gained in 1845now began to devote his attention to that branch of legal practice. A new era in his life begins with the year 1859, when, at fifty-one years of age, he was of fered the presidency of the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad Company. At this period he had been in active practice as a lawyer thirty-one years in the great

84

PRESIDENT OF A GREAT RAILWAY.

States of Pennsylvania and Michigan, twenty-three of which were in the city of Philadelphia, and had given abundant evidence of his ability, industry and learning in all the State Courts, as well as the Supreme Court of the United States, to which he was admitted as a counsellor in 1858. The Board of Direction of the "United Companies of New Jersey, comprising the Camden and Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company, the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company, and the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, and composed of such gentlemen as Edwin Stevens, Esq., of Hoboken, N. J., Robert Stockton, Esq., the Potter family, and others no less eminent in the history of New Jersey, were looking for an able railroad lawyer, and a finished gentleman to preside at the council board over their main trunk line from Philadelphia to New York, involving an insight and acquaintance with the other companies, which were integers of the "United Companies," and those which they had leased. Their choice fell upon Vincent L. Bradford.

Neither the directors nor their president dreamed of what awaited them. No sooner had he entered on his duties, than he found it necessary to secure a brief of title to the roadway, to have the deeds properly recorded, and thus establish the right of the road to its own track. This involved the construction of fences, metes and bounds, straightening of track, the purchase of land and the building of bridges, which occupied all his time during the first year of his presidency.

On the 6th of November, 1860, the long struggle. between the North and the South on the slavery question ended with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the