Very Rare Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy Railroad Company Stock Certificate-1878

Description

Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy Railroad Co.
A very rare
Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy Railroad
stock certificate
( No
. 162)
issued December 13, 1878 to AW March
for One Share at Springfield, Ohio. The certificate is
hand
signed by H L Chapman, Vice President
. It has a very interesting vignette of a mining scene with a coal train arriving and an embossed Corporate Seal in the lower left corner. Certificate is in excellent condition.
The Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy was the offshoot of an earlier project, the Dayton & South Eastern, a narrow gauge railroad planned to run from Dayton to Jackson by a circuitous route that avoided some of the larger hills on a direct alignment. Refusing to accept a secondary role of having a branch line built to serve Springfield, the SJ&P was born when Springfield interests teamed up with disgruntled townspeople missed by the Dayton & Southe
astern's
route.
Both the SJ&P and the D&SE were constructed to provide an outlet for vast coal deposits and the iron furnaces of the Jackson and Wellston area in an era when the narrow gauge fever had struck with a vengeance. Construction of the SJ&P began in a northerly direction from Jackson on December 7, 1876,
raising
of the 0,000 in capital to start the line having taken two years. On March 26, 1877 work started at Springfield and for a brief time the SJ&P was operated in two unconnected segments. The last spike was driven July 18, 18/8 at Dills, 4/10-mile east of Bainbridge, and a 4-1/2-mile branch to Eureka, south of Jackson, was completed the following June. The SJ&P also built several coal mine spurs in the same area.
Hard times, however, soon hit the Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy and on the 11th of October in 1879 the line was sold at a sheriff's sale in Springfield. The buyer was Oliver S. Kelly, who headed a group of ten, and on November 3 anew railroad company, the Springfield Southern Railroad Co., emerged. Kelly proposed, but never built, an extension from Jackson to the town of Rockwood in Lawrence County. He did, however, convert the line to standard gauge, utilizing most of the narrow gauge bridges and much of its 35-lb. rail, as well as most of the narrow gauge ties; every original eighth tie was replaced with a tie of conventional standard gauge until finances permitted total replacement. On May 23, 1881, the short-lived Spring Southern became the Ohio Southern Railroad Company and a period of relative prosperity set in. The Ohio Southern was leased by the Indiana, Bloomington & Western Railroad to be a connecting link between that company, then building east from Indianapolis to Springfield, and the Chesapeake & Ohio building westward. Although the IB&W (later to become the Peoria & Eastern) reached Springfield, the proposed connection with the C&O at Huntington, West Virginia, never materialized, and IB&W control of the Ohio Southern ceased in April of 1892.
From November 28, 1883, until May 31, 1884, the Ohio Southern operated a small railroad, the Cincinnati, Columbus & Hocking Valley -a line whose name was nearly as long as its
trackage
. The CC&HV extended from a connection at Jeffersonville with the Ohio Southern west to Claysville Junction on the Little Miami Railroad's Cincinnati-Xenia main line.
Organized on December 9, 1875 as the Waynesville, Port William & Jeffersonville Railroad Co., also a
narrow gauge
line, its organizers were among those involved with the Springfield, Jackson &
Pomeroy
.
The CC&HV completed 15 miles from Jeffersonville to Port William by October of 1877, and the following month was reorganized as the Columbus, Washington & Cincinnati Railroad Co. It is obvious from its name that the proposed termini were to be Columbus and Cincinnati and, with these cities in mind, the company built to the Little Miami connection at Claysville Junction, now named Roxanna. But profitability eluded the ~W&C and the line was abandoned and removed in 1887, although a portion of the roadbed was purchased by the Ohio Southern in March of 1884 as part of its scheme to construct a Cincinnati-Columbus line at right angles to its own road. Built from Sedalia through Jeffersonville and on to Kingman, funds were exhausted before
either end of the line was finished, and
the entire railroad was abandoned later in several stages between 1931 and 1941.
But this is getting ahead of the story...
In order to obtain new connections and a longer road haul on freight originating on -- its line, the Ohio Southern in December 1892 commenced building an extension in a northerly direction from Springfield to Lima. Completed on December 28, 1893, this was followed in the spring of 1894 by the extension of a spur line to Wellston. Later that year, three coal mine spurs were authorized, including one to Cornelia. But financial resources were too strained by the Lima extension project and the Ohio Southern was forced into receivership on May 9, 1895 at a time when construction of the Cincinnati-Columbus line ground to a halt short of the Pennsylvania connection at Waynesville or a connection at Columbus with the
Cleveland, Akron & Columbus. A group of bondholders purchased the property on October 15, 1898
at a
foreclosure sales
, and the Ohio Southern was history.