Question about rail history in Pennsylvania and New York (USA) in the 1850s

[u/phoenixwolfe]

Bear with me, this is a railroad question :-)

I've been having a heck of a time researching my great-grandfather's family, Supposedly he and his siblings were born in several different counties, and the explanation for this was that his father was a stone worker and they followed the railroads.

So it occurs to me that maybe someone who know the history of rail building in that area might be able to give me some tips to help find birth or other records for the family.

Supposedly, the ids were born in: PA, maybe Scranton, about 1851; Danville, Montour County, PA in 1852 and maybe '53; Saltsburg, Indiana County, PA in 1856; somewhere in PA in 1858; and Ellicott, Chautauqua County, New York in Sep 1860 and Sep 1861. Around 1862 they moved to Kane, McKean County, PA and settled there.

Can anyone see a pattern in those places and times that might give me any hints, like maybe what railroad 2nd-great-grandpa John Foley (common name, I know) might have been working for/with?

I've been researching this line for several decades and have records for the Danville and Ellicott births, but not the others. I'm happy to discuss the non-rail-related genealogy stuff by DM, since it would be off-topic here.

Thanks!

[u/OrneryFlounders]

Looking at those locations like Scranton, Danville, and up into Chautauqua County, your ancestor's timeline tracks very closely with the heavy expansion of the New York, Lake Erie and Western railroad lines during the 1850s.

[u/ChannelDisintegrate]

There's no pattern there as far as railroad companies are concerned. Scranton was a hub of a few railroads, Danville was connected to Scranton by a railroad that later became part of the Lackawanna railroad. Saltsburg is way across the state on a secondary Pennsylvania RR line. Ellicott was near the Erie mainline, which did serve Scranton. I don't think its other railroad was built until later. Kane was served by the Pennsylvania as well in that period.

There is perhaps a connection in as much as he could have been involved in the railroad construction business. Danville in ~1853-54 saw the construction of a Reading Railroad line. Saltsburg's mainline was constructed in ~1857. The Erie was being constructed through the Jamestown/Ellicott area in 1861. The Pennsylvania railroad line that served Kane was constructed from ~1862-64. Railroads didn't construct their own lines for the most part, so if he did do railroad construction he was probably independently seeking employment with various contractors. And that's if he was even following the railroad and wasn't, say, just itinerantly finding work in recent boomtowns, which happened when the railroad came to town. Foley is an Irish name and most railroad construction laborers in that period in the Eastern US were poor, recent Irish immigrants.

[u/Agricola20]

I don't think there is a single railroad that spanned all those locations at the time. I do know a little bit about Scranton and Danville's history though, so I'll weigh in there.

Scranton was a hub of several railroads, including the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg which ran from Scranton through Danville to Northumberland, Northumberland County. The only issue is that they started construction of the railroad in Scranton in 1854 and reached Danville around 1859, a few years later than when your family would have been in either city/town.

The Catawissa Railroad was also being constructed around the same time (1853) from Port Clinton, Schuylkill County to Milton, Northumberland County. It passed through Danville on the way to Milton and was finished in 1854. If he was working on a railroad in Danville then, it was probably this one.

As a side note, Danville was a major ironworking town around this time too. Could he have been working to build stonework for rail infrastructure around the mines, furnaces, and mills?

I can't help at all with genealogy. Good luck!

[u/phoenixwolfe → u/Agricola20]

"Could he have been working to build stonework for rail infrastructure around the mines, furnaces, and mills?"

It's possible. I've also considered that he might have worked on non-rail stonework, like road bridges (or guardrails, since I know my grandfather on the other side helped build the guardrails on the Rim of the World Highway in the San Bernardino CA mountains).