The Missouri legislature had chartered the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Company in 1847 and provided initial state funding through a bond issue in February 1851. Further heavier financing came from investors in Boston and the endeavor received another crucial boost when Congress authorized a land grant to the company in June 1852. When it opened on February, 22, 1859, the 207-mile railroad linked Hannibal to the western part of the state at St. Joseph and was the first railroad completed in the state of Missouri before the Civil War. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Terrell Dempsey, Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens's World (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 241-242. The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1860 (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1860), 387.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Business/Industry