The railroad journey from Boston to Terre Haute, the western terminus of the road, was a very different one from that of today, taking then a week instead of a few hours.
They went down from Anson and Norridgewock to Boston where they exchanged their “money at Suffolk Bank for their bills, as they were good anywhere West, and none others were.”
Leaving Boston at 8 A.M., an all day ride took them to Albany, where they spent the night at the Delavan House. They went on early the next morning to Buffalo, which was reached at 11 P.M. Here they “put up at the Clarendon House. Tired. Sleepy.” At eleven in the forenoon they left for Cincinnati, reaching Cleveland at 8 P.M., Columbus at 4 A.M., where they changed cars, and arrived at their destination late at night, after a thirty-six hour ride in day coaches. They rested at Cincinnati until the next afternoon, when they went over to Dayton for the purpose of making an early start on the last lap of the railroading. The entry for March 16 reads:
“Called at 2 o’clock A.M., went aboard cars at 2 1/2. No breakfast, nor could we get a mouthful until we arrived in Indianapolis, at 2 1/2 o’clock P.M. The R. R. was new, rough and no stations by the way. Arrived in Terre Haute about 5 P.M.”
Here they stopped for a week at the Prairie House. They organized their firm of Flint, Bixby & Co., in which Benjamin, who had been longer in California, had four parts to three each for the others. They wrote letters, bought three horses, fitted saddles to
