TRIAL OF THE ENGINE BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE.
Many of the members of the New Jersey Legislature were farmers. The management of the Camden and Amboy Railroad was anxious to give these gentlemen and other prominent citizens an opportunity to examine a steam locomotive at work and to ride in a railway train.
Sixty years ago to-day, on the 12th of November, 1831, by special invitation, the members of the Legislature and other State officials were driven from Trenton to Bordentown in stages to witness the trial. Among them were John P. Jackson (father of the present general superintendent of the United Railroads of New Jersey division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who afterward took a prominent part in the affairs of the New Jersey Railroad, whose termini were at New Brunswick and Jersey City); Benjamin Fish (director for fifty years for the Camden and Amboy Railroad), afterward president of the Freehold and Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad; Ashbel Welch, chief engineer and superintendent of the Belvidere and Delaware Railroad for many years, and president of the United Railroads of New Jersey during the years immediately preceding the lease to the Pennsylvania Railroad; Edwin A. and Robert L. Stevens, afterward managers of the road.