“The Eighth American Saint” describes the railroad experience of Mother Theodore and her traveling companions: “They rode to Philadelphia on the South Amboy and Camden Railroad, opened only a few years before, the first rail route between New York and Philadelphia. The locomotive, the John Bull by name, was imported from England and was the first the sisters had ever seen. It was amazingly large and the coaches were too, seating a least forty people. The train went like lightning, past fields and villages with white houses and green blinds, along a canal where they saw boats pulled jerkily by a horse that walked along one bank. They were glad they did not have to travel so slowly. The train, they were told, went twenty miles in a single hour. The sisters were not at all alarmed by going so fast and greatly enjoyed the new experience.” (page 65)
To learn more about the transportation of the mid-1800s, click here.
(Image credit: The Library of Congress)
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