Is there a "there" there???

One of the things I've been thinking about for the past several days is the final paper for this class. One thing I've been interested in studying over the years is the development (and impact of that development) of industry and transportation in Connecticut's Thames River Valley. Some of the "big picture" questions I'm attempting to answer is "why did industry find this region so appealing in the mid-19th century? Was the transportation network (two railroad lines, one on each bank of the river, and numerous steamship lines) developed appropriate for the level of business at the time they developed or was it simply a matter of overbuilding as opportunists took advantage of the willingness of the inhabitants of the valley to succumb to "railroad" and "steamboat" fever? How much of the investment was local? How much was "foreign" to the region? And finally, what happened in the latter years of the 19th century and early 20th century to cause so much of this industry to disappear?

The Thames Valley presents an interesting microcosm - it had little natural resources, other than water and gravity, yet boasted a large textile (specifically thread) industry. 

Which leads to the paper. One suggestion Professor P made was to use this opportunity to develop a corporate history - in my case a history of the New London, Willimantic and Palmer, one of the two railroads in the Thames Valley, may be of interest. Or perhaps a closer look at American Thread in Willimantic, or Continental Canning in Uncasville. 

I do have some original sources for the railroad history, including this original Annual Report from 1851:

This contains the usual assortment of "good and wonderful news and hope for the future" one would expect to find in such a document from the time. But does it, and some similar ones from other years I have access to, offer enough to provide some background? 

Another source are the annual and bi-annual reports required by the New England state railroad commissions. These are filled with lots of numbers, data, and other tidbits that may provide some background details. Many of these can be found at Google Books - here's a link to one:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ye_Y58Ld9SYC&pg=PA92&dq=annual+report+to+Connecticut+Railroad+commissioners+New+London+Northern&lr=#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Piecing together the monetary story of any of these companies would seem to be readily achievable, but I'm not sure there's a lot of "there" there. It may be interesting, and necessary for a truly complete history, to compare what was reported to the state commissioner with what the corporate books showed. But that may be a little too involved for this semester. 

Digging a little further, I found some interesting notes on the New London Northern RR (corporate successor to the NLW&P) - Fred Lincoln, a brakeman,received fatal injuries by coming in contact with a bridge in Norwich, Connecticut (NY Times, July 1, 1872). I also learned the first female dispatcher in U. S. railroad history worked for the New London Northern. 

These railroads were fairly small operations, so there may indeed be a "there" there. I'm just not sure yet. 

Comments

[Dianne Schmidley]

Marty, Interesting project you got there. Check out the photograph of the locomotive engine on my blog. My cousin Ellen recently discovered this locomotive in Denver. It is identical to the one Grandpa Schmidley drove for the Chicago Northwestern Line in Wisconsin. Dianne

[Jeff Schueler]

Your topic is very interesting and I have empathy for dilemma. For HIST 711 I wrote on a legal conflict between John Philip Sousa and his manager's estate over the extent of royalties and concert receipts. There is very little from the available sources -- just some comments 30 years later, some material from the appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and that court's opinion. In the end I just tried to paint a portrait of the conflict and how it was resolved. The real difficulty was connecting what I found to some historical thought, like what the conflict said about American culture at the time. I made a stab at is, though admittedly need to do a lot more work. In the end, I was happy to just set forth the conflict and its resolution and save more work for later. That may be an approach that might work for your paper, though you must be the judge of that.