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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
Coast to Coast by Railroad: The Journey of Niles Searls (PH 21-1)(1972) (23 pages)
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Page: of 23
Coast to Coast by Railroad:
The Journey of Niles Searls —
May, 1869
Edited by FRANCES G. LONG
The driving of the golden spike at Promontory Point made it
possible to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific by rail. The
letters of a New Yorker who began his journey two days before
the spike was driven describe what may be the first complete
trip by railroad across the United States. Mrs. Long, formerly
a librarian in a number of public schools in New York State, is
a great-niece of Mary C. Niles Searls. She lives in Rensselaerville,
N. Y., in the former O. H. Chittenden home where Niles Searls
read Jaw in 1847.
Niles Searls was one of a legion of New Yorkers whose restless
Spirit and desire to succeed led them to new lives in the American
midwest and far west. Born in Coeymans, New York in 1825, he moved
with his family to Wellington, Ontario in 1837, then returned to New
York for schooling when he was seventeen. He attended the Rensselaerville Academy in Rensselaerville three years, read law one year
there with O. H. Chittenden, and studied at the Fowler Law School in
Cherry Valley, New York, from which he was graduated in 1848. He
was admitted to the New York State bar that same year, and immediately headed west to find a likely place to begin a law practice.
After visiting Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, he finally
opened an office in Harrisonville, Missouri. But he remained there
for a very few months. In his words, “I kept a law office a short
time, but the law office did not keep me.’
More important, late in 1848 he heard of the discovery of gold
in California, and the following spring he travelled by wagon train
to the gold fields.* His attempts at mining met with mixed results,
Mrs. Long wishes to thank the Wappingers Central School District for
the sabbatical leave which provided time for the editing of these materials,
and State Librarian Mason Tolman and State Historian Louis L. Tucker
for services and advice.
1The Diary of a Pioneer and Other Papers. (Privately printed. Copyright by Robert M. Searls, 1940.)
* This journey is described in ibid.