The Twenty - Five Things That Made Genesee County Famous
Number 10
Dean Richmond
On March 31, 1804, in Barnard, Vermont, a son was born to Hathaway and Rachel Dean Richmond. The boy, named Dean, was destined to become a powerful businessman who helped influence the way people traveled.
When Dean was still a boy, the family moved to Salina (now part of Syracuse), New York. Syracuse was beginning to be a thriving salt town, and the elder Richmond ran a salt business. The business was failing and Hathaway Richmond traveled alone to Mobile, Alabama to look for business opportunities. While in Mobile, Hathaway died. Dean was a mere 14 years old and, as the oldest son, he had to become the man of the house and support his mother and two sisters.
Richmond took over his father’s business and through determination and hard work by the time he was 18 he was turning a profit. He grew the business and before long, he had enough money to invest in other projects.
He invested in canal shipping, and as that endeavor took off, the locomotive industry came to Syracuse. Richmond saw the potential in trains and invested heavily. In 1842, he moved his thriving transportation business to Buffalo. He became a leading businessman in that city and served as a director of the Rochester & Buffalo Railway. Richmond also became the president of the Buffalo and State Line Railway and a director of a Buffalo bank.
Dean's wife, Mary, developed health problems in Buffalo, so they decided to move the family to the country and settled in Attica in 1848. Four years later, after mainlines were built in Batavia, the family moved to a mansion on East Main Street.
 |
Richmond Mansion |
From the 1830s to the early 1850s, rail lines began to crisscross New York State. The presidents of the competing lines decided that consolidation would save money, end duplications and benefit services. Thus, in 1853, twelve competing lines merged into the New York Central Railroad. Because Richmond was the president of one railroad and the director of another, he became a director and vice-president of the company.
The railroad became one of the largest in the United States. Upon the retirement of Erastus Corning in 1864, Richmond was elected the president of the New York Central. While Richmond was building his business, he also got involved in politics.
Richmond was elected the chairman of the New York State Democratic State Committee in 1857, a position he held until his death. He was an early supporter of Horatio Seymour and helped him get elected New York Governor in 1862. He also worked closely with prominent New York Democrats August Belmont and Samuel J. Tilden.
Richmond attended the state convention of the conservative Republican-Democratic coalition at Saratoga in 1866. While there, he contracted a severe cold. As his health got worse, he was taken to the home of Tilden in New York City, where he died on August 18, 1866, at the age of 62.
His body was brought back to Batavia in a train draped in black. The funeral, at the old St. James Church on Ellicott Street, was the largest in Batavia’s history. It was attended by former President Millard Fillmore, Tilden, Seymour, and many other powerful politicians and businessmen. The local paper of the day, The Spirit of the Times, estimated 8,000 attended the funeral. At noon on the day of the funeral, bells from the village’s twelve churches rang in honor of Richmond. The funeral procession followed the hearse from the church (where Ponderosa is today) to the Batavia Cemetery on Harvester Avenue. Today, his remains are entombed, along with many family members, in the Richmond Mausoleum.
 |
Richmond Mausoleum in the Batavia Cemetery |
How Did He Make Genesee County Famous?
Dean Richmond is best known in railroad circles as the first person in America to advocate the use of steel rails for the construction of railroads. An order was placed in England for the steel rails for a test run, but the tests were completed after Richmond died. The tests were successful and the steel industry grew out of the demand for the product by the railroad.
While Richmond was president of the New York Central, he demanded that all trains stop in Batavia. In 1866, the year of Richmond’s death, more than 3.7 million travelers rode on the train line. Not all of those people stopped in Batavia, but a fair share did, and because of Richmond, Batavia became a terminal and a gateway to the west.
In 1861, as President-Elect Abraham Lincoln made his way to Washington D.C., the engine that pulled the train was “The Dean Richmond.” In a gesture of bi-partisanship, Richmond, as the leader of the NYS Democratic Party, boarded the train and had lunch with the Lincoln family as the train roared past Syracuse. Five years later, following Lincoln’s assassination, his body returned to Springfield, Illinois on the railroad. The train traveled from Washington D.C. to New York City and through New York State. On the leg of the journey from Albany to Buffalo the same engine that brought Lincoln to his inauguration pulled his funeral train.
Dean Richmond even had a Great Lakes freighter named after him. The freighter itself became famous when it sunk in Lake Erie near the town of North East, Pennsylvania on October 15, 1893.
Do you agree or disagree? Comment on our blog Here
Links:
National New York Central Railroad Museum