As you know, Rex, I'm rather knowlegable about Henry Burden, his entrepreneurial career, and his inventions. Something that you don't mention is that, apropos current political issues in the States, he was an immigrant. From Scotland, where he'd picked up an education at Edinburgh before he came here. Ninety per cent of all the horseshoes used by the Union Army during the Civil War were made at his factory in South Troy, which cranked out about a million horseshoes a week during the war. Toward the end of the war, a Confederate spy named Mordecai L. Moses was arrested in Troy for trying to steal the plans for Burden's horseshoe machine. Earlier, by the way, Burden was the first person to produce the hook-headed railroad spike by machine. In the 1830s, he supplied all the spikes for the original Long Island Railroad, about ten tons of them, and shortly after that, he supplied all the spikes for the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a hundred tons of them. So if you bought B&O Railroad when you played Monopoly, you bought a hundred tons of railroad spikes made in Troy, New York. His story is an early example of how the nation benefited from the achievements of an immigrant. FYI. Happy Spring to you and Marion. Tom
Thanks, Tom -- wonderful to hear from you, which I actually was hoping this piece might provoke. (I actually did not his immigrant status at the top, but it deserved a repeat later!) I'm sure that you and Nan are so sorry that you are missing the bone-chilling early March dampness up here!
As you know, Rex, I'm rather knowlegable about Henry Burden, his entrepreneurial career, and his inventions. Something that you don't mention is that, apropos current political issues in the States, he was an immigrant. From Scotland, where he'd picked up an education at Edinburgh before he came here. Ninety per cent of all the horseshoes used by the Union Army during the Civil War were made at his factory in South Troy, which cranked out about a million horseshoes a week during the war. Toward the end of the war, a Confederate spy named Mordecai L. Moses was arrested in Troy for trying to steal the plans for Burden's horseshoe machine. Earlier, by the way, Burden was the first person to produce the hook-headed railroad spike by machine. In the 1830s, he supplied all the spikes for the original Long Island Railroad, about ten tons of them, and shortly after that, he supplied all the spikes for the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a hundred tons of them. So if you bought B&O Railroad when you played Monopoly, you bought a hundred tons of railroad spikes made in Troy, New York. His story is an early example of how the nation benefited from the achievements of an immigrant. FYI. Happy Spring to you and Marion. Tom
Thanks, Tom -- wonderful to hear from you, which I actually was hoping this piece might provoke. (I actually did not his immigrant status at the top, but it deserved a repeat later!) I'm sure that you and Nan are so sorry that you are missing the bone-chilling early March dampness up here!
Wow. Haters gonna hate.
Thank you for your attention to my personal history, Adam, and for your subscription payment in support of The Upstate American and my work.
I'm so sorry that someone trolled you.
This makes me feel embarrassed to also be an Adam