| Notes |
In the year 1809, the staid citizens of Philadelphia were agog with curiosity over a strange and mysterious thing upon a vacant
tract beside the Bull's Head Tavern upon Second street, near Poplar street, just where there yet remained some remnants of
the old line of defenses against teh rebel colonists, which were erected by British troops in 1777. Here a civil engineer
named John Thompson, from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and a Scotch millwright named SOmmerville were busy, during September,
constructing a track of wooden rails resting upon sleepers eight feet apart, and having a grade of one and a half inches to
the yard. When completed, it extended a hundred and eighty feet. This undertaking was upon the order of Thomas Leiper, a
Scotchman, who had come to Philadelphia from Virginia many years before, and was best known as a tobacconist. He was also
one of the survivors of those soldiers of the First Troop Philadelphia Cavalry, who had met the British at Princeton. At
the time of this experiment, he was sixty-three years old, and had above $100,000 invested in turnpikes and canals in the
state. He was also a contractor for stone just north of Chester, by sloops sailing up the Delaware River. When the experimental
track was ready, a car with grooved wheels was placed upon it, and it was found that one horse could pull a heavy load upon
the rails with more ease than several horses used upon an ordinary road. Thereupon, John Thompson secured a contract to build
a similar track from the Leiper quarry to the landing upon Ridley Creek, ten miles down the river, a distance of one mile.
This tramway was finished early in the following year. The son of the contracting engineer, John Edgar Thompson, afterward
had an important part in the building of the early railroad lines now a part of the Pennsylvania Railroad system, and became
the President of that great corporation, a position which he held for twenty-seven years. The Leiper quarry tramway upon
which horses were the motive power was in use nineteen years, and was teh first practical rail line built in the United States.
In 1829, the son of Gen. Leiper completed a canal to the quarry, and the tram line was abandoned. The old Bull's Head Tavern
where Leiper's seemingly absurd and costly experiment took place, no longer exists.
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