Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1892 — BY FAITH AND FIVE DOLLARS. [ARTICLE]

BY FAITH AND FIVE DOLLARS.

How a Plucky Man Bum 600 MUas of Bailroad In Texas. For real pluck and enterprise the building of the beginning of the Aransas Pass Railroad In Texas Is probably unequaled. This, which is now one of the great systems of the State, was built by a man whose oiffy resources were faith and a borrowed $5 bill. He move up from Corpus Oblate to San Antonio with all of his possessions heaped on a two-wheeled cart He got a oharter to build a railroad from San Antonio to Aransas Pass. He graded a mile of it, throwing a good deal more than one shovel of dirt with his own hand. The reoeiver of .another road loaned this Indefatigable builder enough old rails for a mile of track. In a distant part of the State was purchased an engine whioh had been oondemned six years before and sent to the shops to be wrecked for sorap iron. Two old oars were picked up somewhere else at a bargain. And that old engine, drawing those old cars, steamed into San Antonio. On engine and oars in bold lettering was painted in lamp-black “S. A A. P.” With one mile of old-rail traok and with the equipment of the old engine and the two old cars, Uria i Lott started the Aransas Pass system. There has been some tall financiering In the history of railroad building in this country, but there isn’t anything which, for dazzling pluok, quite approaches the story of the building of this 600 miles of road in South Texas. To the one mile of traok three were added—three miles by a dicker for some second-hand rails which a street oar company ha 1 bought from a narrow-guage oompaay. On thus basis a oredlt trade was made with a Pennsylvania rolling mill for ten miles of rails.. When they arrived there wasn’t money enough in the treasury to pay the freight. But it was got somehow. Ten miles of traok gave the foundation for bonds whioh built forty miles more, and bo the system grew into its present proportions. This man who built the Aransas Pass system rode from San Antonio to Ohioago at one oritioal period on his enterprise without a cent in his pooket. He had transportation, but he hadn’t anything to buy food, and be went through hungry.