Checking in at number 10 on the Holland Land Office Museum's ongoing list of 25 Things that Made Genesee County Famous is Dean Richmond.
The name Richmond still plays a prominent role in Batavia. There is the library, of course, but there is also the impressive looking family tomb in the Batavia Cemetary on Harvester Avenue.
Too bad his grand old mansion was torn down by the school board (the school board!?) after the board purchased the building in 1966 and the failed in an attempt to annex the Richmond Library. Where the Greek Revival structure once stood (311 East Main St.) is ... a parking lot. (I think they call that progress.)
But back to dear old Dean.
Mr. Richmond, according to HOLM, was born in 1804 in Barnard, Vermont. He was the son of an entrepreneur, but was forced to make his own way in life at age 14, when his father died. He turned his father's money-losing business into a profitable one, and eventually used his growing wealth to invest in the emerging railroad business.
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.
Among the passengers who road through Batavia, according to Patrick Weissend, was Abraham Lincoln -- both on his way to assume the presidency in Washington, D.C., and his casket was carried through Genesee County when his body was returned to Springfield, Ill. In both cases, the name of the engine that transported Mr. Lincoln was the Dean Richmond.
The Buffalo History Works site quotes this passage about the train's pass through Batavia from the Buffalo Morning Express:
The funeral train was met at Batavia yesterday morning by the Committee from this city which included Honorable Millard Fillmore. The Committee left here at 6:00 o'clock Wednesday evening by a special car provided for their accommodation, passing the night at Batavia. At 5:00 o'clock yesterday morning, the funeral train arrived at that point, where it was received, as at every halting point along the line of its long, sad journey, by an immense concourse of people. The assemblage had begun with the very dawn, when the firing of the minute guns awoke the village from its slumbers and hastened the steps of pilgrims from the surrounding country flocking in. Before the train appeared, it had grown to the proportions of a city throng.
The multitude stood with their heads bowed, silent, sorrowful and reverent, paying that sincere homage to the dead which had everywhere been so memorable and remarkable. The pause of the train was but for ten minutes, during which the committee from Buffalo took their places in the car reserved for them. From thence to this city no halt on the journey was made but at every station and almost continuously the train passed between long lines of people, who had come to catch but a floating glimpse of what bore the remains of their beloved President; and everywhere they bowed, with uncovered heads, in afflicting bestowment of their little passing tribute of solemn reverence.
Here's something additional I just found: The wreckage of the Dean Richmond, a freighter on the Lake Erie that went down in a storm in 1893. Here's a 1872 article from the New York Times about a fire aboard the very same steamer. Actually, maybe those are not the same boats. This article says there were for Great Lakes steamers named the Dean Richmond -- all met similar fates. The link contains a picture of the fourth one.
