Vanishing Tracks

Every researcher runs into issuers whose history should be well-documented, but they simply seem to have been swallowed by the mists of time. I’ve collected Indiana obsolete paper money for over half a century and have always been stymied in finding any information about the Ohio, Indiana & Illinois Rail Road Company (OI&I). As I wrote in my 2018 catalog: “No definitive information has surfaced on this railroad.”   

Deceptive Print 

For years, the only things we knew about this railroad were found on the notes themselves. Datelined Marion, Indiana—a town about 85 miles northeast of Indianapolis—the notes are usually dated between 1855 and 1859. Over the years, there has even been some speculation that the line was involved in some kind of legal sleight of hand since all its notes prominently feature THE STATE OF INDIANA while relegating the company name to a small banner above the large passenger train vignette in the center. Issuers in many states often used this ploy so their notes would be confused with those of more prominent or highly respected issuers, in this case, the state of Indiana. And that is about all we knew until a couple months ago.

At that point, I was cataloging another issue of the admittedly somewhat common notes on this railroad, and I decided to see once again if I could find anything new. This time, I had access to new tools. I plugged the railroad name into an extensive online database to which I subscribe, newspapers.com, not expecting to find anything new. But this time, I expanded the search to include more recent years. With the search now encompassing 1850 to 1960, I hoped to pick up nostalgia articles looking back on events from 100 years earlier. And I finally hit paydirt with an article appearing in the April 6, 1954, issue of the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Indiana.

Train Buff

The article detailed the findings of Mr. Frank Hargrave, a retired Purdue University economics professor and railroad enthusiast. Hargrave had read a newspaper story about a railroad official trying to uncover the history of an 1855 check issued by the OI&I. The official had finally given up and concluded that the railroad may not have even existed. However, Hargrave recalled the railroad from his previous research, dragged out his files of notes and clippings, and went to work. An issue of The Wabash Gazette from August 1851 provided the first clue. It carried a news item that stated: 

“The company which has undertaken to build this (Ohio, Indiana and Illinois) road was organized under a charter granted by both the states of Ohio and Indiana. The road commences at Crestline, O., the western terminus of the Ohio and Pennsylvania railroad. And is to run thence through the towns of Bucyrus, Upper Sandusky, Lima, Delphos and Van Wert in Ohio to Fort Wayne, Indiana, a distance of 130 miles; thus forming a direct line of railroad from Fort Wayne to Pittsburgh, a distance of 315 miles.”

Hard Times

Another article appeared in the same newspaper less than a year later on February 16, 1852, indicating that the railroad was, in fact, a reality. It intersected with the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad at
Crestline on the Cleveland and Columbus road and ran through all of the Ohio communities mentioned in the previous year’s article before ending in Fort Wayne. The OI&I apparently ran into hard times, as an April 1863 newspaper notice in the Weekly Journal of Lafayette, Indiana, announced that the road had been placed into receivership. By 1869 the OI&I had become part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway, which gave a 999-year lease to the Pennsylvania Railroad for all of the old OI&I trackage as part of a complicated package of other lines that gave the Pennsylvania Railroad a continuous and direct rail route between Philadelphia and Chicago. At this point, the Ohio, Indiana & Illinois Railroad lost what was left of its identity.

But at least now, thanks to a 71-year-old local interest newspaper column filler, we know that the Ohio, Indiana & Illinois Railroad actually existed. It is rather ironic to me that the answer to the mystery had been there all along, just waiting to be discovered. All it took was a lot of patience and persistence.

The notes from this railroad are not particularly rare. The company issued $1s and $2s that feature a central vignette of a passenger train leaving a busy station, which was later used on the T15 Confederate $50 Treasury note printed by the New Orleans office of the American Bank Note Company (under the name of the Southern Bank Note Company to conceal the fact that the company was printing notes for the Confederacy). Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson, who printed this note, became part of the American Bank Note Company in 1858. In fact, Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson had used the New Orleans office, and after 1858, it served as the American Bank Note Company’s branch office. 

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A version of this article appears in the September 2025 issue of The Numismatist (money.org)