Did Robert Louis Stephenson Ride This Train?

I have a poster on the wall downstairs. It is an advertisement by the Canadian Pacific Railway for people to ride the train west. I never did think much of it until today. The railroads, in both the United States and Canada, depended on getting people to settle in the west so that the railroads could make money by selling the settlers the land that was granted to the railroad with its charter. This website has some background about these “Emigrant Trains”, as they were known.

The picture on the front of this post card is of an “Emigrant Train”. The picture was taken by Thomas C. Roche (a Civil War photographer) during his tour of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads in 1870. https://legacysunfoldingjourney.blogspot.com/2011/07/take-ride-on-immigrant-train-advance.html In order to sell as much of this land as possible, the railroads had to compete for immigrants. So, they covered Europe with advertising promoting the American Dream of religious freedom, upward mobility, and cheap fertile land. So why did so many immigrants choose the U.S. and not countries closer to their homes? Well, there was genuine opportunity and freedom, too. But mostly it was good advertising. The Burlington Northern Railroad alone had over 850 agents roaming Europe selling the virtues of life in the United States. “A Congressional report in the early 1870’s estimated that every foreign laborer landing on our shores was economically valued at $1,500. The report stated that in less than ten years, these people would add $4.8 billion to the wealth of the nation” (“Across America on an Emigrant Train”). http://eyewitnesstohistory.com/emigranttrain.htm It was 1879 and twenty-eight-year-old Robert Louis Stevenson - future author of the novels Kidnapped and Treasure Island - was in love. Her name was Fanny Osborne. She was an American, ten years his senior and married to another man. The two had met in France three years earlier and Stevenson had fallen hopelessly in love. She returned to California and her husband, but in 1879, Stevenson received a cable from her that immediately set him off on a voyage to be by her side. Stevenson's parents were not happy with his plans and refused to fund his journey - so the young author decided to travel to America as an emigrant. This allowed him to take advantage of the low one-way fares to America offered by the American railroads. Special "Emigrant Boats" sailed to America's eastern ports and were met by "Emigrant Trains" that carried the foreign passengers to their final destinations. Stevenson kept a journal of his experience and soon turned this into a book. The picture on this post card was taken by T.C. Roche. This website gives us some of his history: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/t-c-roche-civil-war-photographer.71797/ T.C. Roche (1826–1895) was a photographer who worked with Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady. Not much is know about him. In 1858, Roche became interested in photography and was listed as an agent at 83 South St. in Brooklyn, New York. In 1862 he went to work for E. & H. T. Anthony & Company. Over the years, Roche was Anthony's principal photographer and senior advisor and one of their most valuable assets, developing many patents for the company's products and processes. Roche is probably best known for, and counts among his many accomplishments, the roughly 50 stereoviews taken on April 3, 1865 following the fall of Petersburg, Virginia. These include the "death studies", at least 20 stereoviews of the dead, allegedly taken inside Fort Mahone. After the war, Roche returned to work for the Anthonys, with whom he published a book on photography.Thomas C. Roche was quite an inventor, and has a number of patents that you can find on Google Patents - most of them have to do with photography.

This post card is one of 50 that were sold by the Lightfoot Collection in Huntington Station, New York. This is the website where you can see the other 49 post cards. They are not all about trains. I have numbers 13, 21 and 25 from this collection. http://wallywombatscollectables.com/Master-Photographer-by-Lightfoot.php