60	HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

tors for consultation, then proceed to solicit subscriptions in aid of the
enterprise. This committee was instructed, also, to take into considera-
tion the propriety of establishing a daily mail line, by stage or hack,
between Brazil and Worthington, by way of Ashboro. The published
proceedings of this meeting do not show that Washington township was
represented.
	The summer and fall of the year 1871 were signally prolific in their
forecasts of possibilities in immediate future developments as the sequel to
the building of the two railroads then projected to cross the county—one
from north to south, the other from east to west. Director Small, of the
Terre Haute & Cincinnati line, gave out that this road would be completed
from Terre Haute to Eel river within six months, and that within two
years one of the largest iron plants in -the country would be in operation
at this point. This was followed by the suggestion that the two roads
cross at the Feeder Dam, and as an inducement it was proposed to pro-
cure a site of one thousand acres of laud at the point of crossing by dona-
tion, on which to build the future industrial and commercial city of west-
ern Indiana, the production of Bessemer steel to be one of the industries.
But the work of soliciting donations at the rate of $5,000 to the mile did
not meet with the approval and success that was anticipated. The com-
pany had given assurance that with this amount of aid the road would
be built without any subsidy by taxation. The proposition was to con-
struct it in sections of five miles, to be extended as the $25,000 donations
should be procured, on which no payment should be exacted until the
completion of the road, June 10, 1873. During the time of the canvass
ma(le by the solicitors it was given out through the press of the county,
as an incident, that three land owners at Center Point had proposed
jointly to turn over to the company sixty-two acres of land as the equiva-
lent of $25,000, which was accepted.
	But during the protracted period of preliminaries attending the pro-
motion of the “Indiana Northern & Southern,” faith and interest waned
on the part of many of its originally ardent patrons and public attention
was diverted by competitive enterprises, so that the- passing of this move-
ment, once of so much life and promise of the future of Clay county, was
announced by the publication of the following obituary in the Bowling
Green paper: “Died, at its office, April 1, 1872, of general debility, the
North and South Railroad. The deceased came to this place when but
one year old, looking apparently well and promising, but the cause of the
child’s early demise is that it never was healthy.”
	As late as the year 1879, in the month of April, appeared the follow-
ing “special” in the metropolitan press: “The North and South Rail-
road, with all its rights and franchises, has been sold to the Lochiel Iron
Works of Pennsylvania, on a judgment in favor of the Union Loan and
Trust Company. The purchasers hold nearly all of the bonds, of which
there were issued $486,000. The road as completed runs from Attica to
Veedersburg, a distance of twelve miles. As the North & South Com-
pany had done a great deal of grading and procured the control of 100,000
acres of coal lands, the franchises of the road are valuable.”
	Articles of association were filed on the 18th day of August, 1869,
by the Northern and Southern Central Railroad Company, for the build-
ing of a road from Brazil to Bloomfield, by way of Bowling Green and
Worthington, intended as a section of the Indiana Northern & Southern,