The 1880 Tuckerton Railroad sale notice

Property described

The auction was scheduled for February 11, 1880, at the West Jersey Hotel in Camden. The notice covered the existing railroad between Whiting’s Station in Ocean County and Tuckerton, then in Burlington County, plus an approximately two-mile easterly spur from near Tuckerton to Long Beach on Little Egg Harbor Bay. Included were land, depots, sidings, connections, rails, houses, warehouses, machine buildings, cars, engines, machinery, rolling stock, corporate rights, tolls, fares, rents, dividends, and other proceeds or appurtenances.

The bottom of the crop identifies an unnamed master and an “R. L.” solicitor; the damaged source text also shows a December 8 date that may belong to an earlier legal filing. Those names and the exact year of that line require inspection of a clearer copy.

The railway behind the auction notice

An 1882 industrial survey describes the operating route as twenty-nine miles from Whiting to Tuckerton, with a two-mile spur to Edge Cove. The same book’s Edge Cove entry says steamboats connected that terminus with Long Beach and Beach Haven. Together these descriptions help interpret the sale notice’s “Long Beach” endpoint: the two-mile branch reached the bay shore rather than crossing all the way to the barrier island. The survey shows the route still described as a working railroad after the advertised 1880 auction. Industries of New Jersey (1882), railroad survey, p. 64, and Edge Cove, p. 83.

The New Jersey State Archives separately catalogs a Tuckerton Railroad Company file dated 1881 in its transportation corporation records, reference 559. This is a concrete lead for the corporate changes surrounding the sale, not proof that the scheduled auction took place on its advertised date. The original mortgage proceeding and the company file are needed to establish purchaser, price, and reorganization terms. Transportation Corporation Files collection guide.

Debt figures beside the advertised sale

The federal transportation census gives the railroad’s reporting date as May 31, 1880. Its funded-debt table lists $400,000 in first-mortgage bonds issued April 1, 1871 for thirty years at seven percent, plus $8,000 in second-mortgage bonds. Those are reported liabilities, not a price paid at the February auction or proof that the sale occurred. 1880 census transportation volume, printed pp. 548 and 590.

Income depended on connections

A separate census section describes the New Jersey Express Company paying one-third of its gross receipts. It also records a fifteen-percent drawback on business Tuckerton furnished to three larger railroads: Pennsylvania, Central of New Jersey and New Jersey Southern. The line’s finances therefore included agreements with other carriers as well as its own track and rolling stock. 1880 census transportation volume, printed pp. 548 and 590.

The tables make the income rights offered in the notice less abstract. They still leave the purchaser, sale proceeds and later corporate arrangements unresolved. Establishing those events requires the legal record rather than reading a balance-sheet amount as an auction result. 1880 census transportation volume, printed pp. 548 and 590.