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George Heny Wyatt 291 schooner James Coleman on a new trade, made possible by the opening of the St. Lawrence canals, between Hamilton and Halifax." Of much greater significance for Wyatt’s career, in 1852, Stevenson took on the role of Hamilton agent for the Northern Railroad, an American line which had just opened between Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence River and Rouses Point, where passengers could transfer to the steamboats on Lake Champlain which connected with other rail lines to Boston and New York.” The following spring, on 14 April 1853, Wyatt issued his first newspaper d as agent for the Ogdensburgh Railroad Line at the Ogdensburgh Railroad Office on Front St. in Toronto. Stevenson remained the company’s Hamilton agent.” The reference to the line in this fashion was no doubt in part to reduce confusion with what was generally known as the Northern Railway from Toronto to Collingwood.'* Wyatt would remain associated with the line in some capacity until the end of the decade, being especially active on their behalf in the first few years of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. The American railroad acted through Canadian agents to charter or buy a succession of schooners and steamboats to run to ports between Ogdensburg and Hamilton.'° By 1861, it was no longer chartering special steamers to make connections, instead advertising connections to the Grand Trunk and Ottawa and Prescott railways and to steamer services on Lake Ontario." In parallel, the railroad had. developed a connection with the Northem Transportation Company which ran 4 Daily British Whig (DBW) (Kingston), 13 March 1851 says it had just been bought for this purpose by the Hon. John Elmsley. It arrived back in July (DBI, 16 July 1851). The i to inIvan S. Brookes, Hamilton Harbour, 1826-1901, ‘Walter Lewis Calton Hills, ON: Maritime History of the Great Lakes, 2001), chapter 8, “1851,” https:// sp2ID=Y1851#p08,51.8, Coleman 1 retumed to the sea in 1852 under new ownership. chapter 8, “1852,”, asp2ID=Y 1852#p08.52.4. 8 Globe (Toronto), 14 April 1853. The ad acknowledged that P.S. Stevenson was still the agent in Hamilton, and Ralph Jones in Cobourg. Although Wyatt and Stevenson would pursue different paths in their subsequent business careers, after the death of Stevenson’s first wife in the Desjardin Canal Bridge disaster in 1857, he married Wyatt’s sister-in-law Annie S. Harris in 1864. (Full details of the railway disaster of the 12th of March, 1857, at the Desjardin Canal, on the line of the Great Western Railway (Hamilton: J. W. Harris, 1857), 5, available at https:// (0/13. Ontario County Marriage Registers, 1858-1869, v. 66, Toronto, p. 205, Archives of Sumo) “Officially, it was first the Toronto, Simcoe and Huron Railway and then the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway, before being renamed the Northern Railway in 1859. That said, a letter to the Globe as early as 24 December 1850 referred to the project as the Norther Railway, and the local papers routinely referred to it as such in articles throughout the early 1850s. 18 St. Catharines Journal, 17 March 1853; Globe, 14 April 1853; Globe, 31 March 1855. © The Advance (Ogdensburg, NY), 3 May 1861, 8.