The following items were furnished to us by Lea Kemp, Librarian/Archivist, Collections of the Rochester Museum & Science Center, 657 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607.  Their web site is www.rmsc.org.

 

THE WESTERN UNION OFFICE

from Museum Services Vol. 9 No. 3 March 1936

When the old Reynolds Arcade was torn down its destruction threatened one of the most important rooms in the industrial life of our city.  In the old building, the most famous office building of its time in upper New York, was the room in which was organized the Western Union Telegraph Company.                                       

Since 1926 the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences has been engaged in collecting the furniture of this old office, once occupied by D. Alonzo Watson, the treasurer of the Company.  Some of the furniture remained in storage in the building.  The desk had been separated in two parts, one of which was in the Reading Room of the Reynolds Library and the lower portion in the Zimmerli store.  The tall desk of the accountant was in the Caretaker's room, as was the mirror.  After a long hunt the safe was found in the possession of a Greek florist on the lower floor of the arcade.  The iron hat used as a cuspidor had been saved by the janitor.

When the building was to be dismantled Mr. Charles Van Inwagen of the Western Union Company made it possible for Mr. and Mrs. James Sibley Watson to buy the woodwork and fixtures of the old room.  It was carefully taken down and restored in the museum building through the intelligent work of Melvin D. Andrews who found the gas fixture and the window shade.  One or two of the smaller articles were replaced from description.  The Currier and Ives picture is one.

During the Rochester Centennial in 1934 the Western Union officials sent out a message from this room, telegraphing it to every station within the Western Union System.

"WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!"

By Gladys Reid Holton, Culture Historian

from Museum Services Vol. 29 No. 1 January 1956

When the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences was located in Edgerton Park one of the most interesting in the group of period rooms was the office in which was organized the Western Union Telegraph Company.  The furnishings, woodwork and fixtures were a gift to the Museum when the old Reynolds Arcade was dismantled.  The entire exhibit was moved and installed again in the present museum building in 1943.

Recently at the suggestion of Mr. Harry C. Farmer, superintendent of the Rochester office, we have been working on better lighting of this valuable reconstruction.  It has been said that this was one of the most important rooms in the industrial life of Rochester.

It is interesting to recall some of the early history.  The first line constructed in the United States was put in operation in 1844, between Washington and Baltimore.  The next year it was continued to New York and Boston and in 1846 to Buffalo and Harrisburg.  The next year a line was constructed between Buffalo and Montreal and from Boston to Portland.  In 1848 lines were constructed in every direction.  By 1851 over fifty telegraph companies were in operation.  Some of them were financially unstable.  Many problems concerning rates and the transfer of messages from one line to another resulted in poor service.

Hiram Sibley had the idea of buying up all of these companies, accumulating their worthless stocks, securing the controlling interests of patents, assuming their liabilities and starting a new company.  The original group of 17 stockholders was soon increased to 20, each subscribing about $5,000.  It was not easy at first to interest Rochester capitalists in this scheme.  One of Mr. Sibley's friends said, "If I do invest in it promise me it shall be a secret between us forever -- I'll give you the $5,000 but you are never to tell that I was such a fool.  I believe in you but I don't believe in this telegraphy."

The Company was named the Western Union Telegraph Company, indicating the union of the western lines in one system on April 4, 1856.  This name was insisted upon by Ezra Cornell, pioneer line builder, who used a part of the telegraph fortune he made to found Cornell University.  Western Union continued its policy of merging with other companies and building new lines, rapidly extending telegraph service over the nation.  The first transcontinental telegram was sent on October 24, 1861.

The principle on which Western Union was founded was "a proper telegraph service calls for a system reaching all important points, under a single management, with a fixed tariff and uniform standards of efficiency."  The Telegraph Company absorbed 540 indepenent telegraph companies and built up a national telegraph system.  The latest step in this development took place on October 7, 1943 when Western Union purchased the Postal Telegraph.

On your next visit to the Museum be sure to look for this office and think again about the first message sent from Washington to Baltimore on May 21, 1844, the first telegram, which read, "What hath God wrought!"

The Western Union Centennial

By Blake McKelvey, City Historian and Fellow of Rochester Museum

from Museum Services, Vol. 29 No. 4 April 1956

The Centennial of the Western Union Telegraph Company, organized in April 1856, is an occasion for local celebration, since its inspiration and most of its early leaders came from this city.  Moreover it represented the first triumph of national proportions by local businessmen.  Yet Rochester's interest in the telegraph had been active for a dozen years prior to the Union's organization and that earlier experience helped to assure its success.  The first line opening communications with Albany and New York had reached this city in June 1846, enabling local dailies, among them the Democrat and the Advertiser, to feature "By Telegraph" columns.

It was Henry O'Reilly, former editor of the Advertiser, who first attracted Rochester's interest in the new invention.  Responding to O'Reilly's enthusiastic promotion, several Rochesterians backed the first lines built across Pennsylvania and through the Ohio Valley.  Other local men joined a few from Utica in building branch lines in New York State.  Unfortunately as the numerous short lines constructed under the Morse patent failed to discover a formula for peaceful cooperation, bitter controversies over territory and patent rights ensued.

A new House patent for a printing telegraph, while inferior in some respects to the Morse patent, offered an opportunity to build a new and more unified system.  Judge Samuel L. Selden, previously associated with O'Reilly took the lead in organizing the New York State Telegraph Company, of which Levi A. Ward, his brother-in-law, became president and Isaac R. Elwood of Rochester, secretary.  Construction started in 1850, chiefly with local capital, but competition with the Morse lines soon convinced Selden and his associates, who now included Freeman Clarke the congressman, Isaac Butts publisher of the Union, and Hiram Sibley the sheriff, that real profits could only be won by an extension west of Buffalo.  A reorganization was necessary to attract additional funds, and Henry S. Potter, whose $10,000 investment exceeded that of any of the other 28 stockholders, two-thirds of them from Rochester, became first president of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing and Telegraph Company of 1854.

The Rochester interests were not the only ones endeavoring to build a telegraph empire in the early fifties.  Cyrus Field and Peter Cooper, leaders of the American Telegraph Company, absorbed the Morse lines linking the seaboard cities and prepared to lay an Atlantic cable.  Ezra Cornell who had won control of most of the New York state lines that used the Morse patent, was plotting an extension westward restrained only by the Morse patent holders there.  The Rochester capital in several of the latter lines enabled Sibley, who assumed the active direction of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing and Telegraph Company, to negotiate leases of key lines, notably the Lake Erie Telegraph Company, which opened western service.  This action proved to be the first decisive step in the rapid process by which Sibley and Cornell, who soon joined forces, drew most of the interior lines into one vast system.  A broader charter and a more representative name were secured by a reorganization which brought the Western Union Telegraph Company into being in April 1856.

Inevitably some of the early competing companies lost out, and several of those absorbed accepted purchase offers that paid only a fraction on their investment.  O'Reilly and many of his friends suffered huge losses.  Some, even of the men who joined Sibley who became president of Western Union, sold out before the consolidation was completed and missed the handsome dividends.  But those who held their stock through these uncertain days rejoiced over the cash and stock dividends declared in 1858 and succeeding years,  Even the Civil War contributed to their advantage by weakening the coastal and southern lines and inducing them to accept consolidation on Western Union's terms.  Some of the disgruntled investors who had sold out too soon had the consolation of noting the names of their recent associates high on the list of those who paid the first federal income tax in 1864 and 1865.  Yet the bite on Sibley's $100,174 income, the largest in Rochester, was not very deep by modern standards, only $7,389 according to the list published in the somewhat envious Express.

Rochester men withdrew from active leadership after the main office was moved to New York in June 1866.  Already the major telegraph lines of America had been consolidated into one company, capitalized at $41,063,100.  It is interesting to recall that the nerve center of this vast concern, which had achieved a monopoly of the telegraph business of the country, was located in Rochester, where the executive office at 22 Exchange Street and the manager's office at No. 11 in the old Reynolds Arcade shared the direction of a system that extended over 37,380 miles and included 2,250 local offices.

As Rochester divided its first bonanza, funds became available for university expansion, for the purchase of art, and the encouragement of science, as well as for investment in many promising concerns.  Perhaps the major effect was to encourage a more alert attitude on the part of other residents whose support of later ventures had made Rochester a city of technical industries.