marked the infancy of the nation, and it had a distinct corporate
existence and history, like the railroad that ruined it, and was owned
and operated by a stock company. Though the entire road was not fifty
miles in length, the original enterprise contemplated only a section
thereof, which, in accordance with an act of incorporation passed by the
State Legislature in 1802, was built from the court-house in Dedham, the
shire town of Norfolk County, to the north precinct meeting-house in
Attleborough, then a small border town of Bristol County.

The members of the original corporation that held the franchise of the
road were Fisher Ames, James Richardson, and Timothy Gay, Jr., of
Dedham; Timothy Whitney and John Whiting, of Roxbury; Eliphalet Slack,
Samuel S. Blackinton, William Blackinton, Israel Hatch, Elijah Daggett,
and Joseph Holmes, of Attleborough; Ephraim Starkweather, Oliver
Wilkinson, and Ozias Wilkinson, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They were
all enterprising business men in their day, well known throughout
Eastern Massachusetts, and the undertaking for which they combined
seemed as vast to the rural denizens of the towns through which it
passed as did the Pacific Railroad enterprise to capitalists twenty
years ago. To the surprise of the honest farmers, who considered the
crooked county roads good enough for them, it made almost a straight
line from one terminus to the other, and was laid out four rods in
width--a reckless waste of land--as a preventive against snow blockades
in winter Instead of following the windings of valley and stream as
other roads did, this pike mounted directly over all interposing hills,
in accordance with the most approved theories of civil engineers of that
day; and where sections of those old thoroughfares still remain intact,
it is amusing to observe at what steep, straight grades they were made
to climb the most abrupt ascent, curving neither to the right nor to the
left in merciful consideration for the horses.