When the Swedes first arrived with Peter Minuit they built inside the fort little cottages of round logs, with low doors and no windows except the loop-holes cut between the logs. The cracks were closed with mud or clay. The fireplaces were made of stone, and a bake-oven was built within the house. In 1640 lands were bought from the Indians on the west side of the South River from the Schuylkill as far north as the site of Trenton. ---------- History of Pennsylvania Railroad Begins with Organization of Company March 31, 1847 Prior to 1809, Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, urged repeatedly in public addresses the construction of a passenger railroad from Philadelphia to New York, and in that year attempted to form a company for this purpose. In 1829 a railroad, sixteen miles long, from Honesdale to Carbondale, to carry coal, was completed. In 1827 the Mauch Chunk railroad, nine miles long, was built to connect coal mines with the Lehigh River; the gauge was three feet seven inches, and wooden rails were faced with iron. The Baltimore and Ohio finished, in 1829, the first six miles of track upon which passengers were carried. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company was incorporated by special act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, approved April 4, 1833. The charter granted to the company, December 5, 1833, authorized it to construct a railroad from Reading to Philadelphia. At Reading it was proposed to connect with the Little Schuylkill Navigation and Railroad, which had been incorporated in 1827, to build a railroad from Tamaqua to Reading. Then followed the development of the rails in this country, and the first T-rails made in America were rolled at the Montour Mill, in Danville, Pa., in 1845. This was also an American invention. The first rails, thirty feet in length, were made at the Cambria Iron Works, at Johnstown, Pa., in 1856. The greatest development of the locomotive was made by the great Baldwin plant in Philadelphia. Among the several great railroad groups of America is that of the Pennsylvania system, and this corporation enjoys the distinction of having the greatest number of individual stock holders. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the most important carrier in Pennsylvania and in the Eastern United States, and one of the greatest and most extensive railroad systems in the entire world, was brought into existence by an act of Assembly of Pennsylvania, approved by Governor Francis R. Shunk, April 13, 1846. Letters patent were issued February 15, 1847, and the company organized March 20, but the election of officers was held and the actual beginning of this great corporation dates from March 31, 1847.