So was the idea born. It grew, although very slowly. Communication itself in the North Country was slow in those days, even though the fine military road from Sackett's Harbor through Ogdensburgh to Plattsburgh was a tolerable artery of travel most of the year. Money also was slow. And men, over enterprises so extremely new and so untried as railroads, most diffident. For it must be remembered that when the promoters of the Northern Railroad first made that outrageous promise of going from Boston to Ogdensburgh in thirty-five hours, at fifteen miles an hour, the railroad in the United States was barely born. The first locomotive--the _Stourbridge Lion_, at Honesdale, Penn.--had been operated less than a twelvemonth before. In the entire United States there were less than twenty-three miles of railroad in operation. So wonder it not that the plan for the Northern Railroad grew very slowly indeed; that it did not reach incorporation until fourteen long years afterward, when the Legislature of New York authorized David C. Judson and Joseph Barnes, of St. Lawrence County, S. C. Wead, of Franklin County and others as commissioners to receive and distribute stock of the Northern Railroad; $2,000,000 all told, divided into shares of $50 each. The date of the formal incorporation of the road was May 14, 1845. Its organization was not accomplished, however, until June, 1845, when the first meeting was held in the then village of Ogdensburgh, and the following officers elected: _President_, GEORGE PARISH, Ogdensburgh _Treasurer_, S. S. WALLEY _Secretary_, JAMES G. HOPKINS _Chief Engineer_, COL. CHARLES L. SCHLATTER _Directors_ J. Leslie Russell, Canton Charles Paine, Northfield, Vt. Hiram Horton, Malone S. F. Belknap, Windsor, Vt. J. Wiley Edmonds, Boston Benjamin Reed, Boston Anthony C. Brown, Ogdensburgh Isaac Spalding, Nashua, N. H. Lawrence Myers, Plattsburgh Abbot Lawrence, Boston T. P. Chandler, Boston S. S. Lewis, Boston