We continue with another excerpt from Mount Pleasant: The History of a New York Suburb and its People. Chapter 5 is called “The Coming of the Railroad.”

Philip F. Horne writes:

Until the 1840s a man who wished to leave the city and move to Westchester was forced to cut his ties of employment to New York. Travel was difficult over poor roads; New York was many hours ride by horseback or coach, and even river travel was some distance from Unionville, Nanahagen and Robbins’ Mills, as well as being useless in the winter. When Joseph Miller moved to Robbins’ Mills in 1835 “for the children,” he went to farming.

Of course, that all changed when the train rolled in. In April 1831, a charter was granted to the New York and Harlem Railroad for a line to run from lower Manhattan to Harlem. The charter was amended in 1840 to allow the train to run through Westchester.

By 1844, it reached White Plains.

Two years later, the line was extended to Hawthorne (then “Unionville”) and Pleasantville. A guy named Nathaniel U. Tompkins had a store that became the Unionville train depot.

The sight of the train running through the area was of great interest to the locals. Notes the railroad’s civil engineer, Allen Campbell:

The first running of the trains through the country was a matter of great curiosity, and great crowds of people surveyed it from the adjoining hills.