Hudson River Day Line records
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Abstract
The collection includes the records of the Hudson River Day Line, spanning roughly the entire 100 year history (1840s-1940s) of the company and its predecessor and related entities. The Day Line is best recalled for its passenger service, carrying people for business or pleasure up and/or down the Hudson River between New York City and Albany, with various stops along the way, but its history reaches back to the mid-19th century and its steam towing operations. The collection includes financial and transaction records, correspondence, scrapbooks, publicity material, timetables, ephemera, ship-level records of passengers landed and received, and more. Much of the documents relate to specific steamboats, including the Alida, Anna, Armenia, Austin, Cayuga, Chauncey Vibbard, Commerce, E. Corning Jr., Daniel Drew, Mary Powell, Mercury, New York, Ontario, Oswego, Schuyler, Seneca, and others
Biographical / Historical
The Hudson River Day Line, which operated in various forms from the 1840s until 1949, is best recalled for its passenger service, carrying people for business or pleasure up and/or down the Hudson River between New York City and Albany, with various stops along the way. Its roots went back to the early 19th century and the shipping concerns of Abraham Van Santvoord (1784-1858). By the 1820s, Abraham had become the New York agent for the Steam Navigation Company, one of the first companies to operate steamboats for towing non-powered canal boats. In 1845, he was an organizer and first president of the Hudson River Steamboat Company. In 1848, Abraham had built the Oswego, the first of the large side-wheel steamers designed and built specifically for towing (this collection holds records from the Oswego).
Abraham's son, Alfred (1819-1901), joined the Hudson River Steamboat Company as its Albany agent, with his role in the organization expanding after his father's death. In 1855, Alfred bought the Alida, a day line (as opposed to a night line, with sleeping accommodations) passenger ship and began running regular service between New York and Albany. Over the following ten years, Alfred expanded his line of ships to include the Armenia, the Mary Powell, the Daniel Drew, and the Chauncey Vibbard, and perhaps others. Passenger travel for Alfred's company increased beginning in the 1860s, from 22,000 in 1863, to 173,000 in 1876 and to 192,000 in 1892.
The organization itself also evolved. Partners in the company at this time included John McBride Davidson and Chauncey Vibbard. Vibbard was also a superintendent of the New York Central Railroad, confirming the important business and transportation relationships between the railroads and steamships. In 1879, Alfred's New York and Albany Day Line incorporated, renaming itself formally as the Hudson River Line, though the Day Line reference remained in use. Its stock of ships also turned over, as the old ships Armenia and Daniel Drew were destroyed by fire (1886), the Vibbard was sold (1880s), and two steel hulled boats, the Albany (1880) and New York (1887), were constructed. In 1899, the Hudson River Line officially changed its corporate name to the Hudson River Day Line.
In 1901, Alfred Van Santvoord died of a stroke aboard his yacht, the Clermont. Alfred's son-in-law, Eben Erskine Olcott (1854-1929), took over as president of the Day Line, a position he held until his death. Olcott was the son of John Nathaniel Olcott and Euphemia Helen (Knox) Olcott. He had married Alfred's daughter, Katherine, in 1884 and, upon the death in 1895 of Alfred's only son, Olcott had become more heavily involved in the Day Line's management. Olcott had graduated in 1874 from the School of Mines at Columbia and retained his extensive mining interests, notably in Central and South America, into the 20th century. Under Olcott's leadership, the Day Line's ridership would surge from 266,000 in 1902 to almost 2 million in 1925. New ships were brought on line: Hendrick Hudson (1906), Robert Fulton (1909), Washington Irving (1909), De Witt Clinton (1921), Alexander Hamilton (1924), Chauncey M. Depew (1925), and Peter Stuyvesant (1925). Ships also were brought off-line: New York lost to fire, 1909; Mary Powell, retired in 1919; Albany, sold in 1934; and the Washington Irving, sank in 1926, with three deaths.
Eben Olcott died in 1929, and his son Alfred Van Santvoord Olcott (1886-1961), the donor of this collection, took over as President. But the Great Depression hurt the company financially and its business was scaled back. Into the 1940s, the emergence of automobiles and highways and other forms of recreation reduced the need for and interest in the Day Line, and it went out of business in 1949, selling its assets to other organizations. By that time four steamboats were still running: the Alexander Hamilton, Peter Stuyvesant, Hendrick Hudson, and Robert Fulton. A successor company, which is not part of this collection, continued to run a dwindling number of steamboats up the Hudson to Bear Mountain and West Point until 1971 when the last of them, the Alexander Hamilton, made a final voyage.
(The above note was based primarily on "A Short History of the Hudson River Day Line" by Peter Hess, found at https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2017/02/a-short-history-of-the-hudson-river-day-line/. A biography of Eben Olcott can be found at https://prabook.com/web/eben.olcott/3763677.)
Arrangement
The collection is organized by format:
Series I. Files
Series II. Bound Volumes
Scope and Contents
The collection includes the records of the Hudson River Day Line, spanning roughly the entire 100 year history (1840s-1940s) of the company and its predecessor and related entities. The collection includes financial and transaction records, towing records, correspondence, scrapbooks, publicity material, timetables, ephemera, ship-level records of passengers landed and received, and more. Much of the documents relate to specific steamboats, including the Alexander Hamilton, Alida, Anna, Armenia, Austin, Cayuga, Chauncey Vibbard, Commerce, E. Corning Jr., Daniel Drew, Hendrick Hudson, Mary Powell, Mercury, New York, Ontario, Oswego, Robert Fulton, Schuyler, Seneca, various barges, and others.
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Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers.
Although the collection is unprocessed, the bulk is accessible for use. There are some files that are in poor or fragile condition and require special advance arrangements with the curator of manuscripts before use; these are noted in the container list.
Use Restrictions
Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
The collection should be cited as: Hudson River Day Line records, MS 315, New-York Historical Society.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The collection was a gift of Alfred V.S. Olcott, son of Eben E. Olcott and President of the Hudson River Day Line, donated over time from 1948-1951.
About this Guide
Processing Information
The collection is processed to a minimal degree. To prepare the collection for off-site storage, in 2019-20 archivist Elise Winks rehoused documents from original tin containers into archival boxes, flagged the bound volumes with sequence/control numbers, and prepared box content summary descriptions. The conservation team shrinkwrapped all the bound volumes. Archivist Larry Weimer listed the volumes in the finding aid and added further notes to complete the finding aid.