CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY DOCUMENTARY HISTORY CHARTERS ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION DEEDS CONSOLIDATIONS MORTGAGES, LEASES DECREES, ETC. COMPILED BY W. W. BALDWIN, VICE-PRESIDENT PLAN OF THE WORK HIS compilation contains all impor THIS tant documents relating to the various companies in the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad System, from the beginning of the corporate existence of the oldest companies down to the present time, including special charters, articles of incorporation, consolidations, leases, deeds, mortgages, decrees of foreclosure and sales thereunder, accompanied by brief sketches of the Corporate History of each company together with such general railroad laws as seem pertinent to the history. Chicago, November 1st, 1928. ! T INTRODUCTION HE Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, with over nine thousand miles of road in eleven different states, is a corporation of the State of Illinois. It comprises and includes about two hundred different railroad companies of these states, with which it has been consolidated or whose roads it has acquired. The first of these companies was called "Aurora Branch Railroad Company," organized at Aurora, Ill., by citizens of that place in February 1849. February 12, 1849, the Legislature of Illinois granted a Special Charter for the company and on September 2, 1850, the road was completed from Aurora northerly twelve miles to a connection with the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (now the Chicago & Northwestern) at Turner Junction (now West Chicago). Under contract with the Galena Company, beginning December 1851, the company operated its trains into Chicago thirty miles over the Galena road, and until 1864, when it built its own line directly into the city from Aurora via Naperville. In June 1852 the name of the company was changed to "Chicago and Aurora Railroad Company," and the company extended the road in a southwesterly direction forty-six miles, the line being completed to Mendota in October 1853. In 1855, the name was changed to "The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company." Citizens of Galesburg, Ill., in 1851, procured a charter for a road called "Central Military Tract Railroad Company, which, in December 1854, completed a line from Mendota to Galesburg, seventy-nine miles. The Peoria and Oquawka Railroad Company was chartered February 12, 1849, to build from Peoria via Galesburg to Burlington and was completed between Galesburg and Burlington in March 1855 and between Peoria and Galesburg in February 1857. In July 1856 the Central Military Tract and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy were consolidated under the name "The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail Road Company," and in |