profitable traffic." For the year ending 1856 the Railroad earned $440,290.63 and dispersed $219,218.34. Richard Esselstyne Hungerford, an 1844 graduate of Hamilton College, later served his father's railroad for 17 years as secretary, treasurer and paymaster of what became know as the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh Railroad. Interests Hungerford's primary interests consisted of making money so that he could support his political aspirations as well as fund his many philanthropic endeavors. Along with his Watertown, N.Y. business partners Adriel Ely and Orville V. Brainard, Hungerford was a member of the American Art Union, which established an admission-free art gallery at 497 Broadway in New York. Among other benefits, the annual dues of $5 entitled subscribers to receive a copy of an engraving of an American painting. Hungerford's nephew and business understudy, Solon Dexter Hungerford, was an honorary secretary of the organization. Death After a 12-day illness starting out as "bilious cholic", which then affected his brain in the form of paralysis, Orville Hungerford died on Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. on April 6, 1851. Such illness was said to run in the family. The Otsego Democrat newspaper in Cooperstown, N.Y. stated that the cause of his death was "apoplexy", i.e., the archaic term for stroke. The Reformer newspaper of Watertown, New York, reported the following: Hungerford's death was reported throughout the state of New York as well as nationally. On April 9, 1851, the most widely circulated newspaper in New York City, The New York Herald, published by James Gordon Bennett Sr., reported under its "Deaths of Distinguished Persons" entry that Orville Hungerford's "loss will be seriously felt." On April 15, 1851, The New York Herald published a more in depth obituary, stating Orville Hungerford's "public reputation, doubtless, rests mainly on his talents as a financier." Jefferson County, New York, especially the business interests, mourned the passing of Hungerford. The Board of Directors of the Watertown and Rome Railroad Company held a special meeting on April 8, 1851 to discuss the untimely death of Hungerford, resolving "[t]hat the members of this Board attend the funeral in a body, and wear crape on the left arm thirty days, as further testimony of respect for the memory of their deceased President." Similarly, on the morning of April 9, 1851, the Merchants of the Village of Watertown gathered at Paddock Arcade, the second oldest indoor shopping mall in the country, resolving to "close