 In March 1851, the state of Ohio chartered the Franklin and Warren Railroad (F&W), authorizing it to build a railroad from Dayton, Ohio, to Warren and then east to the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.The F&W investigated the charter of the Pittsburgh and Erie Railroad, which had been chartered in 1846, and discovered that its vaguely-worded charter allowed it to build a railroad from Kinsman, Ohio, to any point in Warren County, New York.Frederick Kinsman, president of the F&W, invited C&M president Jacob Perkins to meet with representatives of the Pittsburg & Erie, the Clinton Line Railroad, the Erie & New York City, the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad, and a group of financiers from Meadville, Pennsylvania, on October 1, 1852.