George Francis Train

George Francis Train
Born	March 24, 1829(1829-03-24) Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Died	January 5, 1904(1904-01-05) (aged 74)

George Francis Train (March 24, 1829 – January 5, 1904) was an entrepreneurial businessman who organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he organized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier in the United States, and a horse tramway company in England while there during the American Civil War. In 1870 Train made the first of his three trips around the globe, with the last in 1890.

In 1872 he ran for President of the United States as an independent candidate; that year he was jailed for defending Victoria Woodhull against obscenity charges for an issue her newspaper had published on an alleged adulterous affair. Despite his many business successes in early life, he was known as an increasingly eccentric figure in American and Australian history.

Biography

Train was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1829. At the age of four, he was orphaned in the yellow fever epidemic, which killed his parents when his family were all visiting New Orleans. He was raised by his strict Methodist grandparents in Boston, who hoped he would become a minister.

Throughout his life, Train was engaged in the mercantile business in Boston and in Australia. In 1860 he went to England to found horse tramway companies in Birkenhead and London, where he soon met opposition. He was also involved in the construction of a short-lived horse tramway in Cork, Ireland. Although his trams were popular with passengers, his designs had rails that stood above the road surface and obstructed other traffic. In 1861 Train was arrested and tried for "breaking and injuring" a London street.

Train was involved in the formation of the Union Pacific Railroad during the Civil War, but left for England in 1864 after having helped others set up the Crédit Mobilier of America company. (See below) Referring to himself as "Citizen Train", he became a shipping magnate, a prolific writer, a minor presidential candidate, and a confidant of French and Australian revolutionaries. He claimed to have been offered the presidency of a proposed Australian republic, but declined. During the American Civil War, he gave numerous speeches in England in favor of the Union and denounced the Confederacy.

In 1870 Train made a trip around the globe which was covered by many newspapers. It likely inspired Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. The protagonist Phileas Fogg is believed to be modeled on Train. In 1890, he managed to accomplish his third circumnavigation of the earth in 67 days. A plaque in Tacoma, Washington commemorates the point at which the 1890 trip began and ended. Train was accompanied on many of his travels by George Pickering Bemis, his cousin and private secretary, who was later elected as mayor of Omaha, Nebraska.

While in Europe after his 1870 trip, Train met with the Grand Duke Constantine. During that period, he also persuaded the Queen of Spain to back the construction of a railway in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, which was the funding for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. He promoted and built new tramways in Britain after some opposition, which was eventually overcome by offering to run the rails level with the street.

On his return to the U.S., Train's popularity and reputation soared. He began promoting the great Union Pacific Railroad, with which he had been involved for several years, despite the advice of Vanderbilt, who told him it would never work. Forming a finance company called Credit Foncier of America, Train made a fortune from real estate when the great transcontinental railway opened up settlement and development of huge swathes of western America, including large amounts of land in Omaha, Council Bluffs, Iowa and Columbus, Nebraska. He was responsible for building the Cozzens Hotel and founding Train Town in pioneer Omaha.

Along with Credit Foncier, Train's most famous creation was Credit Mobilier, which he started specifically to sell construction supplies for the Union Pacific. That venture was torn asunder by scandals that rocked the nation.

In 1872 Train ran for President of the United States of America as an independent candidate. He was a staunch supporter of the temperance movement. That year he was jailed on obscenity charges while defending Victoria Woodhull for her newspaper's publishing an issue reporting the alleged affair of Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, each married to other people. He was the primary financier of the newspaper The Revolution, which was dedicated to women's rights, and published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

As he aged, Train became more eccentric. In 1873 he was arrested and threatened with being sent to an insane asylum.

He stood for the position of Dictator of the United States, charged admission fees to his campaign rallies, and drew record crowds. He became a vegetarian and adopted various fads in succession. Instead of shaking hands with other people, he shook hands with himself, the manner of greeting he had seen in China. He spent his final days on park benches in New York City's Madison Square Park, handing out dimes and refusing to speak to anyone but children and animals.

He became ill with smallpox while visiting his daughter Susan M. Train Gulager in Stamford, Connecticut in 1903.

He died in New York and was buried at a small private ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery. On his death The Thirteen Club, of which he was a member, passed a resolution that he was one of the few sane men in "a mad, mad world."

Family

Adeline Whitney, a noted author, was his sister.

Publications

• An American Merchant in Europe, Asia, and Australia (1851)
• Young America Abroad (1857)
• Young America in Wall Street (1858)
• Irish Independency (1865)
• Championship of Women (1868)
• My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands (1902)

"The story of a remarkable and adventurous life. Mr. Train was at one time one of the best known Americans on the face of the globe. He organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he organized the Credit Mobilier and the Union Pacific Railroad; he was one of the organizers of the French Commune; he built the first street-railway in England; he has been the business partner of queens, emperors, and grand dukes, and the familiar friend of some of the greatest people in the world. His story up to the present is one long romance."

— Publisher's Weekly, Weekly Record of Publications (1902)

See also

• Tramways Act 1870

References

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

External links

• Twain on Train
• "Around the World with Citizen Train"