Collis Potter Huntington
Collis Potter Huntington | |
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Southern Pacific Railroad Chesapeake & Ohio Railway | |
Known for | First transcontinental railroad |
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Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900)
Turning attention to the eastern end of the line at Richmond, Huntington directed the C&O's
Much of the railroad and industrial development which Collis P. Huntington envisioned and led are still important activities in the early 21st century. The Southern Pacific is now part of the
From his base in Washington, Huntington was a lobbyist for the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific in the 1870s and 1880s. The Big Four had built a powerful political machine, which he had a large role in running. He was generous in providing bribes to politicians and congressmen. Revelation of his misdeeds in 1883 made him one of the most hated railroad men in the country.
Huntington defended himself:
The motives back of my actions have been honest ones and results have redounded far more to the benefit of California than they have to my own.[4]
In 1968, Huntington was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.[5]
Biography
Education and early career
Collis Potter Huntington was born in Harwinton, Connecticut, on October 22, 1821.[1] His family farmed and he grew up helping. In his early teens, he did farm chores and odd jobs for neighbors, saving his earnings. At age 16, he began traveling as a peddler.[6] About this time, he visited rural Newport News in Warwick County, Virginia in his travels as a salesman. He never forgot what he thought was the untapped potential of the area, where the James River emptied into the large harbor of Hampton Roads. In 1842 he and his brother Solon Huntington, of Oneonta, New York, established a successful business in Oneonta, selling general merchandise there until about 1848.[1]
When Huntington saw opportunity in America's West, he set out for
Building the first U.S. transcontinental railroad
In the late 1850s, Huntington and Hopkins joined forces with two other successful businessmen,
Huntington negotiated in
Southern Pacific Railroad
Beginning in 1865, Huntington was also involved in the establishment of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, new cities and a shipyard
Following the American Civil War, efforts were renewed in Virginia to complete a canal or railroad link between Richmond and the Ohio River Valley. Before the war, the Virginia Board of Public Works and the Virginia Central Railroad had provided financial assistance to construct a state-owned link through the Blue Ridge Mountains. It had been completed along this route as far as the upper reaches of the Shenandoah Valley when the War broke out.
Officials of the Virginia Central, led by company president Williams Carter Wickham, realized that they would have to get capital from outside the economically devastated South in order to rebuild. They tried to attract British interests, without success. Finally, Major Wickham succeeded in getting Collis Huntington interested helping to complete the line.
Beginning in 1871, Huntington oversaw completion of the newly formed
Beginning in 1865, Huntington had been acquiring land in Virginia's eastern
Beginning in December 1880, he led the building of the C&O's
It may have taken more than 50 years after Virginia's first railroad operated for the lower Peninsula to get a railroad, but once work started, it progressed quickly. In a manner he had previously deployed, notably with the transcontinental railroad, and the line to the Ohio River, work began at both Newport News and Richmond. The crews at each end worked toward each other. The crews met and completed the line 1.25 miles west of Williamsburg on October 16, 1881, although temporary tracks had been installed in some areas to speed completion.
Huntington and his associates had promised they would provide rail service to
No sooner had the tracks to the new coal pier at Newport News been completed in late 1881 than the same construction crews were put to work on what would later be called the Peninsula Subdivision's Hampton Branch. It ran easterly about 10 miles into
At the formerly sleepy little farming community of Newport News Point, Huntington began other, building the landmark
Huntington is largely credited with vision and the combination of developments which created and built a vibrant and progressive community. The 15 years of rapid growth and development led to the incorporation of Newport News, Virginia as a new independent city in 1896. It is one of only two independent cities in Virginia that were so formed without developing first as an incorporated town.[citation needed]
Near the tracks of the C&O's Hampton Branch was a
In the lower Peninsula, Collis and other Huntington family members and their Old Dominion Land Company were involved in many aspects of life and business. They founded schools, museums, libraries and parks among their many contributions. In Williamsburg, Collis' Old Dominion Land Company owned the historic site of the 18th-century capital buildings. This was transferred to the women who were the earliest promoters of what became Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities). This site was later a key piece of the Abby and John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s massive restoration of the former colonial capital city. They developed Colonial Williamsburg, one of the world's major tourist attractions.
Huntington did not neglect his namesake city at the other end of the C&O. In order to supply
After Huntington's death in 1900, his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, assumed leadership of many of his industrial endeavors. The younger man quickly sold off all of the Southern Pacific holdings. He and other family members also continued and expanded many of the senior Huntington's cultural and philanthropic projects, in addition to developing their own.
Historian Howard Jay Graham has summarized Huntington's business acumen:[14]
Huntington's career affords unique opportunity for study of the promoter's function—for observing "the entrepreneur as innovator"—hedging into the Central through a cautiously conceived wagon road to the booming Comstock; gaining state and county aid, cost data, experience in construction and finance; thus discovering the immense liberality of the federal subsidy; mobilizing every resource and building through to Ogden on a revolving fund basis; netting perhaps a million by these means; then, half-reluctantly, beginning over, making the C.P. build the S.P., and when it had, reversing the favorable leases, fattening up the Southern, reaping a second harvest from its bonds and stocks, also taken originally on construction contracts.
Death
Huntington died at his "camp,"
Politics
In addition to his railroad building, Huntington is best known for his political activity in Washington, D.C., and California. At this stage he was based mostly in New York, and visited California about once a year. Stanford remained president, first of the Central Pacific and then of the Southern Pacific Company, until 1890. Huntington was agent and attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad, vice-president and general agent for the Central Pacific Railroad, first vice-president of the Southern Pacific Company, and a director of the two lines. His main duties were selling company stocks and bonds and acting as the chief lobbyist in Washington, where his two main challenges were to block federal support for a proposed rival transcontinental route, the Texas and Pacific Railway (in which he succeeded) and to postpone payment of the $28 million in cash loans the government had made to the Central Pacific (in which he did not). He first asked to delay payments for fifty years, then for a hundred years. His proposal to cancel the loans created a firestorm of opposition in California, covered colorfully in the newspapers by Ambrose Bierce;[15] when it was defeated in Congress in 1897, the governor of California celebrated by declaring a public holiday.[16] Huntington lost the battle in Congress in 1899 and the Southern Pacific finally paid off the loans in 1909.[17]
Huntington described his activities in a series of private letters to David D. Colton, a senior financial official of his railroads. After Colton's death, litigation opened his files in 1883 and Huntington's letters proved a huge embarrassment, with their detailed descriptions of lobbying, payoffs, and bribes to government officials. They showed Huntington to be an active, profane, and cynical promoter of his companies and display his eagerness to use money to bribe congressmen. The letters did not demonstrate that any cash actually changed hands with any official, but they revealed the tenor of Huntington's morals.[18]
His biographer says,
he was vindictive, sometimes untruthful, interested in comparatively few things outside of business, and disposed to resist the idea that his railroad enterprises were to any degree burdened with public obligations. There is, on the other hand, no question with respect to his indomitable energy, his shrewdness in negotiation, his independence of thought and raciness of expression, and his grasp of large business problems. He was the dominant spirit among the small group of men who built up the Southern Pacific system, and that great organization remains his monument.[19]
According to historian Richard J. Orsi,
[Huntington] was an ardent opponent of racial prejudice and discrimination....Huntington had been an abolitionist before the Civil War, and he later donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support African American churches in California, and schools and colleges in the southern states....Though it was politically unwise, Huntington ordered his companies to give equal employment and pay to black workers, and he publicly opposed the exclusions of black and other non-white children from public schools, as well as other “Jim Crow” restrictions then being enacted in the South and elsewhere. In newspaper columns and public speeches in the West, Huntington praised the Chinese for their culture and industry, and condemned state and federal discrimination against American Indians and Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese immigrants. “If we deny to the individual, no matter what his creed, his color or his nationality, the right to justice which every man possesses,” he told a gathering of California civic and railway leaders in 1900, “there will be no enduring prosperity and [the nation’s] decline will surely follow.[20]
Family relationships
Collis Huntington was the son of William and Elizabeth (Vincent) Huntington; born October 22, 1821, in Harwinton, Connecticut. His siblings were:
- Mary (February 17, 1810 – March 9, 1874); married Daniel Sammis of Warsaw, New York.
- Solon (January 13, 1812 – August 11, 1890); married Harriet Saunders of Saratoga, New York.
- Rhoda (October 13, 1814 – May 22, 1888); married Riley Dunbar of Wolcottville.
- Phebe (September 17, 1817 – February 4, 1900); married Henry Pardee of Oneonta, New York.
- Elizabeth (December 19, 1819 – 1903); married Hiram Yaker of Kortright, New York.
- Collis Potter (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900)
- Joseph (March 23, 1823 – February 23, 1849); never married
- Susan Lovinia (August 28, 1826 – 1902); married William Porter, M.D., of New Haven, Connecticut
- Ellen Maria (August 12, 1835 – October 22, 1920); married Isaac E. Gates of Orange, New Jersey. She was known as a poet and hymn writer.
Collis Huntington married Elizabeth Stillman Stoddard (1823–1883), of Cornwall, Connecticut, on September 16, 1844. She lived until 1883. They adopted her niece, Clara Elizabeth Prentice, born in Sacramento in 1860. Clara Elizabeth Prentice-Huntington (1860–1928), as she was called, married Prince Franz Edmund Joseph Gabriel Vitus von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg, a.k.a., Francis Hatzfeldt[21] of the House of Hatzfeld, Germany, on October 28, 1889. They made their home at Draycot House, Draycot Cerne, Wiltshire, England.[22]
Huntington remarried on July 12, 1884, to Arabella D. Worsham (1851–1924). She brought to the marriage her son Archer Milton Worsham, from her first marriage, whom Huntington adopted that year. At fourteen, he became known as Archer Milton Huntington. There were rumors that Huntington had a longer relationship with Arabella and that he was the biological father of her son. Huntington died at his Camp Pine Knot, in the Adirondacks, August 13, 1900.
Huntington's nephew,
He was also related to
Charity
He acquired a substantial collection of art, and was generally recognized as one of the country's foremost art collectors. He left most of his collection, valued at $3 million, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to pass into the museum's hands after the death of his stepson, Archer. His last will directed that if his stepson should die childless (which he did), Huntington's Fifth Avenue mansion or the proceeds from the sale of the property would go to Yale University. He also made specific bequests totaling $125,000 to Hampton University (then Hampton Institute) and to the Chapin Home for the Aged.[23]
Namesake locations
Buildings
- Collis P. Huntington High School, Newport News, Virginia
- Huntington Hotel – San Francisco, California
- Huntington Free Library and Reading Room – Bronx, New York
- Collis P. Huntington Academic Building; Tuskegee University, Alabama (Destroyed in a fire)
- Huntington Dorm; Tuskegee University, Alabama
- Collis P. Huntington House, New York City
- C. P. Huntington Primary School in Sacramento, California
- Collis Potter and Howard Edwards Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California
- Huntington Hall – U.S. Navy enlisted housing and USO 3100 Huntington Avenue, Newport News, Virginia
- Collis P. Huntington Memorial Library – Hampton University Now, the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia
- Huntington Hall; Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, Georgia
Inhabited places
- Huntington, West Virginia
- Collis and Huntington Avenues in Huntington, West Virginia
- Huntington, Texas in Angelina County, Texas
- Huntingdon, Abbotsford, neighborhood in Abbotsford, British Columbia
- North End Huntington Heights Historic District, residential district in Newport News, Virginia
Other
- Camp Pine Knot, also known as Camp Huntington, on Raquette Lake, New York, which is now owned by the State University of New York at Cortland
- Collis P. Huntington State Park, Redding and Bethel, Connecticut
- Huntington Park, and Huntington Avenue, Newport News, Virginia
- Huntington Park, the site of his San Francisco home that was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire
- Mount Huntington, a peak in Fresno County, California
- Collis Place in Bronx County, New York, which is located several blocks from Huntington's riverside mansion.
- Tugboat Huntington – retired 1994, now a floating exhibit and classroom at the Palm Beach Maritime Museum, Palm Beach, Florida
- Collis Avenue, a residential street that starts at Huntington Drive in the El Sereno district of the City of Los Angeles and ends in the City of South Pasadena, California
- Huntington Boulevard in Fresno, California
- C.P. Huntington, a 4-2-4T steam locomotive currently owned by the California State Railroad Museum
In popular culture
He was referred to in Black Beetles in Amber by
See also
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Evans, Cerinda W. (1954). Collis Potter Huntington. Mariners' Museum.
- ^ Prominent and progressive Americans: an encyclopædia of contemporaneous biography. New York Tribune. 1902. p. 184. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7. Retrieved October 26, 2021.
- ISBN 9781250015051.
- ^ "Hall of Great Westerners". National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Retrieved November 22, 2019.
- ^ a b c Collis Potter Huntington . netstate.com
- ^ The Builders of the Central Pacific Railroad @ CPRR.org as retrieved January 13 2007.
- ^ "History & Culture - Golden Spike National Historical Park". www.nps.gov. U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
- ^ "Ceremony at "Wedding of the Rails," May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah". World Digital Library. May 10, 1869. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
- ^ Queenan, Charles F. (May 10, 1992). "'Great Free Harbor Fight' : At Stake Was the Port Site for the Growing City of L.A." Los Angeles Times.
- ^ "A new station for mile post zero". Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine. 1999.[dead link]
- ^ "Ensign Manufacturing Company". Mid-Continent Railway Museum. April 9, 2006. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
- OCLC 26130632.
- ^ Howard Jay Graham, "Reviews of Books," Journal of Economic History (June 1955) 15#1 DOI: 10.1017/s0022050700058149
- ISBN 978-0-615-38455-9.
- ^ Graves, Steve. "The Impact of the Railroad: The Iron Horse and the Octopus" (PDF). Department of Geography, California State University, Northridge. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
- ^ Traxler, Ralph N. Jr (April 1, 1959). "Collis P. Huntington and the Texas and Pacific Railroad Land Grant". New Mexico Historical Review. 34 (2) – via University of New Mexico.
- ^ Bean, Walton (1973). California: An Interpretive History (2nd ed.). pp. 298–311.
- ^ Daggett, Stuart (1932). "Huntington, Collis Potter". Dictionary of American biography. Vol. 5.
- ISBN 978-1478637547.
- ^ "Prince Franz HATZFELDT & Clara Elizabeth PRENTICE-HUNTINGTON". Diana, Goddess of the Hunt - for Ancestors!. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
- ^ Hand of Fate. The History of the Longs, Wellesleys and the Draycot Estate in Wiltshire. Tim Couzens, 2001, OCLC 49204947
- ^ "transcript of NY Times article "Mr. Huntington's Will" 8/25/1900" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 11, 2016. Retrieved December 10, 2018.
- ^ Bierce, Ambrose (1892). Black Beetles in Amber. Western Authors Publishing Company. Retrieved May 17, 2006.
- ISBN 0-7876-3567-7. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
References and further reading
- ISBN 0-684-84609-8. Note: the factual accuracy of this book has been widely criticized. See Stephen E. Ambrose#Criticism.
- Carman, Harry J., and Charles H. Mueller. "The Contract and Finance Company and the Central Pacific Railroad." Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1927): 326–341. in JSTOR
- Daggett, Stuart. "Huntington, Collis Potter," Dictionary of American biography (1932), vol. 5
- Deverell, William. Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850–1910 (1994) online
- Evans, Cerinda W. Collis Potter Huntington (2 vols., 1954), highly laudatory and uncritical biography online volume 1; also see vol 2 online
- Huddleston, Eugene L. "Huntington, Collis Potter", American National Biography Online (2014). Access Date: Jan 26 2016
- ISBN 0-87081-476-1
- Lewis, Oscar. The Big Four: The story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (1938)
- ISBN 0-393-05913-8
- Traxler Jr, Ralph N. "Collis P. Huntington and the Texas and Pacific Railroad Land Grant." New Mexico Historical Review 34.2 (1959): 117–133. online
- Williams, R. Hal. The Democratic Party and California Politics, 1880–1896 (1973) online.
- White, Richard. "Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby: A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.", Southern Spaces, video of lecture by Richard White, Stanford University, April 16, 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-393-06126-0.
- "Collis Potter Huntington" in: Prominent and progressive Americans; an encyclopædia of contemporaneous biography. Compiled by Mitchell Charles Harrison. Publisher: New York Tribune, 1902
External links
- Huntington Hall, Newport News
- Huntington Hotel, San Francisco
- Ellen M.H. Gates, Who's Who Poet