John Murray Forbes
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| John Murray Forbes | |
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| Born | February 23, 1813 Bordeaux, France |
| Died | October 12, 1898 |
John Murray Forbes (February 23, 1813 – October 12, 1898) was president of both the Michigan Central railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in the 1850s. He was one of three brothers sent by their uncle to Canton. He achieved some financial success during a short time spent trading in Canton but it was the contacts he made there that most advanced his career and fortune. Upon returning to Boston, he used his contacts to raise money for investing in the early growth of railroading beyond the east coast and it was in this way that he earned the bulk of his fortune.
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[edit] Biography
His parents were Ralph Bennet Forbes and Margaret Perkins, youngest daughter of the Perkins family, a merchant banking family in the China trade. He was born in Bordeaux, France. The Forbes family settled in Milton, Massachusetts. His father was an energetic but unsuccessful businessman who died when John was only six.
Forbes attended school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, then at Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1823-28.
He settled in Boston and became an early railroad investor and landowner. As with Jay Gould and E. H. Harriman, he was an important figure in the building of America's railroad system. From March 28, 1846 through 1855, he was president of Michigan Central Railroad, and he was a director and president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, he helped with the growth of the American Middle West.
He supplied money and weapons to New Englanders to fight slavery in Kansas and in 1859 entertained John Brown. In 1860 he was an elector for Abraham Lincoln. Staunchly pro-Union, he is given credit for founding the New England Loyal Publication Society in early 1863 (Smith 1948). A delegate to the Republican conventions of 1876, 1880 and 1884, he eventually became displeased with the Republican party and worked successfully to get Democrat Grover Cleveland elected President.
Edward Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, published Forbes biography in the September 1899 issue of "Atlantic" magazine. The Emerson and Forbes families were close. John Murray's son, William Hathaway Forbes, married Ralph's daughter, Edith Emerson. In Letters and Social Aims, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of Forbes: "Never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor... How little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to himself," and "I think this is a good country that can bear such a creature as he."
His brother is the great-grandfather of 2004 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry. His eldest son, William Hathaway Forbes (1840-1897) became the first president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
[edit] See also
- Forbes family of Boston
[edit] References
- Life and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, ed. by Sarah Forbes Hughes, Two Volumes, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.
- An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes, by Henry Pearson, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1911.
- Forbes: Telephone Pioneer, by Arthur Pier, 1953.
- Smith, George Winston. “Broadsides for Freedom: Civil War Propaganda in New England.” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3. (Sep., 1948), pp. 291-312.
- White, John H., Jr., (Spring 1986), America's most noteworthy railroaders, Railroad History, The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, 154, p. 9-15.
