George Francis Train
George Francis Train (March 24, 1829 – January 18, 1904)[1][2] was an American entrepreneur who organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he also organized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier in the United States in 1864 to construct the eastern portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, and a horse tramway company in England while there during the American Civil War.
George Francis Train
March 24, 1829
January 18, 1904 (aged 74)
American
Around-the-world traveling; political activism
Adeline Train Whitney (cousin)
In 1870 Train made the first of three widely publicized trips around the globe. He believed that a report of his first journey in a French periodical inspired Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days; protagonist Phileas Fogg may have been modeled on him.[3][4]
In 1872, he ran for president of the United States as an independent candidate.[5] That year, he was jailed on obscenity charges while defending suffragist Victoria Woodhull against charges regarding an article her newspaper had published on an alleged adulterous affair. Despite business successes in early life, he was known as an increasingly eccentric figure in American and Australian history.
Early life and education[edit]
George Francis Train was born on March 24, 1829, in Boston, son of Oliver Train and his wife Maria Pickering.[2][6] His cousin Adeline later became a noted author. His parents and three sisters died in a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1833 when George was four.[3] He was raised by strict Methodist grandparents in Boston. They hoped George would become a minister.
He attended common schools, where he acquired knowledge about different countries, got exposed to logical ways of thinking, and honed mechanical engineering skills using toy blocks and sticks. His best friend in school had immigrated from England, and related to Train how difficult it was to get around in his hometown, Birkenhead.[7] This is what inspired Train to set up a tramway system in the same town. He did not go into the ministry, instead becoming a businessman and adventure seeker.
Later years[edit]
As he aged, Train seemingly became more eccentric. In 1873, he was arrested and threatened with institutionalization in an insane asylum.[14]
He stood for the position of dictator of the United States, charged admission fees to campaign rallies, and drew record crowds. He became a vegetarian and adopted various fads. Instead of shaking hands with other people, he shook hands with himself, a manner of greeting he claimed to have 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.[3]
In 1890, Nellie Bly traveled around the world in 72 days, instigating Train to do a second circumnavigation of the earth in the same year. He completed the trip from Tacoma, Washington, and back in 67 days 12 hours and 1 minute, a world record at the time.[4][11] A plaque in Tacoma commemorates the location where the 1890 trip began and ended. Train was accompanied on many of his travels by George Pickering Bemis, his cousin and private secretary. Bemis was later elected as mayor of Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1892, the town of Whatcom, Washington, offered to finance yet another trip around the world in order to publicize itself. Train finished this trip in a record 60 days.[15]
He became ill with smallpox while visiting his daughter Susan M. Train Gulager in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1903.[16]
On January 5, 1904, Train died of heart failure in New York. At the time of his death, he was living in a cheap lodging house named the Mills Hotel.[17] He was buried at a small private ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. After 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."[18]