My son’s US History teacher passed out a list of the 40 richest Americans in USA history [fortunes adjusted to today’s dollars]. #20 on the list is John I. Blair. The sheet states Mr. Blair made his fortune in railroads. Who was John Blair? What railroad[s] did he biuld and/or control?
John I. Blair got his start in the railroad industry as the founder of the Warren Railroad in Warren county New Jersey. This railroad was one of the predecessors of the Delaware Lackawanna and Western. The line ran from the Delaware Water Gap to a connection with the CNJ at Hampton NJ. The line’s orignal purpose was to serve the iron industry at Oxford Furnace NJ. After the DL&W took over the Warren RR, they also took over the Morris & Essex RR and connected the Warren line to the M&E at Washington NJ. This route became the orignal main line of the DL&W in New Jersey.
The town of Blairstown NJ is named for John I. Blair (or his ancestors, I’m not quite sure about this). Blair was involved with other railroads later, including–I think–the Union Pacific.
Theres a book by Larry Lowenthal titled “The Lackawanna Railroad in northwest New Jersey” which contains a fairly detailed history of the origins of the Warren RR and the involvement of John I. Blair.
See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Larry%20Lowenthal/002-8291287-5829644
John Insley Blair also figures, oddly enough, in the history of Wisconsin (Green Bay & Western) Nebraska and Iowa railroading. He was the son of Scottish immigrants and was not well educated. Together with the Scrantons he gained control of the Lackawanna, which in turn controlled lots of Lake Michigan steamboats resulting in railroad interests in Green Bay WI. In 1860 Blair and others investigated the railroad situation in Cedar Rapids Iowa. He attended the 1860 Republican party convention in Chicago during the same trip. He had a hand in building the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River RR and surveyed what became the Chicago & North Western’s line across Iowa. By 1860 Blair was in Nebraska and built more railroads in that state. He then promoted a line in Iowa that eventually became part of the Rock Island. By that time Blair had acquired banks, land, railroads – he would develop a small railroad and then sell it to a larger one at a high price. This included situations where he sat on the Board of both sides!
My source is Stan Mailer’s tremendous book “Green Bay & Western” published by Hundman. This is one of the finest railroad histories around and highly recommended.
Dave Nelson
There is a picture of Blair on file with the Farwell T. Brown Photographic Archive at the Ames Public Library web site at www.ames.lib.ia.us/farwell/publication/Pub1236.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The old boy looks like he has had a lot of time behind him, a lot of it interesting I’ll bet
He doesn’t get the attention of the likes of Hill or Harriman, but it sounds as if he was influential earlier. Did he just disappear with a whimper or did he go with dignity as far as railroading is concerned?
But he made a lot of money and must have had a pleasant life.
How would you classify someone like Alexander Cassatt? He was pretty much a company man for the PRR his whole life, and didn’t inherit an orphan railroad, but he did take what was there and made it even greater. He was the one who initiated the contruction of the tubes under the Hudson river in 1901 and built the great original Penn Station. If I remember correctly, he designed the car floats to move freight across the Chesapeake. Also, wasn’t he responsible for the standardization of locomotives and rolling stock on the PRR? He also worked hard to put an end to rate wars among railroads (isn’t that how Morgan got involved in the RR industry?).
Blair sounds like my kinda guy. Railroad Baron, flies in and out under the RADAR. Isn’t involved in major scandal or controversy, probably had a nice town home, country home, wife kids, and a couple of mistresses…not a bad life in the day…
LC
Again, perhaps not a man of vision but a RR Baron and good businessman. The interlocking Boards of Directors and other pesky rules weren’t as much of a problem in those days…
Sounds like he had a good life for his times…
LC
Sorry, I knew what you ment, but what I ment was that Cassatt probably didn’t ignore history when he became president of the PRR. The PRR had good leadership from its beginning. Yet Cassatt still stands out among leaders of the PRR.
I agree that Blair was a minor figure in the history of the railroad industry and it’s not surprising that few people today know who he was. In fact, I know of him only because I read Lowenthal’s book that I referenced earlier, and the reason why I read the book was because about half of it is devoted to the history of the construction of the Lackawanna cutoff.
So the question here is: Why are rail barons like Vanderbilt, Gould, Huntington, Hill, Harriman, and Morgan remembered and those like Blair, Asa Packer of the LV, and Cassatt are not so well remembered if known at all? And the answer is that the former changed the world, but the latter did not. But did the well known barons really change the world? I agree completely that they changed the world of railroading, and in their time, maybe it could be argued that the world of railroading was THE world. But today, even to know of men like Harriman and Hill, a person has to have a special interest in railroad history (or be required to learn it for some reason). I can’t remember learning about any of these railroaders except for maybe a paragraph about Jay Gould in high school or college history classes. But men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison and Henry Ford and the influence they had on the world are promenently featur
It is also important to remember that these men had fresh memories of the Antibellum wars, Daniel Boone, the “First Presidents”, a fellow named Tomson, and their Revolutionary Grandfathers in short the end of the 18th and beginnings of the 19th century. The idea of going out and seeking ones fortune in many and diverse ways was not uncommon. The surveyor in those days was close to being a profession. (George Washington comes to mind). these folks were often paid in some of the property they surveyed. The ownership of real property was not just a nice thing to have, but fundementally necessary to be called a successful man. Could we use a few more men like that today? The question is a social as well as a business historians dream. I’m sure that Messrs. Martin and Klein could weigh in on that one and I’m sure that we would be informed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FYI these two men (Martin and Klein) are the ones that are the more recent experts on the Harriman-Hill era and could fill us in on a more scolarly level about the earlier pioneers of the railroad industies pioneer days.
not to take away from anything done by harriman, hill, huntington, morgan and vanderbilt post 1865, the administrative genius exhibited by the prr’s thomson and scott should be given a nod, not only are they credited with developing modern cost accounting, but they personally trained andrew carniege as well. also remember the organizational genius of boston’s forbes family whose vision ran well built and well managed railroads from michigan to wyoming (cb&q and michigan central). cb&q is the seed of today’s much maligned bnsf…long pedigree. not forgetting the south albert fink must be given some allowance as the renaissance man of railroading: manager, strategist, engineer, regional statesman and national spokesman for the industry.
…and he overcame some real bad luck with that name.
Said like a true student of the muse Clio, she is a great teacher and one that demands respect. She and her hand maiden geography do conspire to cause attention to a time and the adventures of those that were to become legends, though they fade in memory and become the dreams to the generations that come after . . . never really remembered or forgotten but a part of us all.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Forbes_family
mentioning the forbes cb&q family made me wonder if they were also the publishing dynasty. one of the rail forbes’ was named malcolm.
turns out that the answer is no, but they are related to almost everybody else. these guys were into some interesting lines of work. also, remember their “china trade” perkins relations included charles perkins the “shaper” of cb&q. notice that they have stayed politically active.
Distant cousins mabe, B.C. Forbes landed in this country if I am not mistaken, in the early years of the 20th century. The late Malcomb Forbes the publisher of the business magazine “FORBES” was the son of B.C. as memory serves me. The editors of FORBES would probably be the best place to get that information straight.
bertie forbes… they are scotts as well, so there is most likely a clan connection somewhere in the gloomy mist of a distant glenn.