Durant Family Saga
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Trilogy Summary
  • Contact
  • Author Biography
  • Events
  • Copyright

Collis P. Huntington: Benefactor or Schemer?

6/30/2021

 
PictureCollis P. Huntington. Source: wikimedia
When I introduced Collis P. Huntington in my second book in the Durant family saga: Castles in the Air, my biggest dilemma was how to portray this magnate of the Central Pacific Railroad and nemesis of Dr. Thomas C. Durant, who was in charge of the Union Pacific. These men competed against each other to be build the transcontinental railroad across the western frontier and gain financially from the transaction. 

When Dr. Durant died in 1885, Dr. Durant’s son William was on his own to navigate the nefarious jungle of business and politics in New York City at the height of the gilded age. At some point after his death, Huntington struck up a relationship with Durant’s son William. My guess is it was soon afterward, when Huntington became a board member of the Adirondack Railroad Company, a venture started by Dr. Durant to bring people into the wilderness.

While going through William West Durant’s papers at the Library of Congress, I only found a few letters written from Huntington to William. In one letter Huntington writes William that he and his wife will be visiting William’s great camp Pine Knot in the Adirondacks, traveling from their home in Throggs Neck, NY. William also hosted a dinner in New York City in the early 1890s with Huntington as a guest. Huntington appears on the guest registry of William’s yacht, the Utowana.


My research into the catalog of Huntington's papers housed at Syracuse University reveal nothing in the way of actual correspondence between the two men, but the deeds and transfers of Durant property in the Adirondacks were all there. 

What I do know about Huntington from reading his biographies is that he was not a generous man, although he did befriend Booker T. Washington and donated money toward the Tuskegee Institute. Other than that, well let's just say he was not, like  Andrew Carnegie, well-known for his philanthropy.

So why then, would he befriend William, support some of his business ventures, and, lend him money to do so? One biography of William suggests that Huntington, who had only an adopted son, took William under his wing as a fatherly gesture. I don't believe that was the motivation.

When William and Huntington first met, things were not going all that swimmingly for the robber baron. Huntington and his business dealings with the Central Pacific, were under investigation in 1887 by a special commission appointed by President Cleveland. The government wanted its money back, plus interest from the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. The Central Pacific had also some questionable book keeping, and the government suspected that like the Union Pacific Railroad, the company had inflated construction costs for the founders' monetary gain. If Dr. Durant had been alive, he would have been called to the witness stand as well.

But Huntington, I've come to learn was wily. One source I read states that Huntington had nothing to worry about, he had burned any incriminating evidence. He even had the audacity to continue to bribe and cajole congressmen to delay the payments, at the same time he was defending his actions as head of the Central Pacific!

Newspapers that covered the special hearings stated that Huntington was clearly avoiding the truth, using obfuscation, and what one deemed 'almost denial'.  I had to wonder, did Huntington befriend William believing that he might be in possession of documents once owned by Dr. Durant that he could use in his defense? Or did he covet the land that Dr. Durant had accumulated in the Adirondacks while both men were building their railroad empires?

Ultimately Huntington's generosity toward William ended with his death in 1900. This after he had purchased William's first great camp, Pine Knot at a greatly reduced price and had most of the rest of the Durant land holdings held as collateral for the loans he gave to William; loans which William could not pay back. One wonders if Huntington knew this would be the case and had planned the eventual takeover of the Durant lands all along.

What We Leave BehindĀ 

6/25/2021

5 Comments

 
PictureDr. Thomas C. Durant mausoleum. Greenwood cemetery, Brooklyn, NY. Source: Sheila Myers
I dragged my daughter, who lives in Brooklyn, to the Green-Wood cemetery. I wanted to see where one of the main characters in my Durant Family Saga: Dr. Thomas C. Durant, had a family mausoleum.

The whole place intrigued me. I had not known much about the rural cemetery movement during the mid 19th century until I visited this site.

First, I must say I was a tad disappointed in the Doc's mausoleum. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was so, well  - plain. No angels embellishing the entrance, no epitaph, no dates, no sign of who was even interred inside these gray (granite?) walls embedded into the side of the hill. But then the variety of burial sites did surprise me. As you can see from the slide show below, there are all types of statues and burial plots at this cemetery.

While visiting, I learned a lot about this small oasis of tranquility in the middle of bustling Brooklyn. The Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 at the height of the rural cemetery movement. Before these massive land plots were developed into cemeteries most people were buried either in churchyards or private property. Many city residents, fearful of the spread of cholera from burials too close to heavily populated areas such as Manhattan, pushed for the development of rural cemeteries. At the time both Brooklyn and Queens had the land available. So many of the current cemeteries in and around New York City are in the borders of these two boroughs. In fact, there are more dead people in Brooklyn and Queens than live.

Green-Wood is 478 acres. It hosts 7,000 trees, glacial ponds, valleys, scenic views, and a lot of historical figures. Indeed there are over 560,000 permanent residents in the cemetery. Many famous.

It became vogue for wealthy New Yorkers to be interred in these rural cemeteries. The landscape was an escape for city residents as well. These cemeteries served as the first public parklands in New York state. People would go to pay homage to their loved ones, stroll the winding paths and maybe even picnic along one of the ponds.

I had to wonder though, why the mausoleums? There were so many at Green-Wood. And according to my sources Durant's somber gray monument cost him $60,000 at the time (1884), that is more than one million in today's dollars.

I read a few various accounts of why. One is that people were afraid of being buried alive and the mausoleum guaranteed a way out. Other sources believe it was purely a status symbol. A place to show off, even after one is dead.

I'm sure it is a combination of the two. Either way, Dr. Durant, who, for all intents and purposes, was bankrupt at the time he died,
was able to afford this opulent abode in Brooklyn. He was land rich yes -  but cash poor. I guess it shouldn't surprise me though given the propensity of his family to spend money.


Postscript: I contacted the Green Wood Cemetery staff and they ere very helpful in identifying who was interred in the Mausoleum. I was curios to know if Ella Durant Rose, Dr. Durant's daughter was there, but she was not. Who is buried there: Dr. Durant, his wife Hannah Heloise Durant, William West Durant,  one of Williams's sons - Lawrence, and Ella's son Timbrell Durant Rose and his wife Lillian Tiffany.

5 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Sheila Myers  Professor at Cayuga Community College in Upstate New York.

    Subscribe to blog

    RSS Feed

    Follow me on Facebook or Twitter!

    Categories

    All
    Adirondacks
    Alvah Dunning
    Anne Thackeray Ritchie
    Arpad Gerster
    Awards
    Camp Kirby
    Coffee
    Collis Huntington
    Divorce
    Dr Thomas Durant
    Editing
    Egypt
    Ella Durant
    England
    Gilborn
    Gilded Age
    Giveaway
    Great Camps
    Green Wood Cemetery
    Hell On Wheels
    Heloise Durant Rose
    Historical Fiction
    Hochschild
    Huntington
    Isle Of Wight
    J.P. Morgan
    Julia Margaret Cameron
    Last Of Mohicans
    Lillian Tiffany
    Marketing
    News
    Ozymandias
    Pine Knot
    Poultney Bigelow
    Research
    Sagamore
    Sarah Bernhardt
    Tea
    Uncas
    Utowana
    Vanderbilt
    Verplanck Colvin
    William West Durant

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.