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[Illustration: George Francis Train.
From a recent photograph.]
MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND IN FOREIGN LANDS
Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year
by
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN
Illustrated
[Illustration]
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1902
Copyright, 1902
by D. Appleton and Company
Published November, 1902
MY LIFE IN MANY STATES
AND IN FOREIGN LANDS
TO THE CHILDREN
AND TO THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN
IN THIS AND IN ALL LANDS
WHO LOVE AND BELIEVE IN ME
BECAUSE THEY KNOW
I LOVE AND BELIEVE IN THEM
PREFACE
I have been silent for thirty years. During that long period I have
taken little part in the public life of the world, have written nothing
beyond occasional letters and newspaper articles, and have conversed
with few persons, except children in parks and streets. I have found
children always sympathetic and appreciative. For this reason I have
readily entered into their play and their more serious moods; and for
this reason, also, have dedicated this book to them and to their
children.
For many years I have been a silent recluse, remote from the world in my
little corner in the Mills Hotel, thinking and waiting patiently. That I
break this silence now, after so many years, is due to the suggestion of
a friend who has told me that the world of to-day, as well as the world
of to-morrow, will be interested in reading my story. I am assured that
many of the things I have accomplished will endure as a memorial of me,
and that I ought to give some account of them and of myself.
And so I have tried to compress a story of my life into this book. With
modesty, I may say that the whole story could not be told in a single
volume. I have tried not to be prolix, keeping in mind while preparing
this record of events, "all of which I saw, and part of which I was,"
that there is a limit to the patience of readers.
I beg my readers to remember that this book was spoken, not written, by
me. It is my own life-story that I have related. It may not, in every
part, agree with the recollections of others; but I am sure that it is
as accurate in statement as it is blameless in purpose. If I should fail
at any point, this will be due to some wavering of memory, and not to
intention. Thanks to my early Methodist training, I have never knowingly
told a lie; and I shall not begin at this time of life.
While I may undertake other volumes that will present another side of
me--my views and opinions of men and things--that which stands here
recorded is the story of my life. It has been dictated in the mornings
of July and August of the past summer, one or two hours being given to
it during two or three days of each week. Altogether, the time consumed
in the dictation makes a total of thirty-five hours. Before I began the
dictation, I wrote out hastily a brief sketch, or mere epitome, of my
history, so that I might have before my mind a guide that would prevent
me from wandering too far afield or that might save me from
tediousness. I give it here, as a foretaste of the book. I have called
it "My Autobiography boiled down--400 Pages in 200 Words."
"Born 3-24-'29. Orphaned New Orleans, '33. (Father, mother, and three
sisters--yellow fever.) Came North alone, four years old, to
grandmother, Waltham, Mass. Supported self since babyhood. Farmer till
14. Grocer-boy, Cambridgeport, two years. Shipping-clerk, 16. Manager,
18. Partner, Train & Co., 20 (income, $10,000). Boston, 22 ($15,000).
"Established G. F. T. & Co., Melbourne, Australia, '53. Agent, Barings,
Duncan & Sherman, White Star Line (income, $95,000). Started 40 clippers
to California, '49. Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Staffordshire.
Built A. & G. W. R. R., connecting Erie with Ohio and Mississippi, 400
miles.
"Pioneered first street-railway, Europe, America, Australia. (England:
Birkenhead, Darlington, Staffordshire, London, '60.) Built first Pacific
Railway (U. P.), '62-'69, through first Trust, Credit Mobilier. Owned
five thousand lots, Omaha, worth $30,000,000. (Been in fifteen jails
without a crime.)
"Train Villa, built at Newport, '68. Daughter's house, 156 Madison
Avenue, '60. Organized French Commune, Marseilles, Ligue du Midi,
October, '70, while on return trip around the world in eighty days.
Jules Verne, two years later, wrote fiction of my fact.
"Made independent race for Presidency against Grant and Greeley, '71-72.
Cornered lawyers, doctors, clericals, by quoting three columns of Bible
to release Woodhull-Claflin from jail, '72. Now lunatic by law, through
six courts.
"Now living in Mills Palace, $3 against $2,000 a week, at Train Villa.
(Daughter always has room for me in country.) Played Carnegie forty
years ahead. Three generations living off Credit Mobilier. Author dozen
books out of print (_vide_ Who's Who, Allibone, Appletons' Cyclopaedia).
"Four times around the world. First, two years. Second, eighty days,
'70. Third, sixty-seven and a half days, '90. Fourth, sixty days,
shortest record, '92. Through psychic telepathy, am doubling age.
Seventy-four years young."
It may be a matter of surprise to some readers that I should have
accomplished so much at the early age when so many of my most important
enterprises were accomplished. It should be remembered, however, that I
began young. I was a mature man at an age when most boys are still tied
to their mothers' apron strings. I had to begin to take care of myself
in very tender years. I suppose my experiences in New Orleans, on the
old farm in Massachusetts, in the grocery store in Boston, and in the
shipping house of Enoch Train and Company, matured and hardened me
before my time. I was never much of a boy. I seem to have missed that
portion of my youth. I was obliged to look out for myself very early,
and was soon fighting hard in the fierce battle of competition, where
the weak are so often lost.
It may be worth while to present here some important evidence of the
confidence that was reposed in me by experienced men, when, as a mere
youth, I was undertaking vast enterprises that might have made older men
hesitate. When I was about to leave Boston in '53 for business in
Australia, and organized the house of Caldwell, Train and Company, I was
authorized by the following well-established houses of this and other
countries to use them as references, and did so on our firm circulars:
John M. Forbes, John E. Thayer and Brother, George B. Upton, Enoch Train
and Company, Sampson and Tappan, and Josiah Bradlee and Company, of
Boston; Cary and Company, Goodhue and Company, Josiah Macy and Sons,
Grinnell, Minturn and Company, and Charles H. Marshall and Company, of
New York; H. and A. Cope and Company, of Philadelphia; Birckhead and
Pearce, of Baltimore; J. P. Whitney and Company, of New Orleans; Flint,
Peabody and Company, and Macondray and Company, of San Francisco; George
A. Hopley and Company, of Charleston; Archibald Gracie, of Mobile; and
the following foreign houses: Bowman, Grinnell and Company, and Charles
Humberston, of Liverpool; Russell and Company and Augustine Heard and
Company, of Canton.
These were among the best known commercial houses in the world at that
time. Any business man, familiar with the commercial history of the
modern world, should consider this list fair enough evidence of the
confidence I enjoyed among men of affairs. Let me reproduce here--partly
as evidence along the same line, and partly because of the value I
attach to it on personal and friendly grounds--the following letter from
Mr. D. O. Mills:
"NEW YORK, _September 30, 1901_.
"Hon. GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN,
"_Mills Hotel, Bleecker St., New York_.
"MY DEAR CITIZEN:
"The many appreciative notices that have come to my attention of
your distinguished talents of early years lead me also to send you
a line of appreciation, particularly as touching the part played
by you in some of the great commercial enterprises that have so
signally marked the nineteenth century, notably in the Merchant
Marine, and in the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, in the
conception and construction of which you bore so distinguished a
part.
"The present generation, with its conveniences of travel and
communication, can not realize what were the difficulties and
experiences of the merchant and traveler of those early days when
you were engaged in the China trade, and your Clipper Ships were
often seen in the port of San Francisco.
"The long voyage around the Horn, the danger experienced from
sudden attack by Indians while traversing the wild and uninhabited
country lying between Omaha and the Pacific Coast, are experiences
which even an old voyager like myself questions as he speeds
across the continent, privileged to enjoy the comforts of a
Pullman car, and a railroad service that has shortened the journey
from New York to San Francisco from months to a few days. In
recalling the many years of our pleasant acquaintance by sea and
land, not the least is the remembrance of your kind and genial
spirit, and I am glad to see that you have lost none of your
sincere wish to do good.
"With kind regards.
"Very truly yours,
"D. O. MILLS."
Mr. Mills has known me in many walks of life. We have at times walked
side by side. At others, oceans have roared between us. He is my friend,
and I was glad to receive this kindly word from him, after many long
years of acquaintance.
Although I am a hermit now, I was not always so. All who read this book
must see that. I spent many happy years in society--and never an unhappy
year anywhere, whether in jail or under social persecution; and I have
lived many years with my family in my own country and in foreign lands.
My wife, of whom I have spoken of in the following pages, passed into
shadow-land in '77. I have children who are scattered widely now. My
first child, Lily, was born in Boston, in '52, and died when five months
old, in Boston. My second daughter, Susan Minerva, was born in '55, and
married Philip Dunbar Guelager, who for thirty-six years was the head of
the gold and silver department of the Subtreasury in this city. She now
lives at "Minerva Lodge," Stamford, Connecticut, with my seven-year-old
grandson. My first son, George Francis Train, Jr., was born in '56, and
is now in business in San Francisco. Elsey McHenry Train, my last child,
now lives in Chicago. He was born in '57. I was able to see these
children well educated, at home and abroad, and to give them some chance
to see the great world I had known.
A last word as to myself. Readers of this book may think I have
sometimes taken myself too seriously. I can scarcely agree with them. I
try not to be too serious about anything--not even about myself. When I
was making a hopeless fight for the Presidency in '72, I made the
following statement in one of my speeches:
"Many persons attribute to me simply an impulsiveness, and an
impressibility, as if I were some erratic comet, rushing madly through
space, emitting coruscations of fancifully colored sparks, without
system, rule, or definite object. This is a popular error. I claim to be
a close analytical observer of passing events, applying the crucible of
Truth to every new matter or subject presented to my mind or my senses."
I think that estimate may be used to-day in this place. It does not so
much matter, however, what I may have thought of myself or what I now
think of myself. What does matter is what I may have done. I stand on my
achievement.
And with this, I commit my life-story to the kind consideration of
readers.
CITIZEN GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN.
THE MILLS PALACE,
_September 22, '02_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD. 1833 2
New Orleans then my home--All the family except myself
perish from yellow fever.
CHAPTER II
MY VOYAGE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO BOSTON. 1833 16
Four years old and the sole passenger--Sailors teach me to
swear--My aunt shocked at my depravity.
CHAPTER III
MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM. 1833-1843 21
My grandfather a noted Methodist preacher--My first
money earned.
CHAPTER IV
SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE. 1840-1844 35
Leader of the school--George Ripley my school-teacher--Emerson
comes to our village to lecture--Boston visited.
CHAPTER V
EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM. 45
How I was reared religiously--Ideas of right and wrong--Things
outgrown.
CHAPTER VI
IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON. 1844-1850 52
A place with my uncle--Progress rapidly made--I sell Emerson
a ticket for Liverpool--I engage Rufus Choate and
Daniel Webster as our lawyers--My first speculation--Building
fast ships.
CHAPTER VII
A VACATION TOUR. 1850 79
In Washington I meet Webster, Clay, and President Taylor--A
letter with their autographs that served me well.
CHAPTER VIII
A PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE. 1850-1852 90
In Scotland Lord John Russell receives me, and I meet
Lady Russell--Reform in the shipping business--Money
we made--The Duke of Wellington--I visit Chatsworth.
CHAPTER IX
MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE--RETURN TO LIVERPOOL.
1850-1852 109
How I first met my wife--Engaged to marry her within
forty-eight hours--Governors in my charge--Our wedding
and the commotion that preceded it--Phrenology.
CHAPTER X
BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA. 1853-1855 126
A fine income at twenty-one--Melbourne in those days--American
ideas introduced--Accused of stealing $2,000,000.
CHAPTER XI
THE GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES AND TASMANIA.
1853-1855 141
Lucky and unlucky miners--David D. Porter--Sydney in
those days--Free immigrants--Sir John Franklin.
CHAPTER XII
OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS--A REVOLUTION 156
Proposed as a candidate for President--Riotous times--Curious
incidents in business.
CHAPTER XIII
A VOYAGE TO CHINA. 1855 171
Failure of ambitious plans--My first love of flowers--A
remarkable Dutch colony.
CHAPTER XIV
IN CHINESE CITIES. 1855-1856 182
Hetty Green's husband in Hongkong with me--Pirates and
the slave trade--Honesty of the Chinaman--Eating rats--
Pidgin-English--Li Hung Chang on board.
CHAPTER XV
TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND. 1856 204
New ideas in religion--My early Methodism recalled--Where
Christ was born.
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE CRIMEA. 1856 215
Plans in speculation that came to naught--The war, and
what I learned of it.
CHAPTER XVII
HOME ONCE MORE, AND THEN A RETURN TO EUROPE.
1856-1857 221
Boston and New York after a long absence--With my wife
I go to Paris.
CHAPTER XVIII
MEN I MET IN PARIS. 1857 226
A ball at the Tuileries--Eugenie very gracious to me--An
unexpected woman comes in--William H. Seward.
CHAPTER XIX
BUILDING THE ATLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.
1857-1858 237
Queen Maria Christina's fortune employed--Salamanca, the
banker--How I secured a great loan.
CHAPTER XX
A VISIT TO RUSSIA. 1857 249
I carry a message to the Grand Duke Constantine--A dinner
with Colonel Greig--Moscow and the Nijnii Novgorod
fair.
CHAPTER XXI
BUILDING THE FIRST STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND. 259
A line in Liverpool that still exists--Making a start in
London--Better success in Staffordshire.
CHAPTER XXII
ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR--BLOCKADE RUNNING. 271
Speeches for the Union in London halls--A plan to end the
war--Lincoln and Seward--Arrested for interrupting Sumner
in Boston--Dining with Seward when Antietam was
fought.
CHAPTER XXIII
BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY. 1862-1870 283
Early belief in such a project--The Credit Mobilier and its
origin--Men with whom I was associated.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST. 1863-1870 293
Plan for a chain of great cities across the continent--The
creation of Omaha--Cozzen's Hotel--Tour of the Pacific
Coast.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SHARE I HAD IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE. 1870 301
In Marseilles I help to organize the "Ligue du Midi" of the
Commune or "Red Republic"--Attacked by soldiers and
almost shot--Imprisoned and poisoned--Deported by Gambetta.
CHAPTER XXVI
A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT. 1872 314
"Train Villa" at Newport--Independent candidate for the
presidency against Grant and Greeley--A tour of the country,
in which I address hundreds of thousands.
CHAPTER XXVII
DECLARED A LUNATIC. 1872-1873 323
I defend Mrs. Woodhull--Arrested and imprisoned for
quoting Scripture--Fifteenth imprisonment without a
crime.
CHAPTER XXVIII
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY, SIXTY-SEVEN, AND
SIXTY DAYS. 1870, 1890, 1892 331
The tour that Jules Verne used as the basis of his famous
story--In '90 I circle the globe in 67 days; and in '92 in 60
days.
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
Portrait of Citizen Train made recently _Frontispiece_
Portrait of Citizen Train's grandfather, the Rev. George
Pickering 2
Portrait of Mrs. George Francis Train 110
Citizen Train in the Mills Hotel dictating his Reminiscences 200
Citizen Train's former residence in Madison Avenue,
New York 286
Citizen Train's former villa at Newport 314
Citizen Train with the children in Madison Square 324
Citizen Train and his guests at dinner in the Mills Hotel 338
MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND IN FOREIGN LANDS
CHAPTER I
WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD
1833
My grandfather was the Reverend George Pickering, of Baltimore--a
slave-owner. Having fallen in with the early Methodists, long before
Garrison, Phillips, and Beecher had taken up the abolition idea, he
liberated his slaves and went to preaching the Gospel. He became an
itinerant Methodist preacher, with the pitiable salary of $300 a year.
The sale of one of his "prime" negro slaves would have brought him in
more money than four years of preaching. He would have been stranded
very soon if he had not had the good sense to marry my beautiful
grandmother, who had a thousand-acre farm at Waltham, ten miles out of
Boston. My grandfather thus could preach around about the neighborhood,
and then come back to the family at home. My father married the eldest
daughter of this Methodist preaching grandfather of mine, Maria
Pickering.
I was born at No. 21 High Street, Boston, during a snow-storm, on the
24th of March, '29. When I was a baby, my father went to New Orleans and
opened a store. Soon after arriving in that city I was old enough to
observe things, and to remember. I can recollect almost everything in my
life from my fourth year. From the time I was three years old up to this
present moment--a long stretch of seventy years, the Prophet's limit of
human life--I can remember almost every event in my life with the
greatest distinctness. This book of mine will be a pretty fair test of
my memory.
I can remember the beautiful flowers of the South. How deeply they
impressed themselves upon my mind! I can recall the garden with its
wonderful floral wealth, the gift of the Southern sun. I can recollect
exactly how the old clothesline used to look, with its load of
linen--the resting-place of the long-bodied insects we called "devil's
darning needles," or mosquito hawks--and how we children used to strike
the line with poles, to frighten the insects and see them fly away on
their filmy wings. And I can remember going down to my father's store,
filling the pockets of my little frock with dried currants, which I
thought were lovely, and watching him there at his work.
[Illustration: Rev. George Pickering, George Francis Train's
grandfather.]
Then came the terrible yellow-fever year. It is still known there as the
year of the fever, or of the plague. This fearful epidemic swept over
the city, and left it a city of the dead. It was a catastrophe
recalled to me by that of Martinique. My family suffered with the rest
of the city. I remember well the horror of the time. There were no
hearses to be had. Physicians and undertakers had gone to the grave with
their patients and patrons. The city could not afford to bury decently
so many of its dead inhabitants. And the fear of the plague had so
shaken the human soul that men stood afar off, aghast, and did only what
they had to do in a coarse, brutal, swift burial of the dead.
There were no coffins to be had, and no one could have got them if there
had been enough of them. Corpses were buried, all alike, in coarse pine
boxes, hastily put together in the homes--and often by the very
hands--of the relatives of the dead. One day they brought into our home
a coarse pine box. I did not know what it was or for what it was meant.
Then I saw them take the dead body of my little sister Josephine and put
it hastily into the rough pine box. I was too young to understand it
all, but I can never forget that scene; it starts tears even now. After
nailing up the box and marking it to go "To the Train Vaults," the
family sat and waited for the coming of the "dead wagon." The city sent
round carters to pick up the numerous dead, just as it had formerly sent
out scavenger carts to take away the refuse.
We could hear the "dead wagon" as it approached. We knew it by the
dolorous cry of the driver. It drew nearer and nearer to our home. It
all seemed so terrible, and yet I could not understand it. I heard the
wagon stop under our window. Now the scene all comes back to me, and it
recalls the rumble and rattle of those tumbrels of the French Reign of
Terror: only it was the fever, instead of the guillotine, that demanded
its victims. The driver would not enter the pest-stricken houses. He
remained in his cart, and shouted out, in a heart-tearing cry, to the
inmates to bring their dead to him. As he drove up to our window he
placed his hands around his mouth, as a hunter does in making a halloo,
and cried: "Bring out--bring out your dead!"
The long-wailed dolorous cry filled the streets, empty of their
frequenters: "Bring out--bring out your dead!" Again at our home the cry
was heard; and I saw my father and others lift up the coarse pine box,
with the body of my little sister shut inside, carry it to the window,
and toss it into the "dead wagon." And then the wagon rattled away down
the street, and again, as it stopped under the window of the next house,
over the doomed city rang the weird cry: "Bring out--bring out your
dead!"
A few days later another rough pine box was brought to our home. Again I
did not understand it; but I knew more of the mystery of death than I
had known before. Into this box they placed the body of my little sister
Louise. Then we waited for the approach of the "dead wagon." I knew that
it would again come to our home, to get its freight of death. I went to
the window, and looked up and down the street, and waited. Far in the
distance, I heard the cry: "Bring out--bring out your dead!"
The wagon finally arrived. The window was thrown open, the rude box was
lifted up, taken to the window, and thrown into the wagon, which was
already loaded with similar boxes. They were in great haste, it seemed
to me, to be rid of the poor little box. And the carter drove on down
the street to other stricken homes, crying: "Bring out--bring out your
dead!"
I now began to feel the loss of my sisters. Two had gone. Only one was
left with me, my little sister Ellen, as frail and as lovely a flower as
ever bloomed. When the next box came, and she, dead of the plague, was
put into it, I thought it time for me to interfere. I went to the window
and stood guard. Again came the terrible cry: "Bring out--bring out your
dead!" And my last little sister was taken away in the "dead wagon."
I was too young to understand it all, but I remember going with my
father and mother in the carriage every time they carried one of my
sisters to the graveyard.
The next strange thing to happen was the arrival in the house of a box
much larger than the others. I did not know what it could be for. The
box was very rough looking. It was made of unplaned boards. My nurse
told me it was for my mother. Again I took my stand by the window.
"Bring out--bring out your dead!" resounded mournfully in the street
just below the window where I stood. I looked out, and there was the
"dead wagon." It had come for my mother.
I was astonished to find that they did not throw the box containing my
mother into the wagon. It was too large and heavy. Four or five men had
to come into the house and take out the box. It was marked "To the Train
Vaults," and was put into the wagon with the other boxes containing dead
bodies. Only my father and I sat in the carriage that went to the
cemetery and to the vaults that day. There were my mother and my three
little sisters; all had been swept from me in this St. Pierre style--in
this volcano of yellow fever.
Finally there came one day a letter from my grandmother, the wife of the
old Methodist itinerant preacher of Waltham: "Send on some one of the
family, before they are all dead. Send George." And so my father made
preparations to send me back to Massachusetts. I can remember now the
exact wording of the card he wrote and pinned on my coat, just like the
label or tag on a bag of coffee. It read:
"This is my little son George Francis Train. Four years old.
Consigned on board the ship Henry to John Clarke, Jr., Dock
Square, Boston; to be sent to his Grandmother Pickering, at
Waltham, ten miles from Boston. Take good care of the Little
Fellow, as he is the only one left of eleven of us in the house,
including the servants [slaves]. I will come on as soon as I can
arrange my Business."
I remember how we went down to the ship in the river. She lay out in the
broad, muddy Mississippi, and seven other vessels lay between her and
the shore. Planks were laid on the bank, or "levee," as they called the
shore in New Orleans, and up to the side of the nearest ship. We climbed
over these planks and passed over the seven vessels, and came to the
Henry. My father kissed me good-by, and left me on board the ship.
There I was, aboard this great vessel--for so she seemed to me then--a
little boy, without nurse or guardian to look after me. I was just so
much freight. I was part of the cargo. We floated down the Mississippi
slowly, and floated on and on toward the Gulf. We were floating out into
the great waters, into the great world, floating through the waters of
Gulf and ocean, floating along in the Gulf Stream, and floating on
toward my Northern home.
Thus I was floating, when I began my life anew; and I have been floating
for seventy years!
When my father said good-by to me, kissing me as we passed over the last
of the seven ships between the Henry and the shore, I saw him put a
handkerchief to his face, as if to hide from me the tears that were in
his eyes. He feared that my little heart would break down under the
strain. But I didn't cry. Everything was so new to me. I was too small
to realize all that the parting meant and all that had led up to it. I
could not feel that I was leaving behind me all the members of my
family--in the vaults of the graveyard. The ship seemed a new world to
me. I had no eyes for tears--only for wonderment.
For many years afterward I heard nothing of my father. He had dropped
below the horizon when I floated down the Mississippi, and I saw and
heard nothing more of him. As my mother and three sisters had been
buried together in New Orleans, we had taken it for granted that father
had followed them to the grave, a victim of the same pestilence. But
nothing was known as to this for many years.
We were anxious to have all the bodies brought together in one graveyard
in the North and buried side by side. The family burying-ground was at
Waltham, where eight generations were then sleeping--that is, eight
generations of Pickerings and Bemises. There were the bodies of my
great-grandmother, and of ancestors belonging to the first Colonial
days. My cousin, George Pickering Bemis, Mayor of Omaha, afterward had
a monument erected over the spot where so many Bemises and Pickerings
lay in their long rest, to preserve their memory. But my father's body
was never to rest there; nor was it ever seen by any of his relatives.
My uncle, John Clarke, Jr., who had brought me out of New Orleans and
rescued me from the plague, tried to find some trace of my father; but
no record or vestige of him could be found in that city. Every trace of
him had been swept away. His very existence there had been forgotten,
erased. No one could be found who had ever heard of him, or knew
anything about his store. So completely had the pestilence done its
terrible work of destruction and obliteration. As this period was prior
to the invention of the daguerreotype, we had no photographs of him. The
only likenesses that were made then were expensive miniatures on ivory.
I have no picture of him, except the one I carry forever in my memory.
Sixty years passed away. One day I received a letter from one of my
cousins, Louisa Train, who was living in Michigan. She told me that her
father and mother had died, and that the furniture of the old house, in
which they and her grandparents had lived, had fallen to her. "In moving
an old bureau," she wrote, "it fell to pieces, and, to my surprise, two
documents rolled upon the floor. These papers relate to you. One of
them was a letter from your father to his mother, written from New
Orleans shortly before you left that city. In it he says:
"'You can imagine my loneliness in being in this great house, always so
lively, with eleven persons in it, including my own family--now all
alone. George is with his tutor. He is a very extraordinary boy, though
only four years old. The other day he repeated some verses, of which I
can remember these lines:
"'I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.'"
I was to receive one other message from my father. Since I began writing
this autobiography, my aged aunt, Abigail Pickering Frost, now in her
ninetieth year, discovered a letter that my father had written to her
and to her sister, my aunt Alice, who afterward married Henry A.
Winslow, upon the day that he placed me on the ship Henry, and sent me
to my grandmother at Waltham, Mass. Aunt Abigail, after the death of
aunt Alice, who was one of the victims in the wreck of the Lexington, in
January, '40, hid the letter in the garret of the old Waltham farmhouse,
where she later discovered it. She now sends it to me from her home in
Omaha, Neb., where it had again been lost, and found after a long
search, as she knew that I would appreciate it as a part of my
life-story.
The letter came to me as a wail from the dead. I was very young, and
childish, and thoughtless when I parted from him forever; but his letter
brought back to me in a flood the bitterness of our life in New Orleans,
the loneliness of my father in his great grief, and made me suffer,
nearly seventy years afterward, for the pain that I was then too young
to understand or feel. I give this letter, which is inexpressibly dear
to me, just as it was written.
"NEW ORLEANS, _June 10th, 1833_.
"DEAR SISTERS ABIGAIL AND ALICE:
"'Tis just two years since I left this place for New York, and
arrived in Boston the evening of the 3d of July. I hope MY DEAR
BOY will arrive safe and pass the 4th of July with you. He is now
on board the ship (and the steamboat alongside the ship) to the
Balize. I have written several letters by the ship, and found I
had a few moments to spare which I will improve by addressing
you. I refer you to the letters to Mother Pickering for
_particulars_--as I have not time to say much. I can only say, my
dear girls, that I am very unhappy here for reasons you well
know. _I part with George as though I was parting with my right
eye_--but 'tis for his good and the happiness of all that he
should go; take him to your own home, care, and protection; _he
is no ordinary boy, but is destined for a great scholar_.
"I am left here without a friend except my God! in a city where
the cholera is raging to a great extent--100 are dying daily! and
among them some of the most valuable citizens. A sweet little
girl about the age of Ellen, and an intimate acquaintance of
George's, who used to walk arm in arm with him, died this morning
with the cholera, and a great number of others among our most
intimate acquaintances have passed on. Mrs. Simons died in six
hours! What is life worth to me? Oh, my dear sisters! could I
leave this dreadful place I would, and die among my friends! The
thoughts of my dear Maria and Ellen fill me with sorrow! I have
mourned over their tombs in silence. I have been with them in my
dreams, and frequently I meet them in my room and talk with them
as though alive. All here is melancholy. When shall I see you,
God only knows! I have relieved my heavy heart of a burden--a
weight that was almost unsupportable.
"In parting with my _lovely boy_ I have bequeathed him to Mother
Pickering as a legacy--it being all that I possess! You will take
a share of the care, and I know will be all that mothers could be
for your dear sister Maria's sake!
"Give my love to Grandpa Bemis, Father Pickering, and all the
rest of the family. Say to them that _my mind is constantly with
them_, and will ever be so. I have written in great haste and
very badly, as I am on board the ship and _all is confusion_,
with the steamboat alongside. Farewell, my dear sisters! Do write
me a line. If you knew how much I prize a letter from you, you
would write often. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate
brother,
"OLIVER TRAIN.
"To Misses ABIGAIL and ALICE PICKERING,
_Waltham, Mass._"
The other document mentioned by my cousin Louisa, was the deed of a farm
by my paternal grandfather, making a certain physician trustee of the
property. I never came into that property! This was my first bequest. I
had begun, even in my infancy, to give away my property, and I have
thrown it away ever since. This first "bequest," however, was none of my
making, although I accepted it, without trying to question the matter.
Another involuntary "bequest" of my childhood was brought about in this
way. My mother, when a girl, was engaged to marry Stebbins Fiske. It was
by a mere chance that they were not married--and therefore my name is
"Train" by a mere accident which changed the fate of my mother and her
fiance. My father was a warm friend of Stebbins Fiske, and when Fiske
was called suddenly to New Orleans, just before the day set for the
marriage, he left his betrothed, Maria Pickering, in charge of my
father. The result might have been foreseen. It is the common theme of
romance the world over. My mother and my father fell in love with each
other, and were married. There was no thought of unfaithfulness; it was
merely inevitable. Fiske understood the situation, and forgave both of
them, and continued the stanch friend of both.
In his will Fiske left a small sum--$5,000--to my mother's mother. It
was the most delicate way in which he could leave some of his money so
that his old sweetheart might get it. The terms of the will were that
this money should be divided at my grandmother's death. It was so
divided, and a certain portion of it should have come to me; but I never
received a penny. This was my second bequest, for I allowed others to
take freely what belonged to me.
My third bequest was made with my eyes open. When I was about starting
for Australia in '53, another uncle-in-law, George W. Frost, whom I
afterward appointed purchasing agent of the Union Pacific Railway, a
splendid gentleman and a clergyman, came to me and said: "Your Aunt
Abbie" (his wife) "and myself are going to take care of your old
grandmother on the farm. Have you any objections to signing away your
interest in the old place?"
I said that, of course, I would sign it away. I was all right. I was
going out into the great world to make fortunes. And I signed it away,
as if it were a mere nothing.
These incidents I mention here as illustrations of my whole life. Since
my fourth year I have given away--thrown away--money. I have made others
rich. But I have never yet got what was due me from others.