James Frederick Joy

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James Frederick Joy

James Frederick Joy (born December 2, 1810 in Durham , New Hampshire , † September 24, 1896 in Detroit , Michigan ) was an American lawyer , politician and railroad manager. He was instrumental in the development of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) into one of the most successful railroad companies of the 19th century in the American Midwest , which later became part of the Burlington Northern Railroad and finally merged into the BNSF Railway in 1995 . He built a railroad network from Chicago in the Southwest to Nebraska , Kansas and Missouri and was president of over 20 railroad companies, including ten years each with the CB&Q and Michigan Central Railroad . Between 1861 and 1862 he was also a member of the House of Representatives from Michigan and from 1882 to 1886 a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan .

Adolescent years and law studies

James Frederick Joy was the son of James Joy (1778-1857) and Sarah Pickering Joy (1781-1858). His father was originally from Groton, Massachusetts and was a descendant of the carpenter Thomas Joy (1611-1678), who emigrated from England in 1636 , settled in Boston and built the first town hall here in 1657 on the site of the Old State House . James F. Joy attended school in Durham and later went to Dartmouth College , where he graduated in 1833. He later studied at Harvard Law School and was inducted into the Massachusetts Bar Association in 1836 . He then moved to Detroit , where he and George F. Porter opened the law firm Joy & Porter . Joy worked here as a lawyer for over 25 years, but by the mid-1840s his field of activity shifted to building and expanding the railways in North America .

Railway manager

Michigan Central Railroad

Michigan Central Railroad loan dated 1854

Joy's rise to one of the most influential railroad tycoons began with his interest in the state-run Central Railroad of Michigan , which was acquired by the newly formed state of Michigan in 1837 and which he believes was poorly funded and run. After financial difficulties in the early 1840s, the expansion of the railway company came to a standstill and Joy, with the support of entrepreneur John Murray Forbes from Boston, brokered the sale to private investors, which led to the re-establishment of the Michigan Central Railroad (MC) in 1846 . Forbes became president of the company and Joy became legal counsel . Supported by sufficient capital, the expansion of the MC route network progressed in the following period, with Joy realizing the expansion to Indiana and Illinois by taking over smaller railroad companies and enabling access to Chicago in 1852 through an agreement with the Illinois Central Railroad . During this time he also worked with Abraham Lincoln , who was also a lawyer at the time, from which a long-standing friendship with the future President of the United States developed. In 1867 Joy became President of the MC and worked in this capacity until 1877.

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad

In the 1850s, Joy saw profitable expansion opportunities for the railroad in the development of the western United States, and from 1852 onwards, building the Chicago and Aurora Railroad - from 1856 Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) - one of the most successful railroad companies of the 19th century in America, of which he was president from 1853 to 1857 and from 1865 to 1871. By merging several smaller companies and financed by Boston entrepreneurs to John Murray Forbes, a route network was created from Chicago to the eastern border of Iowa and Missouri , where by the construction of railroad bridges over the Mississippi River 1866-1868 in Burlington (Iowa) and Quincy (Illinois) the western expansion was pushed further. With the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad (part of the CB&Q from 1872) acquired by Joy in 1857 and expanded to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River by 1859 , an east-west connection through Iowa was connected to his network and with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad to Saint Joseph (part of the CB&Q from 1883) another through Missouri to the river of the same name, which formed the western border of the states here. In addition, he later built a north-south connection along the Missouri River with the Kansas City, St. Joseph and Council Bluffs Railroad , of which he was president from 1870 to 1874.

  • The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad 1860, Joy realized the connection from Cameron to Kansas City in 1869 Red circle thick.svgand had the first Missouri bridge built here (see marking in the CB&Q network on the right) Red circle thick.svgCarré rouge.JPGRed circle thick.svg

  • Route network of the CB&Q 1891, Joy expanded the network by 1871 from the Mississippi at Burlington and Quincy RouteIndustrial culture anchor point Symbol.svg westwards to the Missouri to Council Bluffs , Saint Joseph RouteIndustrial culture anchor point Symbol.svg and Kansas City

Hannibal Bridge

The Hannibal Bridge from 1869 was the first bridge over the Missouri and encouraged the rapid development of Kansas City

Businessmen from Kansas City to the politician Robert T. Van Horn entered the mid-1860s after the end of the Civil War with Joy in contact to a terminal of the city in the east on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad to realize in Cameron, Missouri. Joy also saw a profitable investment here due to the low property prices and the possible expansion in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico , as Kansas City was previously only served from the south by the later Missouri Pacific Railroad . Due to the location of Kansas City on the south bank of the Missouri River, in addition to the construction of the Kansas City and Cameron Railroad , the construction of the first bridge over the river was necessary, which was the greatest challenge in this remote area at the time. Joy hired the engineer and later aviation pioneer Octave Chanute , who built a truss bridge with a swing bridge made of wood and wrought iron by 1869 . At that time, Joy had also referred the young George S. Morison to Chanute, who had studied Joy at Harvard Law School but wanted to become an engineer. After his first construction project with Chanute, he was to become one of the leading experts in railroad bridges and by 1901 built more than 20 more bridges over the rivers of the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio, six of them for the CB&Q.

further activities

Network of the Wabash Railroad 1887

In 1870 the investors from the east coast sold the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad to Jay Gould against Joy's wishes , whereupon Joy ended his involvement with the CB&Q; however, the railway company finally became part of the CB&Q in 1883. In addition to the expansion of smaller companies - westwards to Nebraska and Kansas as well as to southern Missouri - he then devoted himself to his presidency of the Michigan Central Railroad , but also had to give up his post here after the takeover by William Henry Vanderbilt in 1876. In 1884 he took over the financially troubled Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway (Wabash Railroad) and worked here until the company was split up in 1887.

In addition to his activities as a railroad manager, he was involved in the construction of the first lock system of the Soo Locks on the Saint Marys River between 1853 and 1855 and later briefly president of the Detroit Tribune and the Second National Bank of Detroit . He also saw the need for a tunnel under the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor in Canada, which was not realized until 1910 with the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel .

Politician

The 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago

Joy was politically active at an early age and became Detroit School Inspector in 1838 . He was a member of the United States Whig Party , the Free Soil Party and later the Republican Party and was a strong supporter of his fellow party member and fellow lawyer Abraham Lincoln , who was elected 16th President of the United States in 1860 . The following year Joy moved as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives and was Floor Leader of the House during his tenure from January 1, 1861 to December 31, 1862 . As a delegate from Michigan he held in 1880 on the Republican National Convention in Chicago the nomination speech for James G. Blaine , but the later 20th President of the United States elected James A. Garfield defeated. From 1882 to 1886 he was also a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan .

family

Henry Bourne Joy (1864-1936)

James F. Joy married Martha Alger Reed from Massachusetts in 1841 , with whom he later had four children, but who died in 1850. He remarried in 1860 and had three other children, Mary Bourn of Connecticut . His second wife died in 1890 and James Frederick Joy six years later in Detroit on September 24, 1896. His son Henry Bourne Joy (1864-1936) later headed the Packard Motor Car Company and worked here, among other things, on the development of aircraft engines, from which later the Liberty engines emerged . He was also the driving force behind the construction of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway between New York City and San Francisco, together with Carl Graham Fisher .

Web links

literature

  • Fred Carlisle: James F. Joy. In: Michigan Law Journal. Vol. 4, No. 12, 1895, pp. 347-351.
  • John N. Ingham: Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Volume 2 (H-M), Greenwood Publishing, 1983, ISBN 0-313-23908-8 , pp. 685-688.
  • James Richard Joy: Thomas Joy and his descendants in the lines of his sons Samuel of Boston, Joseph of Hingham, Ephraim of Berwick. New York 1900 ( digitized version ).
  • William J. Petersen: The Burlington Comes. In: The Palimpsest. Vol. 14, No. 11, 1933, pp. 381-395.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Richard Joy: Thomas Joy and his descendants in the lines of his sons Samuel of Boston, Joseph of Hingham, Ephraim of Berwick. New York 1900, p. 33 f.
  2. ↑ a b James Richard Joy: Thomas Joy and his descendants in the lines of his sons Samuel of Boston, Joseph of Hingham, Ephraim of Berwick. New York 1900, pp. 48-51.
  3. ^ John N. Ingham: Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Volume 2 (H-M), Greenwood Publishing, 1983, pp. 685-688, here p. 685
  4. ^ A b c d Brent Maynard: Joy, James F. Detroit Historical Society. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  5. ^ A b William D. Middleton, George Smerk, Roberta L. Diehl: Encyclopedia of North American Railroads. Indiana University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-253-34916-3 , p. 569.
  6. ^ Louis W. Potts, George FW Hauck: Frontier Bridge Building: The Hannibal Bridge at Kansas City, 1867-1869. In: Missouri Historical Review. Volume 89, No. 2, January 1995, pp. 139-161, here p. 143 ( digitized version ).
  7. ^ FB Maltby: The Mississippi River Bridges. In: Journal of the Western Society of Engineers. Volume 8, No. 4, 1903, pp. 418-493, Burlington pp. 472-474, Quincy pp. 478-481 ( digitized ).
  8. ^ A b c d John N. Ingham: Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Volume 2 (H-M), Greenwood Publishing, 1983, pp. 685-688, here pp. 686 f.
  9. ^ Louis W. Potts, George FW Hauck: Frontier Bridge Building: The Hannibal Bridge at Kansas City, 1867-1869. In: Missouri Historical Review. Volume 89, No. 2, January 1995, pp. 139-161, here pp. 139-147 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ David Saville Muzzey: James G. Blaine: A Political Idol of Other Days. Dodd, Mead and Company, New York 1934, p. 169.
  11. ^ John N. Ingham: Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Volume 2 (H-M), Greenwood Publishing, 1983, pp. 685-688, here pp. 687 f.
personal data
SURNAME Joy, James Frederick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer, politician and railroad manager
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Durham , New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1896
Place of death Detroit , Michigan