Collis Potter Huntington Biography

Dromo's Den

HUNTINGTON, Collis Potter (1821–1900). A pioneer American railroad builder, born at Harwinton, Conn., Oct. 22, 1821. Of a noted New England family, Collis P. Huntington early gave evidence of business initiative—at 15 he started life peddling clocks in the South and West. In 1848 he went out to California and set up as a hardware merchant in Sacramento. With Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford he laid plans in 1859 for building the Central Pacific Railway, and credit for the completion of this work (1869) is due largely to Huntington's enterprise as fiscal agent for the group. Later, with his associates, Huntington built the Southern Pacific (completed 1881) and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads, and in time he came to operate 44 branches or connecting railroads along continuous lines from Portland, Ore., via San Francisco and New Orleans to Newport News, Va. The Southern Pacific, of whose board of managers Huntington was president, also acquired large interests in steamship lines. (See Railways, History.) Especially interested in Indian and negro education, he gave liberally to Hampton and Tuskegee institutes; as a memorial to his mother he built a Congregational church in his native town; and to Westchester, N. Y., he presented a library. At the time of his death (which occurred at his camp in the Adirondacks, Aug. 13, 1900) Mr. Huntington possessed a fortune estimates of which ranged from $35,000,000 to $80,000,000. By bequest he left to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Peale's portrait of Washington, and his $3,000,000 collection of paintings as a whole he also bequeathed to this museum, the bequest to take effect after the death of his widow and his adopted son, Archer M. Huntington (q.v.). Besides other large benefactions, Mrs. Huntington in 1909 made a gift of $750,000 to the American Geographical Society.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XI. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 620-621.