Thomas C. Durant facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thomas Clark Durant
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| Born | February 6, 1820 |
| Died | October 5, 1885 (aged 65) |
| Resting place | Green-Wood Cemetery |
| Education | Albany Medical College (1840) |
| Occupation | Physician, businessman, investor |
| Known for | Crédit Mobilier scandal and vice president for railroads, Union Pacific Railroad |
| Spouse(s) | Hannah Heloise Trimble |
| Children | William West Durant Héloïse Durant Rose |
Thomas Clark Durant (born February 6, 1820 – died October 5, 1885) was an American doctor, businessman, and investor. He was the vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in 1869. This was when the Union Pacific met the Central Pacific railroad in Promontory Summit, Utah. He also created a business plan that led to the Crédit Mobilier scandal. Durant was also interested in hotels in the Adirondack Mountains and once owned a yacht called Idler.
Durant successfully built railroads in the Midwest. In 1862, the United States Congress created the Union Pacific Railroad. John A. Dix became president, and Durant became vice president. Durant took on the job of managing the company and raising money. With a lot of money available, he helped pass a law in 1864. This law gave the railroad more land and special rights. He also started and at first controlled a company called Crédit Mobilier of America. But in 1867, he lost control of this company to brothers Oliver and Oakes Ames. Durant stayed on the board of directors for the Union Pacific. He pushed hard to build the railroad until it met the Central Pacific RR on May 10, 1869. After this, the Ames group arranged for him to be removed from his position.
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Early Life and Career
Durant was born on February 6, 1820, in Lee, Massachusetts. He studied medicine at Albany Medical College. In 1840, he graduated with high honors and briefly worked as an assistant professor of surgery. After leaving medicine, he became a director at his uncle's company, Durant, Lathrop and Company, in New York City. This company exported grain.
While working with the prairie wheat trade, Durant realized that better transportation was needed inland. This led him to become interested in the railroad business. Durant started in the railroad industry as a broker, someone who buys and sells things for others, for the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. During this time, Durant met Henry Farnam through his work.
The two men started a new company called Farnam and Durant. In 1853, they were hired to raise money and manage the building of the new Mississippi and Missouri Railroad (M&M). The M&M Railroad received large land grants to build Iowa's first railroad. This railroad was planned to go from Davenport on the Mississippi River to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River.
The most important part of the M&M was a wooden railroad bridge. When it was finished in 1856, it was the first bridge across the Mississippi River. This bridge connected the M&M to the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. After a steamboat hit the bridge, boat operators sued to have the bridge taken down. Durant and the Rock Island company hired a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to defend the bridge. This connection helped Durant in 1862. That year, President Lincoln chose Durant's new company, the Union Pacific, and its main office in Council Bluffs, Iowa, as the starting point for the First transcontinental railroad.
Building the Transcontinental Railroad
As a main agent for the Union Pacific's Eastern Division, Durant was in charge of raising money and getting resources. He also worked to get helpful laws passed for the company. In 1864, Congress gave the Union Pacific more land as part of a plan to give away 100 million acres of public land. Durant also found a way around a rule from the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. This rule said that no single merchant could own more than 200 shares of railroad stock. Durant offered to pay the required ten percent down payment on stock himself. He then asked brokers and merchants in New York and Philadelphia to invest. He promised they would be paid back later. Durant also convinced several politicians to invest as limited stockholders. In this way, he successfully sold $2.18 million worth of Union Pacific stock.
At the same time, Durant also played games with the stock market. He would make the value of his M&M stock go up by saying he would connect the Transcontinental Railroad to it. Secretly, he was buying stock in other competing rail lines. Then he would announce that the Transcontinental Railroad would go to one of those other lines instead.
The government paid for each mile of track that was laid. Durant sometimes ignored his engineers and ordered extra track to be laid in large curves, called oxbows. In the first two and a half years, the Union Pacific did not build more than 40 miles (64 km) from Omaha, Nebraska. Since the federal government was fighting the American Civil War, Durant was able to avoid their close watch on railroad construction.
During the Civil War, Durant made a lot of money by secretly moving cotton from the Confederate States. He did this with help from General Grenville M. Dodge. When the war ended in 1865, the Union Pacific hired more workers. They completed almost two-thirds of the transcontinental route. Durant hired Dodge as the chief engineer along the Platte River route.
Crédit Mobilier Scandal
One of Durant's biggest ideas was creating the company called Crédit Mobilier of America. In March 1864, Durant and a businessman named George Francis Train teamed up. They bought a company called the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency and changed its name to Crédit Mobilier. This company was one of the first to use a new financial idea called "limited liability." Before this, investors were fully responsible for a company's money problems. With limited liability, their only responsibility was for the money they had invested.
Durant created this limited liability company to encourage Union Pacific investors to agree to build the railroad. This happened after a contractor named Herbert Hoxie said he couldn't finish building 247 miles of track on time. Investors thought this contract was too risky because of the high building costs. But the protection offered by Crédit Mobilier convinced them to take on the construction. Durant then changed Crédit Mobilier's structure so that he ended up controlling it. This meant the Union Pacific was effectively paying him, through Crédit Mobilier, to build the railroad.
Durant tried to hide what he was doing by having various politicians, including future President James Garfield, as limited stockholders. Things got worse for Durant when it became clear that he had broken the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act. He had used his control of Crédit Mobilier to become the main owner of the Union Pacific Railroad. People also suspected that Durant had taken money from the company.
Durant's control at Crédit Mobilier was challenged. Oakes Ames took Durant to court and fired him from Crédit Mobilier in May 1867. Ames was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts. In 1867, Durant was removed from his position managing Crédit Mobilier. President Ulysses S. Grant later fired Durant from Union Pacific. The Crédit Mobilier company became known for corruption and secrecy. The government was tired of not being paid back for loans and the dishonest dealings happening at both companies.
Like many others, Durant lost a lot of his money in the Panic of 1873, which was a big economic downturn. He sold his remaining stock in Union Pacific and started a new railroad company, the Adirondack Railroad. He spent the last twelve years of his life dealing with lawsuits from unhappy business partners and investors.
Family Life
Durant was married to Hannah Heloise Trimble. They had two children: William West Durant, who became an architect, and Héloïse Durant Rose (born around 1853 – died 1943), who became an author, playwright, and literary critic.
In 1873, Durant called his family home to try and rebuild their wealth in the Adirondack Wilderness. He owned half a million acres of land there. His idea was to open up this wild area to tourists and as a place for wealthy people to own second homes. At the time, he owned the Adirondack Railroad. He was looking for investors to continue the train track from North Creek, New York, into Canada. He gave his son William the job of starting this project. However, William said his father kept the final control. William focused on his own architectural ideas for the region. He was very important in developing the first "Great Camp" style of buildings. Both father and son encouraged rich investors to visit their Camp Pine Knot, entertaining them in a grand way. William's camps, Pine Knot, Uncas, and Sagamore, were later sold to famous people like Collis P. Huntington, J.P. Morgan, and Alfred Vanderbilt.
Héloïse went to private schools in Europe and the United States. She could speak Arabic, French, German, and Italian fluently. She became an American author, playwright, and book reviewer for The New York Times. Besides articles and plays, she wrote essays, poems, and short stories. Her dramatic poem Dante (1910) was translated into Italian. It is believed to be the first American play performed on an Italian stage. Also, Héloïse started the Dante League in 1917 to encourage the study of Dante. She also signed a petition in 1883 to allow female students to attend classes and exams at Columbia College. Other well-known people who signed included Susan B. Anthony and Theodore Roosevelt.
Death
Durant died in Warren County, New York, on October 5, 1885. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Legacy and Honors
- Durant, Iowa, was named after him.
- He also gave several hundred dollars to this community in eastern Iowa to start its first school. Today, the school is also named after him.
- He successfully built a wooden railroad bridge in 1856. This was the first bridge to cross the Mississippi River.
- Durant, Polk County, Nebraska, is a small community in the United States. It was created when the Union Pacific Railroad reached that point during the building of the First transcontinental railroad.
- In 1870, Durant was chosen as a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
