John W. Garrett
John Work Garrett was an American merchant turned banker who became president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1858 and led the railroad for nearly three decades. The B&O became one of the most important American railroads by the time Garrett died. The rail magnate would also become a noted philanthropist, providing Johns Hopkins University with B&O stock worth more than 1 billion inflation-adjusted dollars. He provided crucial support for the Union cause during the Civil War, expanded the railroad to reach Chicago, Illinois, and competed with the Pennsylvania Railroad for access to New York City.
Early life
Born in Baltimore, on July 31, 1820, to merchant Robert Garrett and his wife Elizabeth Stouffer Garrett. Like his elder brother Henry Garrett, John W. Garrett attended Boisseau Academy in Baltimore, essentially a prep school for Lafayette College. He attended the college in Easton, Pennsylvania, but never graduated. His father Robert , had come from Ireland as a young boy in 1801 with his parents and family, including his father who died at sea during the transit. The Garrett family also included a daughter, Elizabeth Garrett White.John Work Garrett married Rachel Ann Harrisson, and the couple had four children, three of whom survived their parents: Robert Garrett,
Thomas Harrison Garrett and Mary Elizabeth Garrett. Their initial residence was on Fayette Street, in the heart of Baltimore's present business district.
Early commercial career
At age 19 Garrett began working as a clerk and apprentice in his father's mercantile, banking and financial services firm, founded 1819, Robert Garrett and Company. He and his brother Henry learned the business from the ground up, as had their father, including how to tan leather from the teamster Alexander Sharp, how to salt pork and how to pack madder and Spanish whiting in barrels. While Henry remained in Baltimore, John Garrett headed west, seeking to expand trade over the mountains. His travels through Virginia into Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and beyond taught him that the key to Baltimore's commerce lay in the western states, whose trade came to eastern ports including Baltimore.The Garrett company's initial fleet of Conestoga wagons carried food and supplies west over the old National Road, from Baltimore to Cumberland, Maryland and further to Ohio and the territorial capital at Vandalia, Illinois, or via the Ohio River toward the Mississippi River, or over the Cumberland Trail towards Kentucky and Tennessee. From their store then located on Howard Street, Robert Garrett and Company supplied western general stores with various goods, including flints, chocolate and chalk, and in turn received ginseng, snakeroot and whiskey.
As the brothers took over the business from their father, they sponsored new projects, building warehouses and hotels such as the Howard House and the Eutaw House on Baltimore's west side. With the end of the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848, they expanded toward the new American Southwest and California, causing the largest steamship then ever built in Baltimore, "The Monumental City", which soon made regular runs down the Chesapeake Bay to New Orleans, and San Francisco. The company added to its fleet and expanded its mercantile and financial business to South America and Europe.
Interest in B&O Railroad
Garrett began purchasing B&O Railroad stock early, when the railroad was competing with the newly completed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which paralleled the Potomac River from Georgetown near Washington, D.C., to Cumberland and the National Road. Virginia also subsidized canals and railroads which would connect with the National Road further along, in Wheeling. In its early years the B&O had a combination of private and public ownership, because it needed public grants and loans to both acquire right-of-way and build the railroad, but this also led to conflicts within the board. Of the 30 members of the B&O's board of directors, 18 were selected by the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore, who helped fund the construction. In 1854, the Baltimore City Council extended a five million dollars emergency loan to the struggling railroad's growing construction debt as the line pushed westward over the Appalachian Mountains. During the Panic of 1857, money became extremely tight.Brother Henry Garrett had been serving as a B&O director for some time and in 1847, John Work Garrett joined him. The local newspaper The Sun on November 17, 1858, reported on the extensive debate and controversy between those directors wishing to keep the line in private hands, and those representing the interests of the state and city governments. The meeting included an election, and by a vote of 16 to 14, Garrett was elected over incumbent executive Chauncy Brooks of "Cloverdale", who represented the state interests. Following a motion by board member Johns Hopkins, the largest stockholder since 1847 as well as chairman of the financial committee, Garrett became the B&O's new president. Hopkins, a Maryland native, had become a hardware wholesale merchant on South Charles Street and made his substantial fortune in Baltimore. The Garrett Company as well as the B&O also had strong ties to the London-based George Peabody & Company, and through their business interests, financier George Peabody.
The Civil War
The B&O got an early taste of the Civil War during abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Federal armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Garrett learned that raiders had stopped a train at Harper's Ferry, and sent a telegram to the U.S. Secretary of War. Federal troops with U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee, from Arlington House, Virginia across the river from the Capital, were sent to put down the rebellion on a special B&O train.Garrett had previously always considered the B&O to be a "Southern railroad", and had originally pro-South sympathies. However, his business sense, with possibly political and economic acumen made him side with the Union and the policies of President Abraham Lincoln. Under his direction, the B&O was instrumental in supporting the Federal government, as it was the main rail connection between Washington, D.C., and the northern and western states. Garrett became a confidante of President Lincoln, and often accompanied him on his visits to battlefields in Maryland.
During the third Confederate invasion of the North in July 1864, B&O agents began reporting Confederate troop movements in western Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley and through Frederick, Maryland under General Jubal Early eleven days prior to what became the critical Battle of the Monocacy. Garrett had their intelligence passed to the U.S. War Department, particularly to Major General Lew Wallace, who commanded the department responsible for defense of the area surrounding the national capitol. As battle preparations progressed, Garrett provided transport for Federal troops and munitions, and on two occasions President Lincoln contacted him directly for further information. Though Union forces lost this battle, the two-day delay allowed General Ulysses S. Grant, then campaigning further south and threatening the Confederate capital, Richmond and nearby Petersburg to detach several Federal regiments from his substantial forces and send them up north on the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River. They two days later thus repelled the Gen. Early's attack on Washington at the Battle of Fort Stevens on the capital's northwestern outskirts of the capital. After the battle, President Lincoln commended Garrett as "The right arm of the Federal Government in the aid he rendered the authorities in preventing the Confederates from seizing Washington and securing its retention as the Capital of the Loyal States."
In 1865, Garrett organized the funeral train that took the assassinated president's corpse from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. The several-week procession included stops and ceremonies in Baltimore; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; New York City; Albany, New York; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland; Columbus; Indianapolis; and Chicago.
Postbellum activities
After the war, Garrett acquired three gunboats that had been used in the blockade service and refitted them into packet boats, establishing the first regular line service from Baltimore to Liverpool, Pennsylvania. He was also associated with several telegraph companies.Garrett also expanded the B&O by purchasing competing railroads in Ohio and Virginia. The B&O had reached Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before the war, where it competed with the Pennsylvania Railroad for western traffic. However, the route west from Pittsburgh continued through the Appalachian Mountains, which raised costs as well as engineering headaches. The easier route west, along either bank of the Ohio River, was initially owned by competing railroads. Garrett bought the Central Ohio Railroad, which reached Sandusky, Ohio, from which a relatively level expanse continued through Ohio into Indiana and Illinois. In the early 1870s, Garrett expanded the B&O westward from Chicago Junction through Nappanee, Indiana, reaching "Baltimore Junction" at the edge of Chicago on November 15, 1874.
Railroad strikes of 1877
Garrett was president of the B&O during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which was a result of his wage-cutting response to the widespread depression caused by the Panic of 1873, as well as his need for capital to expand the railroad.On July 20, 1877, he asked Maryland Governor John Lee Carroll to move troops from Baltimore, Maryland to Cumberland, Maryland, where large crowds had gathered at a B&O facility and the situation deteriorated. This troop movement erupted into riots in Baltimore, which continued to spread throughout much of the country. President Rutherford B. Hayes ultimately used federal troops to end the strike by force.
Following the strife, in 1880, Garrett helped organize the B&O Employees' Relief Association. The B&O provided its initial endowment and assumed all administrative costs. Worker coverage included sickness, indefinite time for recovery from accidents, and a death benefit. In 1884, Garrett was instrumental in negotiating the loans which allowed the B&O to extend its main line northeast to Philadelphia and through connections with the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to reach New York City, to compete further with the dominant northeastern lines, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central.
Meanwhile, Garrett became deeply involved with the Peabody Institute, which George Peabody had created and endowed in 1857, along with several programs and facilities which opened following the Civil War in 1866. As one of the institute's trustees, Garrett asked Peabody to persuade Johns Hopkins to make the bequest that eventually led to creation of the Johns Hopkins University in 1876.