Chapter 13: Additional Interests

Aug 17, 1858

After many kisses goodbye, I was finally allowed to leave this morning. Everyone and everything were aboard the Freedom, although there were a few disgruntled passengers still standing on the docks looking for passage to St. Joseph or Kansas City. Despite his personality flaws and shortcomings, we let the territorial governor sail with us. He was curious about why we weren’t taking passengers or cargo until I told him how much gold we were transporting.

Dad was taking Mr. Pate and Mr. Franklin, as well as all three of their wives, but they would be stopping in Jefferson City, the same city where we raided the pirate’s farmhouse last trip. They would be negotiating for the right to run telegraph wires from St. Louis to Kansas City, and then north through St. Joseph to Council Bluffs. From Council Bluffs, we planned to run the line to Libertyville. Iowa had already given us permission to run telegraph wires there.

Even though there was already a telegraph to St. Joseph, service all along the line was sporadic at best. I intended to use cedar poles, not poles made from whatever saplings we found nearby. I wanted the poles to last for years, and not to be subject to the same decay causing the flimsy poles of the current company to topple.

The man who came to me with the idea was Ira Witt. He had worked with his father installing the current lines from St. Louis to Kansas City, and then northward to St. Joseph. His father had been the engineer hired by the current company to oversee the work. Unfortunately, the company had ignored his father’s warnings that their proposed method would fail. Less than a year after the line was completed, the predicted problems surfaced, and the telegraph company publicly blamed the elder Witt for the problems. Despite proclaiming his innocence, it took more than two years before the truth became common knowledge. In the meantime, he had been vilified and humiliated.

The telegraph company had been undercapitalized when they started the work. Their contract with the state allowed only three months to complete the installation or the state would award the contract to someone else, so they cut corners. They used untreated saplings for the poles. Mr. Witt had insisted on cedar poles or treated wood poles. Since he got neither, the poles were constantly rotting and falling.

To cut expenses further, the gauge of the copper wire they used was too thin, making it weak and easy to break. To save more money on wire, they didn’t allow enough extra between each pole, causing the wire to snap when the wire shrank due to extremely cold weather.

Ira suggested buying the existing company and upgrading everything. Mr. Franklin was adamant that we NOT buy the existing company. We needed to install all new poles and all new copper wire. If we bought the existing company, we would be paying for the faulty lines, and would be inheriting their bad reputation. Since we’d have to replace every pole and all the wire, it would cost the same to begin a new company. Since the reputation of Libertyville Bank was growing rapidly, tying the new Libertyville Telegraph Company to the Libertyville Bank would give us a measure of credibility as soon as we started.

Ira wanted to buy the old company to see the original owners tossed out on their ear. Mr. Franklin explained that it would be even better to watch the company shut down when everyone started using ours. They would walk away with nothing.

I had further ambitions for the telegraph, hoping to extend it throughout Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa.

Aug 19

The group going to Jefferson City debarked once we docked. They had money for their expenses, and five hundred thousand dollars in federal bank drafts to show the Missouri lawmakers that we were fully capitalized. I wished them good luck. They also had twenty guards.

By nightfall, we reached St. Louis. James met us and directed us to a dock on the Illinois side of the river where our train awaited us. Despite the late hour, within half an hour of docking, dockworkers were busy unloading our pallets from the boat and loading them aboard the train. While they worked, my men stood guard, making sure that everything made it aboard the train and stayed there.

Once I boarded the train, I was impressed. The railroad rented us rail cars with deluxe accommodations, including a car with three cooks and a five-woman serving staff to feed us. Even with cranes and so many dockworkers to help, it took three hours to finish loading the gold. In the meantime, I gave federal bank drafts worth two million dollars to James, explaining that I had even more with me and would begin shipping supplies to him for building the telegraph line to Libertyville.

As an afterthought, he told me that our stamping mill was due any day now, and the second one for the gravel would accompany it. Knowing that I wanted to pave the entire Pioneer Road, I asked him to order two more. He and Captain Nadeau waved goodbye as our train pulled out of the station. I was a bit disappointed because it was still dark outside. This was my first trip on a train, and I couldn’t see anything except an occasional speck of light far off in the darkness. After setting up a guard schedule, I retired, surprised at how quickly I began drifting off, lulled to sleep by the steady rhythm of the clacking of the wheels on the rails.

Aug 22

We arrived in Philadelphia well before dawn. Yesterday afternoon we sent a telegram warning of our predawn arrival and were pleasantly surprised to see an army of wagons, mules, muleskinners, and enough federal troops that they could have won the Revolutionary War in three months. The captain was obviously surprised when our men directed him to someone so young and did a double take when introduced to me.

“You must be doing something right to have enough gold to be able to afford a private train, and to warrant so many troops,” he commented as he shook my hand.

“I just learned that treating people right can have surprising results,” I replied. Four hours later, the last wagonload arrived at the Mint. It would have taken considerably longer, but the Mint was directly across the street to the west of the Pennsylvania Railroad freight depot. The troops closed off Juniper Street in either direction for one block, so our wagons could go back and forth without waiting on cross-traffic.

“Now I know how Claude felt in New Orleans when you delivered there,” the director chuckled, surveying the two-hundred-twenty pallets. Fortunately, the Philadelphia Mint was better equipped to handle the sudden arrival of so much gold and had begun processing the first pallet as soon as it was unloaded.

Aug 23

With the gold delivered, I let eighty of our men return home. The rest would stay here to keep an eye on things and would accompany me on the way home with the Federal notes and whatever gold coins we took. After checking in with the director of the Mint, Ira and I left, renting horses from a livery stable near the hotel. An hour later, we arrived at the business we wanted, well outside of town.

James Callahan had already contacted them to let them know what we planned, and to assure them that we were well funded. An hour later, they had payment for the first half of the telegraph poles. All the poles were to be cedar. Based on James’ earlier assurance that we had the money, they had already begun producing the poles and had nearly a thousand ready to ship to St. Louis.

After lunch, we rode through much of downtown and the waterfront securing supplies and suppliers for the things we needed to start a new telegraph company. Aside from a supplier for the wire, we found reliable suppliers for telegraph keys and insulators, as well as batteries and the acid for the batteries. When we got back to the Mint to see how things were going, there was a telegram from Dad saying that the Missouri legislature wholeheartedly accepted our plan, not that there had been a question in our minds.

The unreliability of the current telegraph company was legendary. Since we weren’t applying for a contract to be the sole supplier of telegraph service, we didn’t really need their approval, but it would make things easier and Mr. Franklin said it would help in the long run to play nice with the legislature. The legislators almost begged Mr. Franklin to open branches of Libertyville Bank in Jefferson City, St. Louis, and Kansas City.

I was stunned when the director of the Mint asked if we could open a branch in Philadelphia. Too many banks had closed, causing people to distrust the remaining banks.

Hoping to catch him before they left for home, I rushed to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to Mr. Franklin at the hotel where they were staying. I figured the wives would insist on a night out on the town to celebrate. His reply arrived via messenger three hours later. They would leave tomorrow morning and be here in five days. When he learned about it, the director of the Mint was ecstatic that we would consider opening a bank branch here.

Aside from the prestige of having a branch here, it would make our transactions with the Mint easier. Someone from this branch could handle the details of the gold shipments, distributing needed coins to us and any other branches we decided to open.

Aug 24

Grinning from ear to ear, Ira left for St. Louis aboard a train this morning. He would put together crews in St. Louis to begin phase one, the telegraph to Kansas City, and then St. Joseph. From there, he would push his crew towards Council Bluffs, and then Libertyville. The entire route to Council Bluffs would remain north and east of the Missouri River. If all went well, the line to Libertyville would be finished before Christmas, before winter weather froze the ground.

Phase two would be a separate line west of the Missouri River, from Libertyville south to Kansas City, then east through Jefferson City, and eventually to St. Louis. That route would remain entirely west and south of the Missouri River until reaching St. Louis. Aside from linking several large cities, and the smaller cities between them, Phase 2 would provide a redundant system giving us two different paths to St. Louis. If one line was damaged, the other should still work. A short line would link Kansas City, Missouri, with Kansas City, Kansas, providing a third link.

Phase three would be a line across Iowa from Council Bluffs, through Des Moines, to Davenport. There it would connect to the telegraph line in Moline, Illinois, giving us a second connection to the East.

Despite stifling humidity the next day, I finished securing suppliers for the things we needed. Bothered by Ira’s comment that the poles would be the thing slowing us down, I spent two days using the railroad to visit parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I ordered cedar telegraph poles from mills in Camden and Trenton, New Jersey, as well as Allentown and Reading, Pennsylvania. They would supplement the poles from Philadelphia. James had given me a list of mills, and I originally chose Philadelphia because their mill was the largest and I was already going there.

By the time I finished with everything, I had ordered and paid for an enormous quantity of cedar poles, and even more wire.

Back in Philadelphia, a day before everyone was to arrive, I toured the city, visiting Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and the Constitution was debated and signed. Knowing I was in a room where, less than a hundred years ago, the Founding Fathers of our country once debated, sent chills racing up my spine. Two blocks to the east, I visited Carpenter’s Hall where the Continental Congress forged, and then tempered and honed the Declaration of Independence.

Aug 28

I met everyone when the train pulled in at 6:42 this morning, only fifteen minutes late. They were all excited to be in such a large and prestigious city, the second largest city in the country. Philadelphia was about four times the size of St. Louis. I was just happy that the stifling humidity the area had experienced since my arrival chose today to end. We walked north across Market Street to the Great Western Hotel where my men and I were staying. The hotel was just north of the railroad’s freight depot. The Mint was across the street west of the railroad’s freight depot. After taking their belongings to the rooms I had reserved for them, everyone joined me for breakfast at the hotel. Over breakfast, we discussed the telegraph and possible bank branches.

Mr. Franklin knew several bank managers he trusted enough to run a branch of the bank; four of them were relatives and he knew them very well. By lunch, we decided to go ahead and open branches in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Jefferson City, and Kansas City. We had the money, and Mr. Franklin felt we had the people. He headed for the telegraph office to send four telegrams, returning two hours later with a monstrous grin on his face. “All four are eager to work for us. Even though they had heard of Libertyville Bank, they didn’t know I managed it,” he explained proudly. He also told us that the bank he had managed in Virginia had since closed.

The Mint director just pointed south when we asked if he knew of a nearby bank we might be able to buy. Sure enough, just across Chestnut Street, directly across the street south of the Mint, was a bank with a sign proclaiming it Merchant’s Credit Bank. By supper, we had a tentative agreement with the bank, pending a walk-through tomorrow and a verification of their records.

Aug 29

While Mr. Franklin reviewed the records of the bank, I looked around the building and liked what I saw. Three days later, we owned the nearly defunct bank. Mr. Franklin agreed with my assessment of the basement. Like the cellar in my home in Libertyville, we would build a second wall here, partitioning off part of the basement.

A strong room door already secured the top of the stairs to the basement. We would install a second one at the bottom of the stairs and use the visible two-thirds of the basement for a normal strong room. One section of the shelving along the back wall would be movable, hiding a third strong room door, as well as the remainder of the basement. In there, we could keep gold ingots until the Mint was ready for them. They could also keep huge quantities of gold and silver coins. There would even be a monstrous steel safe to hold federal bank drafts.

The Franklins stayed in Philadelphia to oversee the remodel of the bank and the startup of our second branch. His four relatives would come to Philadelphia to help start the new branch. He would send one of them to oversee the Libertyville branch in his absence. When Philadelphia was open and running, St. Louis would be next, and then Kansas City. Jefferson City would be the final branch, although I had a feeling we would end up with more in the future.

Mr. Franklin planned to have his older brother manage the Philadelphia branch since he had successfully managed the Richmond branch of the bank they had all worked for and was used to big city banking, although hardly in a city this big. Philadelphia was at least ten times the size of Richmond.

With a million dollars in gold coins, and a thick packet of Federal bank drafts, the remaining guards and I began the return trip to Libertyville. We made two stops before St. Louis--Harrisburg and Pittsburg--arranging with a mill in each city for the delivery of cedar telegraph posts.

I found Ira busy installing wire west of St. Louis. His team followed the team installing the posts. His crew ran the wire from post to post while Ira double-checked the amount of slack to ensure we wouldn’t have the same problems as the current company when the weather got cold. I was glad that he knew how much slack he needed between each post because, like with so many other things, I didn’t have a clue.

Our startup telegraph company made the newspaper and the existing company tried to entice Ira into buying them out. When I read the story, I noticed that the paper mentioned the link between Libertyville Telegraph and Libertyville Bank, as well as the fact that we planned to open a branch of Libertyville Bank in St. Louis as soon as our branch in Philadelphia opened. Ira told me the reaction to the story was extremely positive, both about the new telegraph company and about the bank.

Having found and checked on Ira, I returned to St. Louis and the men who had remained there to guard our money. We waited two more days for one of our own ships and sailed home aboard the Tippecanoe.

Dec 25, 1858

Nearly four months later, my second Christmas morning in Libertyville found me in a reflective, albeit satisfied mood. Despite an early snowfall in October, the ground had remained workable long enough to complete the telegraph to Libertyville. Even though we can’t continue installing poles until spring, we’re stockpiling supplies on leased lots and in warehouses along the route of Phase 2. Having so many mills providing the poles made the difference between finishing before the ground froze and not.

Construction for Phase 2 will begin as soon as the ground thaws enough to dig holes for the posts and for the concrete to set properly. Ira will check the ground around Kansas City and we’ll monitor the ground near Libertyville in case one thaws before the other. Being farther south, Kansas City may thaw first. If so, and if we attract enough new laborers, Ira plans to start both north and east from Kansas City at the same time.

Five days after our telegraph service from St. Louis to Kansas City started, the old company closed, forcing us to use their decrepit lines north to St. Joseph until our own line reached there. Their closure did save us some money as we absorbed their telegraph offices and most of their operators, as well as the telegraph keys and batteries. We made sure not to change the name until our own lines reached there. Ira decided that Mr. Franklin was right; watching the old owners slink away empty-handed was better than buying them out. Seeing that we were doing everything properly, Ira’s dad wanted to oversee the second group if we got enough people. If not, he’d supervise the men setting the poles while his son supervised the men stringing the wire.

Our four new bank branches all opened amidst great revelry in each city. In each city except Philadelphia, every other bank closed within two weeks as depositors withdrew their money and deposited it with us. In many cases, we purchased existing loans from the other banks at a deep discount, but only after evaluating each loan individually.

When the banks closed, we bought all their repossessed properties for pennies on the dollar. The economy would recover someday, and we had enough in reserve to sit on the properties.

We also received a deep discount on loans that were already behind on payments. With those, we spoke with each individual, which was no small task. We made them a new loan based on the discounted amount we had paid for the loans, not the original purchase price, making the payments and debt smaller.

If they defaulted anyway, we had enough in reserve that we could hold the properties until their values recovered and people were looking to buy. We made money and helped a lot of people who were struggling financially. For those individuals we felt would default anyway, we bought their loans from the defunct banks at the same rate as those who had already defaulted.

Our harvest was incredibly successful, and we sold tons of grain. Speaking of tons, we have seventy tons of rice waiting for spring planting. I have a difficult time believing it but was told that the yield will be more than four thousand tons of rice!

Despite selling some of our grain, we still have three times as much of everything now compared to last winter. Pantries and root cellars are jammed with bottled, pickled, dried, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Food stores for the mine in Paha Sapa, as well as the coal mine and our lumberjacks, are just as full. Even our cattle herd increased. We sent men back out just before ranchers usually sold off their excess cattle so they didn’t have to feed them all winter. They returned with almost five thousand more cattle, including two hundred more dairy cows. They also bought another two-hundred-fifty mules, God bless ‘em. Without mules, we’d be shit outta luck. Horses would do, but not as well.

Penny gave birth to a son on December 1 and both mother and son are doing well, although Danny, her husband, seems to be a bit frazzled. I remember the feeling all too well. They named their son Carl James, after both my father and me. Flower, Polly, and Molly gave birth on the third, fifth, and seventh of December, giving me two more sons and another daughter. Emma, Flo, and Madison are pregnant again. I teased them that I wasn’t aware of a competition to see who could have the most children.

Less than two years after we left Virginia, Libertyville is a thriving, prosperous, vibrant city with a population in excess of eleven thousand. We are technically a city since we wrote and adopted a charter, elected a mayor, and had our charter approved by the Nebraska Territorial Legislature. I did manage to dodge being elected mayor, letting my father have the honor. He’d done an excellent job of it unofficially since we got here anyway.

This Christmas, we have not one, but six churches in town. My wives and I plan to attend three of them, just to make an appearance.

The restlessness I felt last year is practically nonexistent, and it seems that, as Libertyville grows, their need to know I’m on another adventure has diminished, much to my relief.

The Paha Sapa gold mine and our coal mine will continue operations all winter, although we can’t transport the gold ingots until spring because the river freezes over farther north. They returned most of the mules to Libertyville for the winter, so they didn’t have to house and feed them.

We have again doubled our land holdings by buying all available land south of us to the Kansas Territory border, effectively buying all unclaimed land in ten more counties. We completed the agreed upon improvements along the entire two-hundred-eighty-mile length of the road used by west coast-bound pioneers and Pike’s Peak gold seekers, and the first one hundred miles of the road is macadamized. We now call it the Pioneer Road.

Technically, we fulfilled our agreement with the former territorial governor to repair the road. We improved the entire length of the road, beginning at the Omaha city limits. Their original goal was to entice pioneers to begin their trek from Omaha instead of Bellevue. When we macadamized the road, however, we started at the Libertyville docks, connecting with the Pioneer Road well west of Omaha, a shorter route than going through Omaha. That effectively eliminated Omaha as a jumping off point. That our docks are bigger and newer than those at Saratoga Bend, and that we sell coal means that most steamboats prefer our docks anyway.

The streets in Libertyville are macadamized, including several where houses haven’t yet been built. We try to stay four streets ahead of the building, no easy task when we’re planting and harvesting crops. The road north to the coal mine was improved and is scheduled to be macadamized this coming year. Citizens of the towns north of us use the road more than we do, but shipments of brick, limestone, and cement arrive weekly via wagon from Fort Atkinson, as well as aboard the Paha Sapa.

Delegations from St. Louis and Kansas City approached us about funding a railroad between the two cities. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad will be complete in a few months, drawing business away from their cities. The new, albeit slow-to-materialize Davenport to Council Bluffs railroad will draw away even more of their business. They hoped we would build a railroad to counter the others.

Several smaller ventures tried unsuccessfully, mainly due to undercapitalization. Our discussion of the proposal led to a suggestion to build it, and then extend the railroad north from Kansas City to Council Bluffs. It should also give us an edge when construction of the railroad to the west starts since we’d own one of the main existing routes.

We even discussed running a railroad into the Pike’s Peak area but decided that we might end up with a ghost railroad to nowhere when the gold played out. We even discussed running a railroad to the Pacific, paralleling one of the immigrant trails, but a brief discussion was as far as the idea got.

For now, we agreed to fund the railroad from St. Louis to Kansas City, and then north to Council Bluffs. I insisted on using only treated wood for ties, and that we cut no corners during construction. Once the route was surveyed and approval gained from both the federal government and the Missouri legislature, we would fund the construction and the startup costs. We finished the survey a week ago, and we’re sure approval by the Missouri legislature will be almost automatic since the federal government already approved it and the federal government owns the land.

The federal government even allowed us a ten-mile right of way on both sides of the railroad. When someone already owns land in the right of way, we get an equivalent amount of land somewhere else adjacent to our right of way. For the two-hundred-fifty-mile railroad, that’s more than three million acres of central Missouri land.

Four more Sioux tribes and one very desperate tribe of Pawnee have joined us. The Pawnee and Sioux have battled each other for more than three decades for control of the land to the west of us, much of which we now own. The Sioux eventually drove the Pawnee south of the Platte River. This particular Pawnee tribe lost more than half of their hunters last summer when lightning spooked a buffalo herd that trampled their hunters. Only six of their hunters survived, three of those with broken bones. Their three healthy hunters ran across our Kansa hunters and learned about us.

I told the Sioux I would let the Pawnee stay at least until next spring. If there were still tensions between them, I would outfit the Pawnee and send them back south of the Platte River. The next night, the Sioux chiefs agreed to let the Pawnee stay for as long as they wanted. Chief Lone Buffalo reminded everyone that I took in his tribe despite the fact that whites and Sioux had previously fought each other. He felt it was only fair to extend the same treatment to the Pawnee.

I took it as a good omen when the Sioux hunters went out with the three healthy Pawnee hunters. Taking the hunting wagons, they were gone for four days, returning with a dozen dressed and nearly frozen buffalo carcasses. When the Sioux chiefs asked me to provide the Pawnee hunters with horses and rifles, I did.

The Sioux chiefs returned two weeks later with the leader of the Omaha Indians. Yet again, I learned something major about which I had no idea. Barely fifteen miles north of our coal mine was a reservation the Federal Government had assigned to the Omaha Indians. The Sioux knew the Omaha were there, and traded with them, as did our coal miners. The Omaha had been surprised to find Sioux and Pawnee hunting together.

They already knew about us, and about us buying Paha Sapa. They tried to trade with the Sioux for some of the rifles, but the Sioux politely explained that I gave them only to those hunters who lived on property I owned.

With that tidbit, the Omaha chiefs and elders met and decided to ask me to buy their reservation. Aside from qualifying them for rifles, they knew how fickle treaties with the government were. The location they now inhabited included Blackbird Hill, a special place to them. They didn’t want to lose it if white settlers decided they wanted the land.

George Pate had his hands full trying to get the purchase of the Reservation approved. The governor finally received approval from Washington, contingent on all the Omaha chiefs agreeing. I paid a dollar just to make the transaction legal. I paid George Pate a lot more to accomplish the task.

A similar-sized parcel between our coal mine and the reservation cost me six hundred thousand dollars since it was all prime land located within twenty miles of the Missouri River. I figured that three dollars an acre was an acceptable price. I added it to the reservation since there were already nine villages living there.

“Are there any other tribes I don’t know about on our land?” I asked rhetorically a few days later.

“The Otoe,” Dawn answered with uncharacteristic nervousness.

“Otoe?” I asked.

“And the Iowa, the Sac and Fox, and the Nemaha half-breed reservations,” she added.

I found out that the southern quarter of Gage County along the Kansas border held the northern half of the Otoe reservation. The other three reservations were all crammed into the far southeast corner. Aside from those reservations, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kiowa all hunted and lived nomadically in the area as they followed the herds of buffalo.

Three days later, I headed out to meet the Otoe, accompanied by an impressive entourage. Running Buffalo went along as the representative of the Kansa, Lone Buffalo represented the Sioux, Chief White Wolf represented the Pawnee, and Chief Standing Elk the Omaha. There were also thirty warriors accompanying us, ten from each tribe except the Pawnee.