Albro martin biography of barack

This is a well-wrought biography of a man who hasn't got his due in American history, perhaps because he was so tied up with Canadian history.

He was born to Scottish immigrants in a small town in Ontario in 1838, but moved to the booming frontier town of St. Paul, Minnesota, when he was 18.

Big 4 railroad tycoons

After learning the ropes as a freight agent, helping transport all of the new material to settlers and a little of their "winter wheat" back East, he set up on his own as a local merchant, bought some steamships and ran a warehousing business.

Hill's big break came in 1879, when he wrangled some capitalists, including Donald Smith and George Stephen of Canada, chiefs of the First Bank of Montreal, to buy up the bankrupt St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, and agreed to complete its lines within a year to the Canadian border.

In 1889 he decided to take his renamed "Great Northern" railroad all the way to the Pacific Coast, which he accomp