3 March: George Pullman

George Pullman, inventor and industrialist, inventor of the railway sleeping car was born on this date in 1831.

1. Pullman was born in Brocton, New York, the son of Emily Caroline and Lewis Pullman, who was a carpenter and inventor. He was one of nine children.

2. His father had invented a machine that could move buildings onto new foundations. George took over the family business at the age of 22 when his father died.

3. Three years later, he won a contract with the State of New York to use his father’s invention to move buildings to make way for a canal.

4. His wife’s name was Harriet Sanger. She was the daughter of a construction company owner. They had four children. There was also a man named Gustave Behring who claimed he was Pullman’s illegitimate son.

5. He spent some time in Colorado during the gold rush. He saw a business opportunity catering to the needs of miners there. He opened a ranch, providing food, accommodation and supplies for the miners and a place to exchange tired teams of animals for fresh ones before ascending the mountain passes, earning the ranch the name Pullman’s Switch.

6. Pullman is most famous for inventing the railway sleeping car, which he modelled on packet boats and marketed as a luxury way to travel. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his body was carried in one of Pullman’s carriages from Washington DC, to Springfield, which with thousands of people lining the route, helped raise awareness of the sleeping cars.

7. He hired freed slaves to provide services to his passengers. These men served as porters, valets, entertainers and waiters. Whether this was a good job or not isn’t clear as at least one of my sources contradicted itself, saying at one point that these men had to live on the tips they got, but later saying they were well paid and got to travel and were hence well respected in their communities. They became known as Pullman porters.

8. He founded a company town in Chicago for the workers in his factory, which sounds like a good thing to do, but he turned out to be as big an asshole as many of the super rich people today. In 1894, when the demand died down, Pullman cut jobs and wages but still charged the same rent and didn’t cut utility costs in his town, which led to violent strike action by the residents for which federal troops were called in.

9. On October 19, 1897, Pullman died of a heart attack in Chicago, Illinois. He was 66 years old.

10. He was buried in a mahogany coffin lined with lead, which was then encased in a block of concrete. This was because his family feared that his disgruntled employees might try to dig him up and desecrate the body.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/