CANTIDAD:

500

RESUMEN

Edwin Hale Abbot (Jan. 26, 1834 – May 30, 1927), lawyer and railroad executive, was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, to Joseph Hale Abbot and Frances Ellingwood Larcom, both from well-established New England families. Edwin, one of five surviving Abbot children, entered Boston Latin School in 1846; one of his classmates there, Phillips Brooks, later Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church, became a lifelong friend. Abbot graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1855 (again Brooks was a classmate) followed by a master’s degree in 1858, and a Doctor of Laws degree (LL.D.) in 1861.

In November 1859, Edwin Hale Abbot married Mary Clark Carter of Worcester, Massachusetts. She died three months later. In 1866, he wed again, this time marrying Martha Trask Steele of Portland, Maine. Joseph and Martha raised three children together.

From 1862 to 1876, Abbot practiced law in Boston handling a number of high-profile cases, most notably serving as an attorney for the Alabama Claims against the government of Great Britain for aiding the Confederate cause during the American Civil War. He was also Law Editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser from 1862 until 1870. Three years after being named general solicitor and a director of the Wisconsin Central Railway in 1873, Abbot moved to Milwaukee to serve as its president. He was instrumental in the development of railroad lines, terminals, and mines in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota and led the construction of the Grand Central Station and terminal in Chicago. His Wisconsin Central Plan (1879), in which control of the corporation was vested in bondholders by giving them voting rights on stock, had a significant influence on American corporate practice.

Towards the end of his tenure as president of the Wisconsin Central Railway, Abbot commissioned Longfellow, Alden, & Harlow to build a house just off Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts. The Edwin H. Abbot House was completed in 1892. In 1937, it was purchased by the Longy School of Music and remains today an iconic Harvard Square house.

Abbot maintained a close connection to his alma mater and his fellow members of the Class of 1855 (of which he was class secretary) who included the engineer Alexander Agassiz, the philanthropist Theodore Lyman, and Phillips Brooks, Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church and one of the leading Episcopal clergymen in 19th century. America When Brooks died in 1893 it was Abbot who led a seven-year effort to memorialize him on Harvard’s campus. Phillips Brooks House was finally dedicated in January1900, with Harvard President Charles W. Eliot in attendance. Several months later Abbot contributed to Eliot’s Summer School for Cuban Teachers, donating $500 to help fund the transportation and housing costs for the project.

In the years before his passing, Abbott served as Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Edwin Hale Abbot died in 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 93 years old.

Further Reading

The Edwin Hale Abbot family papers, containing extensive correspondence and records of his family and personal life and educational and business activities are archived at the Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.

1. “Edwin Hale Abbott,” Who’s Who in America Vol. 5 (1908-9): 2-3.

2. Gotlieb, Howard B. “The Friendship and the House: Phillips Brooks and Edwin Hale Abbot Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1963): 37-48.