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CHAPTER XCIX

FOUR NOTABLE DETROITERS

(EVERAL notable young Canadians of Scottish descent came to Detroit shortly before the beginning of the Civil War. They scored such individual success in their business enterprises and played so important a part in the industrial development of Detroit that they earned places of honor in the history of the city.

William Ker Muir at the age of 23 years gave up 23 years gave up his position as station agent of the railway at Ayr, Scotland, and came to Canada in 1852 with a letter of recommendation which secured him employment with the construction company then engaged in building the Great Western Railway from Niagara Falls to Detroit. This road is now known as the Grand Trunk.

Mr. Muir proved so capable and industrious that he was afterward made division superintendent of the eastern division and was stationed at Hamilton. There he became an intimate acquaintance of the family of William McMillan, who was interested in the construction of the railway. Two sons of Mr. McMillan, James and Hugh, and George Hendrie, who afterward conducted the railway trucking business at Hamilton, became well known to Mr. Muir. The Great Western was completed to Detroit in 1854. Meanwhile the Great Western was seeking connection toward the West. The Detroit & Pontiac Railway had been operated as a sort of plug line between the two cities for several years, but in 1848 another company procured a charter for the Oakland & Ottawa Railway, which was to extend from Pontiac to Grand Haven. On February 13, 1855, an act of legislature authorized the consolidation of the two roads so as to make a continuous route from Detroit to Grand Haven. From there a line of steamboats was to extend the transportation service to Milwaukee, hence the new title of the railway line, the Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee. This

construction reached Fentonville in October, 1855; Owosso in July, 1856; St. Johns in January, 1857; Ionia in the following August; Grand Rapids in July, 1858; Grand Haven, August 30, 1858.

While this work was in progress negotiations were conducted between the Michigan and Canadian railway companies, and in 1857 W. K. Muir was sent from Hamilton to act as superintendent of the work of completing the line to Grand Haven. His new office was involved in more detail than one man could well handle. He needed a purchasing agent to gather railway and car-building supplies. His friend, James McMillan, was still in Hamilton employed in a general hardware business, and through the suggestion of Mr. Muir and the influence of the elder McMillan, James McMillan was given the position of purchasing agent. For a time he exercised his function through the wholesale hardware firm of Buhl & Ducharme.

For many years there were no connecting tracks between the Michigan Central and Grand Trunk railways. Freight in transit from one line to the other had to be unloaded, trucked from one freight house to the other and there reloaded. Passengers were also transferred between the Third Street and Brush Street depots by hacks and omnibuses. The heavy traffic over that section of Jefferson Avenue, which was badly paved, played havoc with the street surface. This transfer business was conducted by about 50 independent truckmen who lived in Detroit. So many independent truckmen complicated bookkeeping and made trouble for the men who checked freight in and out of Detroit, so Mr. Muir suggested that the railways would be better served by having all transfer service furnished by one trucking concern, which would be under joint control of the railways.

That proposal was adopted and Mr. Muir introduced his old friend, George Hendrie, who was an experienced manager of the trucking business in Hamilton. Mr. Hendrie came to Detroit to enjoy a practical monopoly of the freight transfer business between railway stations and to collect freight about the city. To secure the necessary capital Mr. Hendrie organ

ized the Hendrie Trucking Company. Naturally this did not please the Detroit truckmen, who were thus separated from a highly profitable business in which they all had a co-operative interest. They called upon their friends and in 1858 held an indignation meeting at which harsh criticisms were made concerning the Canadian invasion.

Their protests had no effect, and in 1860 they made a last spectacular appeal to public sentiment. J. G. Erwin & Company had a shipment of 100 dressed hogs to be delivered to the Grand Trunk Railway. A long line of Detroit draymen gathered and loaded one or two hogs on each dray and then wound their way in procession through the business streets to show the business men of Detroit how their business had dwindled away. The exhibition produced a general laugh, but no public protest followed. The Hendrie Trucking Company's monopoly continued undisturbed.

The first public hacks were introduced in Detroit in 1845 and two years later a line of street omnibuses was introduced. The principal business of both was between depots and along the line of Jefferson Avenue. In the course of time Mr. Hendrie became interested in the omnibus service. A cheaper service was wanted for the transfer of passengers between depots and this need brought about the first street railway promotion in Detroit.

Street railway service in this country began with the New York & Harlem Railway, which was a horse car line built in 1832-33 from Prince Street through the Bowery to Fourteenth Street and Murray Hill. Later it was extended farther north and for a time it became a steam railway. Boston had its first street railway in 1836 and Philadelphia soon followed, but street railway building did not become common in cities of moderate size until 1860. During the succeeding 20 years they became the common transportation service in every American city.

A street railway franchise was granted to a group of local promoters by the Detroit common council May 24, 1862. The grant involved a deposit of $5,000 as an assurance of good faith and to prevent the promoters from making use of a free

public grant as a means of holding up actual street railway construction. The $5,000 was not deposited and the franchise was forfeited after four months. In the following November another franchise was granted to another group of citizen promoters. The first franchise granted the right or option to build street railway tracks in certain streets. The second grant gave the exclusive right to lay tracks in Woodward, Jefferson, Witherell, Grand River, Gratiot, Fort, and Third streets, thus opening the way for a monopoly of the most available streets of the city.

The promoter of both petitions was Eben N. Willcox. Mr. Willcox went to Syracuse, N. Y., where he interested a number of investors and a deposit of $5,000 was made with the common council January 10, 1863. Then the grantees filed articles of incorporation for the Detroit City Railway with capital stock fixed at $100,000. Bonds to that amount were floated in Syracuse. A single strap rail track was laid in Jefferson Avenue, extending from the bridge over the D. G., H. & M. tracks to the Michigan Central depot. The line found little patronage after street car riding had become commonplace and it became evident that the line must be extended for larger public accommodation before it would pay the cost of operation.

In 1864 some other investors were added to the company and $21,000 was invested in an extension up Woodward Avenue to Adams. All the tracks consisted of wooden ties and stringers laid on a mud foundation and a rail of strap iron spiked to the stringers. It was of the cheapest possible construction and two one-horse cars served for a time. The operation still did not pay. As a measure of economy the operation of the cars was turned over to George Hendrie, who always had extra horses for his trucking business.

In 1867, the stock was increased to $500,000 for further extensions of the line. Sidney D. Miller, E. W. Meddaugh and F. E. Driggs, all railway attorneys at some time, took five $100 shares each. James McMillan and George Hendrie, acting as trustees for 1,123 shares, became the controlling factors in the Detroit City Railway. The Woodward line was extended to

Erskine Street, the Jefferson Avenue line half way to Belle Isle. But the Fort Street and Grand River Avenue lines were forfeited and snapped up by other promoters, who afterward built street railway tracks and furnished service. It was in this way that George Hendrie found the opportunity which made him in later years a street railway magnate and a notable promoter of both city and suburban lines. For many years he held a controlling interest in the main lines of Detroit street railways and was one of the largest holders of street railway bonds as well as stocks, so that even when a majority of the stock was later sold to another company his minority stock, combined with his bond holdings, still made his holdings virtually the controlling interest.

James McMillan in 1864 promoted the organization of the Michigan Car Company in association with John S. Newberry, E. C. Dean and George Eaton. This soon became one of Detroit's leading industries and after its consolidation with the Peninsular Car Company, founded by F. J. Hecker and Charles L. Freer, it was one of the largest car-building enterprises of the country.

Mr. McMillan's younger brother Hugh came to Detroit in the early 1860's and was for a time employed with the Grand Trunk Railway, but he became one of the officers and general manager of the Michigan Car Company and its subsidiary plants. The two McMillans, George Hendrie and W. K. Muir were always close friends and business associates. In the course of time they became stockholders, officers and directors of practically every great manufacturing enterprise in Detroit, in several railway corporations, and in the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company and other shipping companies. All their undertakings seemed to prosper and all the men became multimillionaires while they contributed very largely toward the prosperity and growth of Detroit from a city of 50,000, when they arrived, to a city of more than a million inhabitants.