Oliver Ames Jr. (November 5, 1807 – March 9, 1877) was president of

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

when the railroad met the

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the " First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incor ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

for the completion of the First transcontinental railroad in North America.

Biography

Born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he was a son of

Oliver Ames Sr. Oliver Ames Sr., or "Old Oliver", (April 11, 1779 – September 11, 1863) was the family patriarch of the Ames family of Easton, Massachusetts. He established the family shovel business, which over generations grew to become one of the largest ...

and Susannah (Angier) Ames, and a brother of

Oakes Ames Oakes Ames (January 10, 1804 – May 8, 1873) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts. As a congressman, he is credited by many historians as being ...

.Spencer Marks (2005),
The Ames Family of North Easton, MA
''. Retrieved December 29, 2005.Union Pacific Railroad,
Union Pacific: Significant Individuals
''. Retrieved December 29, 2005. Young Oliver attended public schools for a few years, then Franklin Academy in North Andover. He briefly entered the law field, but left to help in the family shovel business. By 1844, Oliver and his brother

entered into partnership with their father, operating under the company name of Oliver Ames & Sons. It was a good time to be in the shovel business, as the nation was experiencing a dramatic expansion of canals, railroads, and other major infrastructure, all of which were built by men swinging shovels. Oliver Ames Jr. served as president of

(UP) while the railroad was busy building the First transcontinental railroad in North America. He was its president '' pro tem'' from 1866 until 1868, and was formally elected president of the company on March 12, 1868. He continued as president until March 8, 1871. His tenure was marked by controversy since his 1866 ascent to the presidency was over

Thomas C. Durant Thomas Clark Durant (February 6, 1820 – October 5, 1885) was an American physician, businessman, and financier. He was vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in 1869 when it met with the Central Pacific railroad at Promontory Sum ...

who had tried to gain the position for himself. Durant filed lawsuits against Ames that stopped construction, and Ames retaliated by garnering support to remove Durant from the railroad's executive committee. A divided board of directors was beyond Ames' management capabilities, and he finally acquiesced to readmitting Durant in 1867, and Crédit Mobilier awarded Ames a new construction contract.PBS; The American Experience,
People & Events: Oakes Ames (1804-1873)
'. Retrieved December 29, 2005. In 1873, Ames succeeded his brother as the head of Crédit Mobilier. Oliver Ames Jr. served in the Massachusetts State Senate in 1852 and 1857. He was a Whig and later a Republican.

Personal life

Starting around 1826, Oliver became involved in the

temperance movement The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emph ...

; he was said to be the first man in Easton to sign a temperance pledge. Ames married Sarah Lothrop on June 11, 1833. Sarah was daughter of Howard Lothrop of Easton, Massachusetts. They had two children: Frederick Lothrop Ames and Helen Angier. Like the rest of his family, Oliver Jr. was a devoted Unitarian, and attended Unitarian churches in Easton and North Easton. In 1875, Ames hired his nephew,

John Ames Mitchell John Ames Mitchell (January 17, 1845 – June 29, 1918) was an American publisher, architect, artist and novelist. He was co-founder, editor, and publisher of the original ''Life'' magazine, in which he was a contributing artist, and the au ...

, to design the Unity Church of North Easton, at a cost of $100,000, (~$ in ) and on his death he left a bequest to keep the church in repair.

Death and legacy

Ames died at North Easton on March 9, 1877. He left $50,000 in his will for the construction of a library. The will stipulated that it was to be a private institution, not owned by the town, but operated in trust for the public. The request was carried out by his children, Frederick Lothrop Ames and Helen Angier Ames. They hired Henry Hobson Richardson to design the Ames Free Library. The final cost of the building came to at least $80,000. Medallions in the library honor Ames with his likeness. The contributions of Ames and his brother Oakes in the building of the Union Pacific are commemorated in the

Oliver and Oakes Ames Monument The Ames Monument is a large pyramid in Albany County, Wyoming, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and dedicated to brothers Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames, Jr., Union Pacific Railroad financiers. It marked the highest point on the first transcont ...

at Sherman Summit, near

Laramie, Wyoming Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was estimated 32,711 in 2019, making it the third-largest city in Wyoming after Cheyenne and Casper. Located on the Laramie River in southeaster ...

, along the railroad's original route. The

pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

al monument was designed by famous architect Henry Hobson Richardson (who designed a number of projects for the Ames family) with sculpted plaques of the Ames brothers by

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Augustus Saint-Gaudens (; March 1, 1848 – August 3, 1907) was an American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. From a French-Irish family, Saint-Gaudens was raised in New York City, he tra ...

. At the time of its construction, the monument was located at the highest point attained by the Union Pacific's transcontinental route. With a change in the route of the railroad, the monument today is not on any major transportation route, though is easily accessible a short distance off an exit of

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one ...

Footnotes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ames, Oliver Jr. 1807 births 1877 deaths Butler–Ames family Union Pacific Railroad people 19th-century American railroad executives People from Plymouth, Massachusetts People from Easton, Massachusetts American Unitarians Massachusetts state senators Massachusetts Republicans Massachusetts Whigs

Biography

Personal life

Death and legacy

See also

Footnotes

References