He was born on May 20, 1843 at Boston, Massachussets, United States, the son of Charles and Elizabeth (Bogman) Pope. Both his father and mother were of old New England stock, the former tracing his ancestry back to John Pope who was in Dorchester, Massachussets, by 1634.
The financial reverses of Albert's father, who was a merchant and real-estate operator, forced the boy to work after school hours and during vacations, and to leave the Brookline High School at the age of fifteen in order to contribute to the support of the family.
He worked in the Quincy Street Market, and later as clerk in a shoe-finding store.
At nineteen he enlisted in the Union army, becoming second lieutenant Company I, 35th Massachusetts Regiment. He was promoted to the grades of first lieutenant and captain in 1863. With his regiment, he not only participated in the principal Virginia campaigns, but was with Burnside in Tennessee, Grant at Vicksburg, and Sherman at Jackson. He commanded at one time "Fort Hell" before Petersburg, and led his regiment in the last attack upon the city. He was brevetted (1865) major "for gallant conduct at Fredericksburg, Virginia" and lieutenant-colonel "for gallant conduct at the battles of Knoxville, Poplar Spring Church, and in front of Petersburg. "
At the conclusion of the war, he went into business for himself in Boston, manufacturing and selling shoe manufacturers' supplies. In this venture he was successful from the start, and in twelve years amassed a small fortune. In 1877 he organized at Hartford, Connecticut, the Pope Manufacturing Company, for the making and marketing of small patented articles; but the chief business of this concern soon became the manufacture of bicycles. Pope saw his first bicycle at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 and soon afterward made a study of such vehicles in England. Having determined to stake his future upon the manufacture of them, he began to import them in 1877 and to purchase European patents.
His first order for bicycles to be manufactured in the United States was placed with the Weed Sewing Machine Company in 1878. By 1898 it comprised five large factories, covering seventeen acres, and employed over 3, 000 men.
He found it necessary to overcome public prejudice and to fight municipal ordinances restricting the use of bicycles. To promote cycling, he founded The Wheelman in October 1882 under the editorship of S. S. McClure, combining it a year later with Outing. In behalf of the latter, he secured a petition with 150, 000 signatures including those of seventeen governors.
He began in 1896 the manufacture of electric phaetons and runabouts through the Columbia Electric Vehicle Company. Within a few years, three plants controlled by him were making automobiles: at Toledo the company turned out the Pope-Toledo gasoline cars; at Hartford, the Pope-Hartford cars; and at Indianapolis, the Pope-Waverly electrics. The passing of the bicycle craze and a lull in the development of the automobile forced the overexpanded Pope Manufacturing Company into a receivership.
Pope had pioneered in the manufacturing of automobiles just as he had in that of bicycles, but it was left to others to reap the harvest. The strain of reorganizing the finances of his large enterprises hastened his death, which occurred at his summer residence at Cohasset, Massachussets.
Albert Augustus Pope organized the Pope Manufacturing Company, that manufactured bicycles, later automobiles. He was enlarging his plant at Hartford, where later the famous Columbia and Hartford bicycles were manufactured. Pope's career as "the founder of American bicycle industries" included much more than manufacturing. Namely, he fight municipal ordinances restricting the use of bicycles, became responsible for the cost of test cases between wheelmen and various city governments, with the result that bicycles were soon admitted to parks and boulevards on the same footing as carriages or other vehicles. Pope's business interests also made him one of the most enthusiastic pioneers in the better-roads movement, he built a piece of macadam on Columbus Avenue, Boston. Through his influence and financial backing, special instruction in road engineering was introduced into the curriculum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lawrence Scientific School. He also seems to have been largely responsible for the establishment of the Massachusetts Highway Commission and a Bureau of Road Engineering in the Department of Agriculture. Among his philanthropies are the Pope Memorial Church at Cohasset in memory of his son; the Pope Dispensary at the New England Hospital in honor of the long professional services of his two sisters; and the gift of seventy-four acres and $100, 000 to the city of Hartford for a park.
Pope was married September 20, 1871, to Abby Linder, daughter of George and Matilda (Smallwood) Linder of Newton. There were six children, of whom four survived their father.
