(Excerpt from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Vol. 7: An Early ...)
Excerpt from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Vol. 7: An Early America Metropolis, February, 1921 It is a snug and well built city. Twice or three times fire had swept across it, and, rebuilt, it seems to have been each time better than before. Not a city of great mansions with outbuildings for slaves and other retainers, but a city of homes of high-bred, God-fearing gentlemen;for if archi tecture Can record, as it surely does, the character of a people, it writes large in Portsmouth the refinement and gentility of that early town. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Electus Backus Litchfield was born on February 15, 1813 in Delphi Falls, New York, United States to which place his parents, Elisha and Percy (Tiffany) Litchfield had removed in 1812 from Connecticut. Both families were of early Massachusetts stock. The father served at Sacketts Harbor during the War of 1812 under Gen. Electus Backus, for whom the son was named. He afterward became prominent in local and state politics, serving five terms in the state Assembly and two in Congress.
Litchfield apprenticed in his father’s store in Delphi.
Electus began business as a merchant in Cazenovia but in 1844 moved to New York City where for ten years he conducted a wholesale grocery business. His younger brothers, E. Darwin Litchfield and Edwin C. Litchfield, soon followed him to the metropolis, and through Edwin, who, as a member of the law firm of Litchfield & Tracy, handled much legal work for railroads, all the brothers were drawn into the railroad business. The state of Michigan in 1846 sold its uncompleted Michigan Southern railroad to a firm in which the engineer, John B. Jervis, and Edwin Litchfield were the leading members. By uniting it with the Northern Indiana Railroad and completing the construction on both lines they secured by May 1852 a through route from Lake Erie to Chicago.
Meanwhile Electus was treasurer, and later president, of the Toledo & Cleveland, a portion of which the Litchfields built. They constructed also a Toledo-Detroit line, the Air Line from Toledo to Elkhart, Indiana, and minor branches, all of which formed a well-knit system. They allied themselves with the Chicago & Rock Island, then building west to the Mississippi, of which Jervis was president and Elisha C. Litchfield, another brother, a director. They were interested in the construction of the Terre Haute & Alton, and Litchfield, Illinois, on this line was named for them. East of Cleveland an understanding was reached with the new roads along the south shore of the lake to Buffalo, thence across New York state, and with the Hudson River Railroad, which resulted in connecting interests from New York to Chicago. The meager facts available do not reveal any one author of this remarkable network of interests, the most impressive before the Civil War, but the Litchfields contributed much to bring it within the realm of possibility, and would have profited immensely had not the panic of 1857 broken it up for a time. Caught with interests too far extended, they could not hold their control in the reorganizations.
For several years afterward Electus Litchfield busied himself with building the Fifth Avenue and Atlantic Avenue street railways, the Coney Island Plank Road, and other enterprises in Brooklyn, of which city, after 1846, he was a leading resident. With his brother Edwin he developed the old Cortelyou farm which they had purchased south of the expanding city. Needing money after the panic he successfully urged the city to buy a large part of this area for park purposes, and to this combination of self-interest and vision Brooklyn owes her famous Prospect Park. Much later he purchased and renovated the Brooklyn, Bath & West End Railroad which did much to develop West Brooklyn and the New Utrecht sections.
Meanwhile, in 1862, E. B. Litchfield & Company contracted with the St. Paul & Pacific to build their lines in Minnesota, taking stock and bonds in pay. Financial difficulties soon landed the road in Litchfield's hands, and to complete enough construction to obtain the appertaining land grants he organized the "First Division of the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, " sold bonds in Holland to finance the work, and finished the main line west to Breckenridge and the branch north to St. Cloud. Litchfield, Minnesota, received its name at this time.
In 1870 the Litchfields sold to the Northern Pacific, then booming under Jay Cooke's control, but when that road collapsed in 1873 the stock came back to them. They attempted a reorganization in 1875, but failed, and in 1879 sold their remaining holdings to James J. Hill who made their lines the nucleus of his Great Northern system. Curiously, it was E. B. Litchfield's son, W. B. Litchfield, and a half-brother, E. S. Litchfield, who had helped Hill to a start when in 1867 they became silent partners with him in his warehouse business on the St. Paul levee. During most of this time the Litchfields had been bankers, brokers, and agents for railroad loans in New York City and had been interested in various minor undertakings.
(Excerpt from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Vol. 7: An Early ...)
He was a man of ingratiating personality and of vision.
Electus married Hannah Maria Breed, the daughter of Elias Breed of Norwich, New York, in 1836. Five children were born to them.
