Background
Scullin was born on August 17, 1836 on a farm near Helena, New York, United States, the third of seven children of Nicholas and Mary (Kenney) Scullin, natives of Ireland.
Scullin was born on August 17, 1836 on a farm near Helena, New York, United States, the third of seven children of Nicholas and Mary (Kenney) Scullin, natives of Ireland.
Scullin Scullin was educated in the country schools and the academy at Potsdam, New York.
Accustomed to hard work from boyhood, Scullin crossed into Canada at nineteen to serve the Grand Trunk Railway as water-carrier, brakeman, ballast-train conductor, and construction contractor. In 1863 he went to Minnesota, where he became a construction contractor for the Minneapolis & Cedar Valley Railroad, later part of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system. Attracted by reports of gold in Idaho territory, he joined an ox-team party of prospectors, seven of whom were killed by Indians. Leaving the Northwest after several months, he was back in New York by 1865, ready to resume railroad building.
Opportunities being more numerous in the West, he settled in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1866 and soon acquired contracts to lay forty miles of the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1868 he built the Missouri Valley railway between Maryville and Savannah, Missouri, and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific from Leavenworth to Cameron, Missouri. In 1869 he undertook his most important railroad construction, that of the major portion of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas system, which began with the section from Emporia, Kansas, to Texas and ended with the Missouri division terminating at Moberly in 1874. To defeat his competitors at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas system, he laid twenty-six and a half miles of tracks in eleven days, reaching the boundary near Chetopa, Kansas, June 6, 1870.
In 1875 he brought his family from Sedalia, Missouri, to St. Louis, where he invested in street railways. In 1883 he became the president of the Mexican National Construction Company. Though he was urged to stay in Mexico, he returned to St. Louis in 1885 to become a street-railway operator. He unified several lines, instituted a system of transfers, and went directly from horse power to electricity while his competitors experimented with cable cars.
Selling his interests in 1899, he formed the next year the Scullin-Gallagher Iron and Steel Company, later the Scullin Steel Company, which manufactured large railroad castings and rolling mills and prospered greatly during the World War. He was important in St. Louis banking circles as well as in various railway and transportation companies.
Active in business to the last, he died of uremic poisoning in St. Louis.
His largest project - the Missouri-Kansas-Texas system, which began from Emporia, Kansas, to Texas and ended with the Missouri division. John Scullin also built parts of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio and the Denison & Southeastern railroads. Being the president of the Mexican National Construction Company, he was responsable for the Mexican National railroad from Mexico City to San Luis Potose and from Acambaro to Morelia. He also established Scullin-Gallagher Iron and Steel Company and built huge foundry and rolling mill near St. Louis’s southwestern city limits.
A rugged man, Scullin reveled in the railroad camp's rough life.
Generous in his benefactions, he always stipulated that nothing be said about them. His personal property, not including real estate, was appraised at approximately two and a half million.
On August 18, 1863, Scullin married Hannah Perry of Montreal. He had a son and two daughters.
