Patrick Calhoun, American lawyer and financier, was involved in several railroad ventures, which brought him into Wall Street circles. He developed a section of Cleveland Heights known as Euclid Heights
Background
Patrick Calhoun was born on March 21, 1856 near Pendleton, South Carolina, United States, at Fort Hill, the plantation home of his illustrious grandfather, John C. Calhoun. He was the fifth son and youngest of six children of Andrew Pickens Calhoun and his second wife, Margaret Maria (Green) Calhoun, whose father, Duff Green, had been a political supporter of John C. Calhoun. A wealthy cotton planter, Andrew Calhoun was financially ruined by the Confederacy's defeat and died in 1865.
Education
Young Patrick acquired most of his early education at country schools near Fort Hill. In 1871 he rode horseback to Dalton, Georgia, to study law with his grandfather Duff Green. He was admitted to the Georgia bar at nineteen, but in 1876 he moved to St. Louis. Gaining admittance to the Missouri bar that same year, he opened a general practice, but his health failed a short time later, forcing him to retire temporarily to the Arkansas plantation of his older brother John Caldwell Calhoun.
Career
Around 1878 he settled in Atlanta, Georgia, to resume his legal career. By specializing in corporate law he quickly acquired a lucrative practice and a wide circle of business contacts.
Calhoun was senior partner in the firm of Calhoun, King & Spalding from 1887 to 1894, but his energy and ambition led him into a wide range of business interests as well. He organized the Calhoun Land Company to raise cotton in the Mississippi Valley and acquired extensive properties in Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas. His other enterprises included oil, railroads, manufacturing, and mining. Between 1887 and 1893 he was a member of the syndicate controlling the Richmond Terminal, a holding company for several railroad properties. During that period his firm served as general counsel for the Terminal and two of its subsidiary roads, the Central of Georgia and the Richmond & Danville. Calhoun himself had a large financial interest in all three of these companies. In 1892 he resigned as their counsel and was ousted from the boards of the Terminal and the Central during a struggle for control. Two years later he acted for J. P. Morgan & Company in buying the now bankrupt Richmond Terminal and consolidating it into the Southern Railway system.
Calhoun's railroad ventures had brought him into Wall Street circles, and about 1894 he turned his full attention to business enterprises, giving up the practice of law and leaving the South. He developed and reorganized street railway properties in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and St. Louis. After living briefly in New York City, he moved around 1896 to Cleveland and developed a section of Cleveland Heights known as Euclid Heights, where he later built a magnificent residence. After the turn of the century, Calhoun entered the business life of San Francisco, where he helped amalgamate the street railways into the United Railroads of San Francisco, of which he became president in 1906. Despite opposition from the press and from prominent citizens, who preferred underground electrical conduits, Calhoun urged the construction of an overhead trolley network, and the United Railroads gave political boss Abraham Ruef $200, 000 to help secure approval for the plan from the city's board of supervisors. In May 1907, after an investigation of his activities spurred by Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, Ruef admitted distributing this money to city officials, a confession which led to the indictment of Calhoun and other United Railroads executives for bribery. Calhoun's trial in 1909 resulted in a hung jury, and before a second trial could be held, an appellate court dismissed the case in August 1911. By this time, Calhoun's position had become tenuous. He claimed to have lost $2, 500, 000 in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, in addition to the heavy legal expenses arising from his trial. In a bitter 1907 transit strike, he broke the power of the carmen's union only by importing strikebreakers and thus provoking a bloody riot. Now, in 1912, an investigation by the California Railroad Commission revealed that the United Railroads had authorized Calhoun to invest company funds without restrictions. The company's books had mysteriously disappeared, but testimony showed that Calhoun had invested and lost about $890, 000 in the Solano Irrigated Farms Company, one of his private ventures; another $207, 000 was unaccounted for. Lacking firm evidence, the commission could not indict, but the New York bankers who had helped finance the United Railroads, outraged at these losses, forced Calhoun to resign the presidency in the summer of 1913. His career tarnished and his fortune dissipated, Calhoun largely retired from active business after this time. He made several heavy investments in real estate, but all of them failed. He drifted to New York in search of new opportunities, only to suffer humiliation there in 1916 when he was sued for unpaid office rent; at the hearing he testified that he was virtually penniless and that for the past two years the family had been living on his wife's funds. He is said to have become involved subsequently in the development of California oil fields, but little is known about his later business affairs. Calhoun died in Pasadena, California, at the age of eighty-seven of injuries received when he was struck by an automobile. He was buried on the family plantation where he had been born.
Achievements
Personality
A tall, portly man with an air of sternness, Calhoun could be aggressive to the point of arrogance. To stabilize his own sometimes erratic judgment, he often relied upon the counsel of his brother John, a frequent business associate. A hot temper at times made him reckless of consequences. Once in 1889, when he was called a liar by a Georgia legislator during a committee hearing on a railroad consolidation bill, Calhoun challenged his adversary to a duel, which was held in Alabama to evade the Georgia antidueling law. The exchange was bloodless and the opponents parted as friends.
On social occasions, Calhoun had a gracious charm and sharp wit that made him a favorite. He was devoted to his extensive family.
Connections
On November 4, 1885, Pat Calhoun (as he signed his name throughout his life) married Sarah Porter Williams, who bore him eight children.