Background
Thomas T. Eckert was born on April 23, 1825, in St. Clairsville, Ohio, the son of Conrad Eckert and Hannah Stokes.
Thomas T. Eckert was born on April 23, 1825, in St. Clairsville, Ohio, the son of Conrad Eckert and Hannah Stokes.
Catching the enthusiasm for the telegraph at an early age, he went to Wheeling, West Virginia, hoping to enter a newly opened telegraph office there. Failing in this he went to New York, after many difficulties, and learned telegraphy in the office of the Morse Telegraph Company.
Thomas Thompson Eckert was employed by the Wade Telegraph Company on their line between Pittsburgh and Chicago.
In 1849 he was appointed postmaster at Wooster, Ohio, but still retained his position with the telegraph company.
In 1859 he resigned to become superintendent of a gold-mining company in Montgomery County, North Carolina, where he stayed until the outbreak of the Civil War.
He went to Cincinnati, Ohio, as head of the United States military telegraph at that place, but in 1862 was called to Washington, D. C. , as superintendent of military telegraph, Department of the Potomac, and, with the rank of captain and assistant quartermaster, accompanied Major-General
McClellan to the Peninsula.
In September of the same year he was appointed general superintendent of military telegraph, with the rank of major, and established headquarters in the War Department.
In 1864 he was breveted lieutenantcolonel, then colonel, and lastly (March 13, 1865), brigadier-general of volunteers, “for meritorious and distinguished services. ”
On July 27, 1866, Eckert was made assistant secretary of war, resigning Feb. 28, 1867.
On several occasions he was charged with special commissions of the utmost importance.
Upon resigning from the government service he accepted the position as general superintendent of the eastern division of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which he held until 1875.
In 1875 Jay Gould and his associates gained control of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company and began to compete with the Western Union.
Gould, however, soon organized another competing company, the American Union Telegraph, and retained Eckert’s services as president.
This position he held until Gould ended the rivalry by purchasing control of the Western Union.
He was also a director in several other corporations.
He organized the government telegraph during the Civil War so that it was of real use, and built up a staff of associates, many of whom stayed with him in later activities, jay Gould recognized him as a force he needed and shifted him from company to company according to the exigencies of the situation.
A man of great aggressiveness and vigor and a born leader. His strong personality and diplomacy were shown by the manner in which he handled, in 1870, the threatened universal strike of the telegraphers’ Protective League, which would have tied up the railways and paralyzed business in general. This made him a leading figure in the struggle between ambitious companies for the telegraphic control of the country.
As a man, he had qualities which endeared him to his friends and subordinates.
Thomas Eckert was married to Emma D. Whitney.