Samuel Spencer, 1st President of Southern Railway
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Thorny1
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(1847 – November 26, 1906) was an American civil engineer, businessman, and railroad executive. Spencer eventually became president of six railroads, and was a director of at least ten railroads and several banks and other companies. Although his career was cut short when he was killed in a train wreck in 1906, Samuel Spencer is best remembered as the Father of the Southern Railway System.
Waymark Code: WM415N
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 06/21/2008
Views: 52
Samuel Spencer was born in Columbus, Georgia, and grew up on the cotton plantation of his father, Lambert Spencer. His mother died when he was 10 years old. He was educated at Georgia Military Academy. During the American Civil War, he served in the Confederate Army under Generals Nathan B. Forrest and John Bell Hood. After the War, he attended the University of Georgia and the University of Virginia.
In 1869, he began working with railroads as a surveyor, and rose through the ranks, learning many aspects of railroad management. He became superintendent of the Long Island Rail Road in 1878[1][2] and headed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (1887-1888).
Spencer was working for financier J.P. Morgan of Drexel, Morgan and Company as a railroad expert when the bankrupt Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) was acquired in 1894. The Southern Railway was formed from a consolidation of the R&D and the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad.
Tapped to lead the new railroad for Morgan, Spencer became its first president. Under his leadership, the mileage of the Southern Railway doubled, the number of passengers served annually increased to nearly 12 million, and annual earnings increased from $17 million to $54 million.
Samuel Spencer was killed in a train collision in Virginia on November 26, 1906. According to Southern Railway: Green Light to Innovation, Spencer and some companions were sleeping in car parked on a siding while on a hunting trip in Virginia south of Lynchburg. The parked car was struck by a train which was on the wrong track.
Spencer is credited with leading the Southern Railway and the South during a period of unprecedented growth. After his untimely death, 30,000 Southern Railway employees contributed to pay for a bronze statue of him by sculptor Daniel Chester French, which was dedicated in 1910 and stood for many years at Atlanta's Terminal Station. The statue is currently located in Hardy Ivy Park near downtown Atlanta.
The Southern Railway's Spencer Shops and the town of Spencer, North Carolina were named in his honor. In 1977, the closed Spencer Shops formed the basis of the new North Carolina Transportation Museum.
(from Wikipedia)
Today, the bronze statue of Samuel Spencer that stands near the intersection of Peachtree and West Peachtree in downtown Atlanta. Samuel Spencer was the first president of the Southern Railway. He was killed in a train wreck in 1906 at the tender age of 60; his 30,000 employees were so grief-stricken that they raised the funds necessary to have this statue erected. It was cast in 1910 by Daniel Chester French, who is perhaps better known for the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, among many others. The statue was placed in front of the Terminal Station on May 21, 1910. William W. Finley, his successor, had this to say at the ceremony:
"Mr. Spencer was essentially an organizer and a builder. His highest ambition was the development of the Southern Railway into an efficient transportation system thus making it a still more important factor in the upbuilding and prosperity of the south. Mr. Spencer constantly devoted the best energies of his creative mind to this goal and we, as his successors, will carry forward the great work he had planned, that this railroad be of inestimable value to the south. That this has been achieved will be the crowning work of his life."
The statue stayed at that location until the station was demolished in 1972; it spent some time by the current Amtrak station before being moved to its present location.
It stands without any sort of historical marker or biographical information.
Visit Instructions:
You must have visited the site in person, not online.