John Murray Forbes (February 23 1813 – October 12 1898) was president of both the Michigan Central railroad and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in the 1850s. He was one of three brothers sent by their uncle to Canton; he amassed a fortune in the opium trade and China trade during the Opium Wars.

Biography

His parents were Ralph Bennet Forbes and Margaret Perkins , youngest daughter of the Perkins family , a merchant banking family in the China trade. He was born in Bordeaux, France. The Forbes family settled in Milton, Massachusetts. His father was an energetic but unsuccessful businessman who died when John was only six.

Forbes attended school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, then at Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1823-28.

He settled in Boston and became an early railroad investor and landowner. As with Jay Gould and E. H. Harriman, he was an important figure in the building of America's railroad system. From March 28 1846 through 1855, he was president of Michigan Central Railroad , and he was a director and president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, he helped with the growth of the American Middle West.

He supplied money and weapons to New Englanders to fight slavery in Kansas and in 1859 entertained John Brown. In 1860 he was an elector for Abraham Lincoln, and was a delegate to the Republican conventions of 1876, 1880 and 1884. He became displeased with the Republican party and worked successfully to get Democrat Grover Cleveland elected President.

Edward Waldo Emerson , Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, published Forbes biography in the September 1899 issue of "Atlantic" magazine. The Emerson and Forbes families were close. John Murray's son, William Forbes , married Ralph's daughter, Edith Emerson . In 1871, Ralph, John, Edward, Edith and William visited an opium den in San Francisco. In Letters and Social Aims, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of Forbes: "Never was such force, good meaning, good sense, good action, combined with such domestic lovely behavior, such modesty and persistent preference for others. Wherever he moved he was the benefactor... How little this man suspects, with his sympathy for men and his respect for lettered and scientific people, that he is not likely, in any company, to meet a man superior to himself," and "I think this is a good country that can bear such a creature as he."

His brother is the great-grandfather of 2004 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry.

See also

• Forbes family of Boston

Further reading

• Life and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, ed. by Sarah Forbes Hughes, Two Volumes, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.
• An American Railroad Builder: John Murray Forbes, by Henry Pearson, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1911.
• Forbes: Telephone Pioneer, by Arthur Pier, 1953.

External links

• Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography: John Murray Forbes

References

• Timeline of Old Plank Road Trail history and development. Retrieved March 1 2005.