1867 Credit Foncier of America re Union Pacific Railroad Land Stock Certificate

Description

FANTASTIC - part of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad  --   signed by George Francis Train -- This is reported to be the only that is known in private hands  --
A
ntique Original Vintage Stock Certificate -
--  this is guaranteed to be Genuine and Original -
Credit Foncier of America
Industry
Financing
,
railroads
,
real estate
Fate
Bankrupt
Founded
1866
Defunct
1870s
Headquarters
Omaha, Nebraska
Denver, Colorado
Tacoma, Washington
Key people
George Francis Train
Credit Foncier of America
was a late 19th-century
financing
and
real estate
company in
Omaha, Nebraska
. The company existed primarily to promote the
townsites
along the
Union Pacific Railroad
,
[1]
and was incorporated by a special act of the
Nebraska Legislature
in 1866.
[2]
[3]
Credit Foncier was said to be "intimately connected with all the early towns along the Union Pacific."
[4]
While related to
George Francis Train
's Crédit Mobilier company, Credit Foncier was not involved in the
Crédit Mobilier scandals
that tore that organization apart.
[5]
Founded, controlled, and initially owned by eccentric railroad booster George Francis Train, Credit Foncier was named after
Credit Foncier de France
.
[6]
Along with support from businessman
Cyrus McCormick
,
[7]
Omaha banker
Augustus Kountze
was among the original "special commissioners" appointed by the Legislature to form the company.
[3]
The company is said to have been organized to "profitably dispose" of the Union Pacific's
land grant
acreage.
[5]
The company owned almost 5000 lots in Omaha; 1000 in
Council Bluffs, Iowa
, and several hundred in
Columbus, Nebraska
, along with other land along the Union Pacific mainline.
[8]
[9]
Train once explained, "One of my plans was the creation of a chain of great towns across the continent, connecting
Boston
and
San Francisco
by a
highway
of magnificent cities."
[10]
The company built a hotel it called the "Credit Foncier" in
Cleveland, Nebraska
in 1868; it was moved to Columbus the next year. George Train, with so much land in the city, predicted a great future for Columbus.
[11]
Train is credited with writing newspaper articles and delivering speeches in which he promoted the town, calling it, "Columbus, the new center of the Union and quite probably the future capital of the U.S.A."
[12]
Train served as president of the company;
George P. Bemis
, who later became mayor of Omaha, was the secretary.
[13]
Train built the
Cozzens House Hotel
in Omaha. He also developed a tract at the southern edge of Omaha, originally called "
Train Town
" for its owner and still entitled "Credit Foncier Addition" in city records. This yielded Train "a small fortune" as he sold homes and empty lots to new settlers.
[14]
Train later moved the headquarters of Credit Foncier to
Denver, Colorado
, and again to
Tacoma, Washington
. Along with Omaha, Train promised each city it would become the "gleaming metropolis" of the Union Pacific.
[
George Francis Train
Born
March 24, 1829
Boston, Massachusetts
, US
Died
January 5, 1904 (aged 74)
New York City
,
New York
, US
George Francis Train
(March 24, 1829 – January 5, 1904) was an American entrepreneur who organized the
clipper ship
line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he also organized the
Union Pacific Railroad
and the
Credit Mobilier
in the United States in 1864 to construct the eastern portion of the
Transcontinental Railroad
, and a
horse tramway
company in England while there during the
American Civil War
.
In 1870 Train made the first of three widely publicized trips around the globe. He believed that a report of his first journey in a French periodical inspired
Jules Verne
's novel
Around the World in Eighty Days
and the protagonist
Phileas Fogg
may partially be modeled on him.
[1]
[2]
In 1872 he ran for
President of the United States
as an independent candidate. That year, he was jailed on obscenity charges while defending
Victoria Woodhull
against charges regarding a report her newspaper had published on an alleged adulterous affair. Despite his many business successes in early life, he was known as an increasingly eccentric figure in
American
and
Australian
history.
Contents
1
Early life and education
2
Career
3
Later years
4
Marriage and family
5
Publications
6
See also
7
References
8
External links
Early life and education
[
edit
]
George Francis Train was born on March 24, 1829, in
Boston
, son of Oliver Train and his wife Maria Pickering. He had a cousin
Adeline
, who later became a noted author. His parents and three sisters died in a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1833 when George was four.
[1]
He was raised by his strict
Methodist
grandparents in Boston. They hoped George would become a
minister
. He attended common schools. He did not go into the ministry as he sought more adventure in his life.
Career
[
edit
]
Train entered the
mercantile business
in Boston, and made it his career all his life in the United States and in Australia. He initiated numerous new businesses, building the corporate and financial structures to make them work.
In 1860 he went to England to found
horse tramway
companies in
Birkenhead
and
London
, where he soon met opposition. He was also involved in the construction of a short-lived horse tramway in
Cork
, Ireland.
[3]
Although his trams were popular with passengers, his designs had rails that stood above the road surface and obstructed other traffic. In 1861 Train was arrested and tried for "breaking and injuring"
Uxbridge Road
in London.
[4]
He tried again with the
Darlington Street Railroad Company
in 1862, but it was short-lived and closed in 1865.
Train was involved in the formation of the
Union Pacific Railroad
(UP) in 1864 during the
Civil War
. The federal government chartered the railroad for construction of the portion of the Transcontinental Railroad west of the Missouri River. Train was involved in setting up the shadow finance company for the project, the
Crédit Mobilier
of America, whose principal officers were the same as those of UP. (See below)
That year he left the United States for England. Referring to himself as "Citizen Train", Train became a
shipping magnate
, a prolific writer, a minor
presidential candidate
after return to the United States, and a confidant of French and Australian revolutionaries. He claimed to have been offered the presidency of a proposed Australian republic, but declined. During the American Civil War, he gave numerous speeches in England in favor of the
Union
and denounced the
Confederacy
.
In 1868 Train was arrested while aboard the
RMS
Scotia
in the port of Queenstown (now
Cobh
) in Ireland,
[5]
and held in custody. He had in his possession a bundle of papers containing many speeches he had given in the United States in defence of the
Fenian
cause of Irish independence. These documents were seized by a local magistrate. His release four days after his arrest was on condition that he disavowed any intention of promoting Fenianism while in Ireland or England.
In the middle of his campaign for president in 1870 Train decided to make a trip around the globe, which was covered by many newspapers. The actual traveling took 80 days, though he stayed two months in France, supporting the
Paris Commune
for which he spent two weeks in jail (the US government and
Alexandre Dumas
intervened to get him released).
[6]
His exploits possibly inspired
Jules Verne
's novel
Around the World in Eighty Days
.
His protagonist
Phileas Fogg
is believed to have been partially modeled on Train.
[2]
While in Europe after his 1870 trip, Train met with the
Grand Duke Constantine
.
[
which?
]
During that period, he persuaded the
Queen of Spain
to back the construction of a railway in the backwoods of
Pennsylvania
; her support provided funding for the
Atlantic and Great Western Railroad
. He promoted and built new
tramways
in Britain after some opposition. He overcame this by agreeing to run the rails level with the streets.
[7]
On his return to the U.S., Train's popularity and reputation soared. He began promoting the
Union Pacific Railroad
, with which he had been involved for several years, despite the advice of
Vanderbilt
, who told him it would never work. Forming a finance company called
Credit Foncier of America
, Train made a fortune from real estate when the transcontinental railway opened up settlement and development of huge swathes of western America, including large amounts of land in
Council Bluffs, Iowa
, and
Omaha
and
Columbus, Nebraska
. He was responsible for building the
Cozzens Hotel
and founding
Train Town
in pioneer Omaha.
Train was noted for having created the
Crédit Mobilier
in 1864, which he started specifically to finance the Union Pacific. While appearing to be a separate, independent company which Union Pacific hired, Crédit Mobilier was staffed by the same officers as the railroad. Train and others created a structure that allowed them to realize outsize profits during the construction of the railroad. The story about the scam and Congressional graft was broken in 1872 by
The Sun
,
a New York newspaper opposed to the re-election of
Ulysses S. Grant
for president. Eventually the
scandals
resulted in Congressional and executive federal investigations which implicated numerous congressmen, including
James Garfield
.
[8]
Denying the charges, Garfield was elected as president.
In 1872, Train ran for President of the United States as an independent candidate. He was a staunch supporter of the
temperance movement
. That year he was jailed on
obscenity
charges while defending
Victoria Woodhull
for her newspaper's reporting the alleged affair of
Henry Ward Beecher
and Elizabeth Tilton, each of whom were married to other people. He was the primary financier of the newspaper
The Revolution
, which was dedicated to
women's rights
, and published by
Susan B. Anthony
and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
.
Later years
[
edit
]
As he aged, Train was considered to become more eccentric. In 1873 he was arrested and threatened with being sent to an
insane asylum
.
[9]
He stood for the position of Dictator of the United States, charged admission fees to his campaign rallies, and drew record crowds. He became a vegetarian and adopted various
fads
in succession. Instead of shaking hands with other people, he shook hands with himself, the manner of greeting he had seen in China. He spent his final days on park benches in New York City's
Madison Square Park
, handing out dimes and refusing to speak to anyone but children and animals.
[1]
In 1890,
Nellie Bly
traveled around the world in 72 days, instigating Train to do a second circumnavigation of the earth in the same year. He completed the trip from
Tacoma
to Tacoma in 67 days 12 hours and 1 minute, a
world record
at the time.
[2]
[6]
A plaque in Tacoma commemorates the point at which his 1890 trip began and ended. Train was accompanied on many of his travels by
George Pickering Bemis
, his cousin and private secretary. Bemis was later elected as mayor of
Omaha, Nebraska
.
In 1892, the town of
Whatcom, Washington
offered to finance yet another trip around the world in order to publicize itself. Train finished this trip in a record 60 days.
He became ill with
smallpox
while visiting his daughter Susan M. Train Gulager in
Stamford, Connecticut
in 1903.
[10]
On January 5, 1904, Train died in New York and was buried at a small private ceremony at
Green-Wood Cemetery
in
Brooklyn
. After his death
The Thirteen Club
, of which he was a member, passed a resolution that he was one of the few sane men in "a mad, mad world."
[11]
]
please see my other listings as i will be selling many hundreds of wonderful documents from an Old Time Collection over the next year -    thanks