Railroads

Charles Carroll Gilman

Conspicuous among Iowa men who have aided in developing the agricultural, mineral and other resources of the State through the agency of railroads, is Charles C. Gilman, projector and builder of the Central Railroad of Iowa, and its President and General Superintendent during its construction and operation, from 1867 to 1872 inclusive.

Charles Carroll Gilman was born on the 22d of February, 1833, in the town of Brooks, Waldo county, Maine, and was named by his parents Charles Carroll, after Charles Carroll, of Carrolton, the latest survivor of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and who had died a few months before this son was born. The father of Charles, an eminent physician, was a native of New Hampshire, and known as belonging to the Newmarket branch of the family. The mother, Lois P Gilman, nee Webb, was of the Pollard family from Kennebec county, Maine.

C. C. Gilman received an academic education in Frankfort, New Winterport, Maine, where he resided ten years; and fitted himself at home for the Sophomore Class at Waterville College, now Calby University, and at the same time completed two years of study in a medical course with his father, who was a graduate of Bowdoin. His health failed, Charles went to work at lumbering, and in two years gave up study entirely, and entered on what has proved to be, thus far, a very active business life.

In 1853 he started westward, halting three years in Michigan, conducting a saw mill in the summer and devoting the winter to exploring and locating pine lands owned by the Government; in 1857 he pushed further westward to Dubuque, Iowa, engaging in the wholesale lumber trade in that city; he established retail yards in 1858, and 1859 at Earlville, Dyersville, Independence, Waterloo, Cedar Falls, Sand Springs, Anamasa, Monticello and Marion, towns on the Dubuque and Sioux City and Dubuque Southwestern Railroads. In 1861 he devoted a short time to the enlisting of soldiers; raising four companies of infantry for the brigade of General F. J. Herron, his Dubuque neighbor and friend.

While the subject of this sketch has ever since his residence in Iowa, maintained a large private business in conjunction with partners, his chief labors have been expended on what he is pleased to call outside operations.

In 1858, the Dubuque and Sioux City railroad coming to a halt on the prairie, thirty-eight miles west of Dubuque, he started the town of Earlville, by building twenty-eight stores and dwelling houses in that year and the following. In 1860 and 1861 he built grain elevators at Monticello, Marion and Cedar Falls, and opened a large farm in Delaware county. About this time he purchased a water privilege on the Maquoketa river, north of Cascade, erected a flouring mill and saw mill, and founded a town called Hillsdale. In 1864, by a series of able articles in the Dubuque and St. Louis dialer papers, he called the attention of the public to the necessity of unimpeded navigation of the Mississippi river as competing outlet to the products of the Mississippi valley, which resulted, after great personal effort on the part of Mr. Gilman, in conventions being held at Dubuque and St. Louis, and finally in appropriations by Congress, which have removed the rapids near Davenport and Keokuk.

General William Vandever, B. B. Richards, Patrick Robb, and others, were his faithful coadjutors in the great work.

In 1865, in conjunction with other active business men of Dubuque, he secured the incorporation of the Dubuque Produce Exchange, an institution which will long be remembered by the citizens of that place as inaugurating a new era in Dubuque 's relations to the surrounding country tributary to it, the good effects of which are felt to this day.

In 1866 Mr. Gilman made the first soundings of the Mississippi at Dubuque, with the view of erecting a bridge, and the next year was appointed chairman of a convention by the Produce Exchange, whose duties were to call a public meeting for the purpose of incorporating a company to build it. This was done; and, although not built by the company thus formed, the result was the immediate organization of the Dubuque and Dunleith Bridge Company, which erected the beautiful structure which now spans the river at that point.

In this effort Mr. Gilman was ably seconded by Hon. Platt Smith, Hon. William B. Allison and Hentry L. Stout.

In 1868 he bought out all the parties identified with the Eldora Railroad and Coal Company, went to New York and formed a new company, and engaged the services of W. B. Shattuck as financial agent (the man who had previously sold the 10-40 government bonds, as well as the bonds of the Union Pacific Railroad).

The bonds of the Iowa road were promptly sold, and the road as promptly built, 132 miles of the 208 miles. The peculiar feature of this transaction was the fact that no land grant or subsidy was attached to the project, and for the first time in the history of western railroad enterprises, 200 miles of railroad were built on the merits which a surrounding country alone offered for business.

The Central Railroad of Iowa, extending from Albia, Monroe county, to Northwood, in Worth county, was the first north and south road built in the State, and bid fair to be the most important. In 1870, when this line, which was built in sections, was united in Mahaska county, at North Skunk river bridge, with loaded freight trains from the north and south waiting to pass, President Gilman happily remarked, as he drove the last spike, “To Southern Iowa we have brought the lumber of Minnesota; to Northern Iowa and Minnesota we introduce the cheap fuel, the magnificent coal of Mahaska county.” Mr. Gilman resigned the Presidency of this railroad in 1873, and immediately commenced mining coal in Mahaska county, in connection with his old Secretary, H. W. McNeill, forming a company for the purpose under the name of the Consolidation Company. These works increased from a delivery of 110 cars in 1871 to 12,780 in 1875. In this year he sold his interest to Hon. Ezekiel Clark, of Iowa City, and immediately began to develop the resources about his new home in Eldora, to which place he had removed from Dubuque in 1867. This he did by organizing a company for the manufacture of sewer-pipe, drain-tile and terra cotta from the superior fire-clay which abounds in this region.

The company is known as the “Gilman Terra Cotta and Fire Clay Company,” and bids fair to become one of the most important manufactories in Iowa. Of this company he is President and chief owner, as well, also, of the telegraph company whose headquarters are at Eldora. In August, 1858, he married Miss Abbie Williams, of Saginaw, Michigan. Mr. Gilman is a man of indomitable energy, and great force, both of Character and intellect. He is a solid thinker on practical subjects, a ready writer, a splendid organizer of physical forces, and uses his hands as well as his brains in carrying forward a great enterprise to completion. To just such men the present age owes the glory of its progress.