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heard that the great man would be passing through Bloomington on a particular train, Van Horne met it, introduced himself, and travelled with the celebrity for some distance. Their conversation culminated in a correspondence that lasted until Agassiz’s death in 1873.
Geology was not the only science that got Van Horne’s attention. He also pursued an interest in chemistry and botany, sometimes setting aside a Sunday to “review his chemistry lessons.” Astronomy was another field that intrigued him, so much so that he drew up elaborate charts to follow the progress of a comet sighted in Bloomington on April 16, 1868.
By now, though, the greatest personal interest in Van Horne’s life was not art or science, but an attractive and well-educated young woman, Lucy Adaline Hurd.
Van Horne was still based in Joliet when he met the young woman, affectionately known as Addie or Adda, who would become his devoted wife. Born in 1837 into a middle-class family that revered education and placed ideals before material possessions, she had studied music, taught Sunday school in the Universalist Church of America, and cultivated an interest in literature. What really set her apart from the other young women of her era, however, was her education. When she was nineteen, she had graduated with a B.A. from Lombard College, a liberal institution founded by members of the Universalist Church and located in Galesburg, Illinois — her birth place. Addie Hurd was six years older than Van Horne, and she undoubtedly took some pains to hide it.
When Adaline’s father Erastus, a civil engineer, died in 1857, the family was plunged into poverty. To satisfy creditors and make ends meet, they sold much of their property and Addie went to work as a music teacher. Family lore has it that the young couple first met in the early 1860s in Joliet, where Adaline and her widowed mother were living. Their chance meeting occurred at the train station, where Addie was stranded without a ride home after her train arrived late from Chicago. Although William was normally very shy in the presence of women, he gallantly offered to escort her home. They set off, but not before he shoved the pipe he was smoking into his jacket pocket. As he walked on, absorbed in conversation, he suddenly detected the smell of burning wool. He then remembered that his pipe was still alight and quickly smothered the embers as best he could.
It was probably Adaline’s refined beauty that made the most forceful impression on Van Horne that day. If he considered her beautiful, he was not alone. His friends were completely smitten by her looks. A future clergyman, the Reverend E.P. Savage, confessed that when he and some other friends heard that Van Horne was to marry Miss Hurd, “It just took our breath away. All the rest of the boys in the Agassiz Club liked parties and girls except Will. And here he was engaged to the most beautiful girl we knew.” Van Horne was probably also captivated by Addie’s dignity and reserve — two qualities that were later remarked on by others. The well-known British journalist and diarist Henry Beckles Willson, for instance, described her as “a quiet, intelligent woman, of simple manners and entirely devoted to her husband and family.”
By the fall of 1864, when the South was being pummelled by Union forces, the couple were exchanging letters, as William had by then moved to Bloomington. Two years later, the friendship had blossomed into a true love affair that saw him shuttling back and forth by passenger or freight train between Bloomington and Joliet. When they were apart, as happened most of the time, he took every opportunity to write to her, frequently filling his letters with affectionate concern for her well-being. “You must be very careful, dearest, and not in any way endanger your health,” he advised on her forthcoming trip to Vermont to visit relatives. “I fear you are not sufficiently cautious in that respect.… And in travelling you must not hesitate to call upon the conductors for any information or assistance that may be conducive to your safety and comfort.”
In his longing to be with Adaline, William convinced himself that only marriage would put a permanent end to the “aimless, cold, loveless and mechanical existence” of his life without her. He hoped that he and Addie would marry in the fall of 1866, but for some reason the ceremony did not take place that autumn. Clearly Addie was in love with the taciturn young man who, despite occasional spells of melancholy, seemed headed for great things. “I thought of you constantly & was only happy in closing my eyes & transporting myself to the time when I could again be with you & relive the only true pleasure which your presence alone can give,” she wrote to him in the summer of 1866.
Despite this love for her fiancé, Addie was apprehensive about marriage. Her “insecure health,” as she ambiguously expressed it, seems to explain some of this hesitation. Her mother’s unflattering view of marriage probably also played a role. Moreover, because Addie had her own career outside the home, she may also have harboured some reservations about relinquishing her independence. Whatever the explanation, the delay caused William considerable suspense and anxiety. Finally, on a cold, wet, March 26, 1867, they married in Christ Church in Joliet — the day after William obtained a marriage licence and, perhaps significantly, while Addie’s mother was away in Vermont visiting her relations.
Shortly after the marriage, Addie’s mother, Anna, as well as William’s mother, Mary, and his unmarried sister, Mary, moved to Bloomington to share a large rented home that Van Horne had repapered, whitewashed, and painted. This was a highly unusual arrangement, even for Victorian times, but, fortunately, the extended family got on well together. With all these women to minister to his needs, Van Horne could look forward to enjoying a warm, serene home environment — something he craved. Although he realized that his life would be buffeted from time to time by adversity, he knew that he could always look to his home for comfort and solace from the pressures of a job with irregular hours and frequent changes of residence. This assurance would prove extremely important to him as he continued his steady progress up the railway hierarchy.
Mrs. William Van Horne in 1889. The Canadian novelist William A. Fraser described her as “the most gracious woman I ever met in my life.”
Courtesy of the Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal, 11-89974.
Meanwhile, he had friendships and leisure pursuits to cultivate in Bloomington, a far more appealing place now that he had his own home and family there. Along with the well-known professor of natural history, chemistry, and botany, Dr. J.A. Sewall, he also struck up a close relationship with W.A. Gardener, who, like Van Horne, rose to meteoric heights in the railway world. At this time Gardener was a telegraph operator in Bloomington, but by 1912 he was president of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway and the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway. Another friend from Bloomington was Peter Whitman, a lumber dealer who went on to become a large manufacturer and, finally, a bank president. But men on the rise seldom have the opportunity to stay long in one place and, all too soon, Van Horne was on the move again — this time to Alton, Illinois, to take up a new job with the Chicago and Alton.
By the time that he left Bloomington, Van Horne had established a solid foundation for his railway career. He was not only rising in a cutting-edge industry that was strategically situated in both the American economy and the Midwest, but he had attained that most desirable of all Victorian goals — bourgeois respectability. As the son of a middle-class, professional father, and now a married man with a family himself, he was ready to capitalize on his exceptional skills and advance quickly up the railway hierarchy.
3
Realizing a Dream
Van Horne’s dream of becoming general superintendent of a railway came closer to being a reality when, on May 1, 1868, he was appointed head of the Chicago and Alton’s entire telegraph system, making him one of the railway’s two assistant supervisors. In this new role he came into frequent contact with the company’s leading officials, who were soon impressed by both his bearing and his force of character. Within a few months they offered him a position with even greater authority: superintendent of the railway’s new southern division. Van Horne promptly accepted. And so it was that, in 1869, he moved his entire family to Alton, Illinois. Like the modern-day diplomat’s or