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Huntington (COLLIS POTTER one)

COLLIS POTTER, one of the earliest American railroad builders; born in Connecticut in 1821.

He started at the age of 15 as a peddler of clocks in the South and West. In 1848 he joined the rush to California and eleven years later he was one of the leading promoters of the Central Pacific railway. In 1881 Huntington, with Leland Stanford, built the Southern Pacific and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. His enormous fortune, accumulated in these successful ventures, was partly used to further Indian and negro education. At his death in 1900 he bequeathed his valuable collection of paintings to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.