CHAPTER 2Growing Up in the Great Lakes Region

Born in Auburn, New York, on October 16, 1828, Albert Benton Pullman proved to be a diligent worker but an irregular family correspondent. At various points in his life, he drifted, and occasionally sprinted, away from the nest, incurring regular reprimands from his mother and siblings along with reminders to participate in the family letter-writing ritual. Illiteracy was not the cause of his negligence; he could read and write, although it is unclear where he and his siblings were educated. Legend has it that the brothers attended the Universalist Academy in Canton while their sisters were educated at the Clinton Institute. But Canton was over 300 miles, and Clinton nearly 250, from Corners, the tiny village to which the Pullmans moved when Albert was two years old and where he remained until he was nineteen.¹ It is unlikely any of the children attended those august institutions except in their later imaginations, one instance among many of Pullmans retrospectively rewriting family history. It is more likely that the children all attended a local school in or near Corners and, for the boys, began to learn carpentry in their father's workshop before entering formal apprenticeships.²

Armed with a Universalist's optimism and ecumenical outlook, it is easy to imagine Lewis Pullman instilling in his children the idea that opportunity would come their way. Like many of his peers, however, Lewis did not wait for it to knock but went in search of it, driven by the need to house, feed, and clothe his growing family. Though his carpentry skills were in high demand and he was paid accordingly, Lewis found himself increasingly involved in the business of moving buildings. By 1845, traffic growth in the Erie Canal meant structures needed to be raised, placed on rollers, and pulled back from its banks for the ditch to be widened. Rather than demolish expensive edifices, owners chose to shift them. This involved the tedious process of jacking the building high enough for sets of wheels to be inserted underneath and a team of horses or men, or both, pulling and pushing it to a new location. A complicated procedure courting disaster, moving buildings was commonplace by 1850, when a large barn could be moved up to 150 feet a day by a horse and five people.³

Lewis Pullman became a skilled mover of buildings, inventing and patenting a device for carefully transporting them on wheels instead of sleds or logs.⁴ The contracts he signed concentrated on the town of Albion, over one hundred miles from the family home in Corners, by then renamed Salem Cross Roads and later called Brocton. Lewis and his sons had built a house in Corners, expanding it as the family grew. They were loath to leave it, but Lewis's absences in Albion grew longer, and he concluded that relocating would be in the family's best interests. Albion was expanding with the increasing canal traffic, local shops were booming as they supplied barge crews, and Lewis was never without work. But when he took Emily and the children to Albion in 1845, the three eldest sons, Royal Henry, Albert, and George, remained in Salem Cross Roads, the first splintering of the close-knit family.

Apprenticed to a family friend in Salem Cross Roads, seventeen-year-old Albert developed the talent he would later put to good effect designing and building the intricate and eye-catching interiors for which Pullman cars would become known. He learned to purchase raw materials, to carve and inlay, to size up a project and imaginatively bring a piece of furniture to fruition. An excellent craftsman with a fine sense of detail, he lacked a head for business and relied on others to balance the books. Always happier working with his hands or making new friends than dealing in numbers and accounts, Albert grew into a gregarious man whose love of drinking and conversing remained with him throughout his life.

George, in marked contrast, had little of either the carpenter or the good fellow in him. His abilities inclined to understanding the numbers Albert ignored and, in later life, raising capital, fending off competition, prosecuting patent infringements, and acquiring powerful partners. Where Albert proved to be friendly and expansive, George was introverted and brusque. Religious duty drove George, and that was reflected in his attitude and actions toward his siblings. He loved their mother, but he tolerated his brothers and sisters. George was inflexible where Albert would accommodate, judgmental where the other was forgiving, and demanding where the older brother could be relaxed. George proved to be patient with Albert's wayward approach to all things financial, though his tolerance had its limits, as Albert discovered late in life.

In Salem Cross Roads, Albert completed his apprenticeship and entered a partnership with the eldest brother, Royal Henry, to make furniture while fourteen-year-old George worked at their Uncle John's general store. In one of the few letters he wrote to their parents, Albert recounted in spirited terms how “the old and well known firm of R H & A B Pullman” was thriving and why he had to “give George a good trouncing.” This early example of Albert's image creation—a thriving business and a successful older brother looking out for his younger sibling—presaged a career of cultivating and shaping press coverage of himself and his firms. George likewise showed evidence of his future direction. He was already something of an entrepreneur, selling a coat he had sewn himself and telling his parents not to worry as a local homeopathic doctor would keep him healthy through the winter.⁵

The Pullmans were not alone in adhering to homeopathy. Developed as one among many alternatives to the perceived overuse of drugs and “heroic,” often painful, treatments such as bleeding and anesthetic-free surgery, homeopathy was invented by the German physician and chemist Samuel Hahnemann in the 1790s. Homeopathic healers attacked sickness with small doses of remedies that in large quantities would cause the ailment being treated. Based on the principle of like cures like, homeopathy became a popular alternative—or, “irregular,” to use the contemporary word—to allopathic doctors brandishing leeches and an armory of bone saws.⁶

Homeopathic practices quickly made their way to the United States, acquiring the infrastructure of respectability. A licensure process developed along with the dissemination of information encouraging lay practitioners and healers to use homeopathic remedies as one among a range of curative options. By the time Albert was a teenager, homeopaths were well established in most of New England.⁷ The Pullman family adopted homeopathy as its choice of medicines. Albert remained interested in homeopathy, which gained a national foothold by the 1850s, primarily to treat his chronic dyspepsia.⁸ Homeopathic hospitals in Midwestern cities—notably Cleveland and Chicago—trained practitioners and treated patients, and found popular support. By 1880, some 6,000 homeopathic physicians practiced in the United States, 112 of them in Chicago, double the number a decade before.⁹ Homeopathic pharmacies also opened as the medical world embraced multiple approaches to curing disease until the hegemonic American Medical Association discredited and set out to destroy nonallopathic practices.¹⁰

Homeopathic remedies were never far away because of Albert's probably self-inflicted stomach problems, caused by his hearty enjoyment of rich food and alcohol. The first mention of his digestive troubles occurred in a letter he wrote to his parents from Salem Cross Roads, an aside so casual it must have been referring to a commonplace of which they were well aware. The pains seem rarely to have become debilitating, and though he would later seek rest and recuperation at the spa town of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Albert's stomach problems slowed him down but rarely interfered with his enjoyment of life.

After three years of family separation, the Pullmans reunited in Albion. This time, George replaced Albert as Royal Henry's partner. Together Royal Henry and George built a successful business, beginning by constructing their own shop adjacent to the family home. Albert exhibited neither aptitude for finance nor dedication to the workbench, preferring to labor at his own pace or chat with friends. Within a year of forming their new partnership, Royal Henry and George expanded their facilities, employing a dozen men and hiring Albert on a piecework basis.

Work had fallen low on Albert's list of priorities because he was courting “a smart little woman that earns him three or four dollars a week at cap making.”¹¹ This “smart little woman” was Emily Bennett, the daughter of Charles Bennett, a sawmill owner and leading Republican in Cussewago Township. It is likely they met when Albert traveled to the mill to have lumber prepared for furniture making. The relationship deepened, and he returned on any pretext he could invent to see her. She was one of seven children from Bennett's first marriage; by the time she knew Albert, Emily had three additional siblings. Two of her stepsisters, Lavonia and Luana, moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and remained there for the rest of their lives, occasionally hosting members of the Pullman family. Later, elite women of her circle would use Emily's working-class origins against her, but she was the perfect match for Albert and her income no doubt of great value to their combined purse. They married in Albion on May 29, 1848.¹²

Shortly after the wedding, the local economy slowed, and Albert moved to Grand Rapids in search of a new beginning. At the same time, Royal Henry also left Albion, traveling to Baltimore to begin training for the ministry. Albert went to Grand Rapids initially without Emily, taking his brother James.¹³ The journey, which other Pullmans would make many times, involved riding a lake steamer to Detroit, a train to Kalamazoo, and then a stagecoach for the final leg from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids. Bad weather and missed connections extended travel times; on more than one occasion the Pullmans pooled their resources with other travelers to hire horse-drawn coaches after a late arrival at Kalamazoo.

Longer journeys meant more time for socializing, something Albert relished. He recounted in one of his infrequent missives to the rest of the family how, delayed while returning home from a visit with his parents, he and brother James “luckily fell in with some Grand Rapids folks” and telegraphed ahead for a coach. Leaving in the middle of the afternoon, Albert anticipated “a delightful ride in the night” for the duration of the sixty-mile trip.¹⁴ The joy came in the form of conversation, for the bumpy roads were not conducive to sleep.

At the time of Albert's move, Grand Rapids was poised to enter its golden age as the furniture-making capital of the country. Albert and Emily picked the expanding city because her stepsisters lived there, a great advantage to the newly arrived couple. Other members of the Pullman family, most notably George and James, visited them in Grand Rapids. Albert's strengths and weaknesses were on full display there. He had no business sense but made memorable cabinets, chairs, and tables, some of which survive in local museums and private homes.¹⁵ He formed a partnership called Pullman and Eagles, making custom furniture and selling pieces brought in from New York workshops using family connections. But Albert could never quite master the art of turning skill into profit, and his family lived precariously.¹⁶

Back in New York, the Pullmans of Albion suffered a severe jolt when, in November 1853, Lewis Pullman died. Aged just fifty-three, he had suffered a stroke eleven months earlier. Unable to move without pain, he wasted away.¹⁷ Although his death came as no surprise, it was still a shock. Buried with full Masonic honors, Lewis's lodge remembered him as “a practical advocate of those principles of universal good will and brotherly love which form the Key Stone of our Order.” He was, his fellow Freemasons wrote, “Beloved in the Domestic circle, Respected in Society and Honored in our Order.” The Masonic moral system prioritized groups of people in concentric circles radiating out from family members, reinforcing Lewis's Universalist worldview. Freemasonry also provided business contacts, and both Albert and George would later join the order.¹⁸

The impact of Lewis's death on his survivors was immediate and long-term. The three eldest sons, led by George, gave their mother title to the house in which she lived.¹⁹ The demise of the family patriarch meant one of the boys had to serve as head of the household. Royal Henry was well into his preparation for the ministry, while Albert was married and living in Grand Rapids. This left George, the third oldest, to step into their father's shoes. With little time to grieve, he became the provider for his mother and five younger siblings, a role endowing him with patriarchal power and in which he excelled.

This unwanted and unexpected elevation thrust new responsibilities onto the shoulders of the twenty-two-year-old George. His response was to get to work. Using his father's connections and his own determination, he signed a series of contracts to lift and move buildings along the Erie Canal, once more being widened to accommodate larger barges in an effort to compete with a new railroad running alongside it. He earned several thousand dollars over the next three years and proved a more than adequate breadwinner, but the lifting business was evaporating as the last of the contracts neared completion. Aware that further work along the canal was unlikely, George left Albion in search of opportunities.

He traveled first to Grand Rapids, where he helped Albert open another furniture workshop. The elder brother did most of the manufacturing while George took care of the books, his business acumen in sharp contrast to his woeful woodworking skills.²⁰ George soon resumed his travels while Albert continued to construct new pieces and to perform repair work when new sales declined.²¹ He maintained a large circle of friends who appreciated “his jovial nature and his genial spirit.”²² Albert and Emily worshipped at the Congregational Church just a few blocks from their house, where Albert sang in the choir.²³ They also worshiped with the Universalists, who met in a “beautiful hall” and engaged in “fine singing,” as George discovered to his pleasure on a visit.²⁴

But all was not well in Grand Rapids. George formed their new partnership because he found his brother struggling financially. Although commonly acknowledged to be “an extra good workman” whose pieces were in great demand, Albert's reputation for mismanaging his businesses was well earned and persisted throughout his life.²⁵ In March 1856, for example, he borrowed $13 from Lucretia Lyon, the widow of a family friend, promising to pay interest at the exorbitant rate of 20 percent. A year later, he owed $27 in rent and was planning an exit from Grand Rapids. Neither the loan nor the rent would be repaid, two examples of what would become a troubling pattern.²⁶

Events beyond Albert's control contributed to the family's difficulties. The Panic of 1857, an economic depression caused by bank failures across the country, created unemployment and dislocation. The economy contracted as grain prices fell, decreasing property values and convincing European investors to withhold or withdraw their capital. Albert's loss of income from his furniture business meant he could not repay his loans. He did build a house that George called “very pretty and convenient,” but it took several years to complete. Now with two daughters—three-year-old Nellie (described by George as “quite delicate and pretty with bright blue eyes”) and Emma, a year younger—to clothe and feed, Albert and Emily needed help. George convinced Albert to turn to the familiar task of moving buildings.²⁷ They began by relocating a neighbor's barn, and the undertaking proved so successful that the Grand Rapids directory for 1859 listed Albert as a “house mover,” his furniture firm apparently dissolved.²⁸

Work as a building mover was not to be Albert's long-term destiny. Worse, Grand Rapids itself was changing as mass-production furniture factories opened and the demand for his skills declined. Despite his burgeoning success as a building mover, Albert still did not write to his siblings and their mother, however. He earned “a lecture on the subject of home correspondence” for his persistent neglect of letter writing, but that had no effect on him.²⁹ Contributing to Albert's slow distancing himself from the family was George's ascendancy to a position of paterfamilias. George proved an excellent replacement as family head. His sense of duty, guided by their mother and by Universalist notions of charity, meant the younger brother remained a constant source of financial support to his siblings and proved instrumental in Albert's life-changing move to Chicago.