Andover’s John Alfred Poor

by James Nalley

Maine’s railway visionary

In 1834, the first locomotive in New England ran through Boston, Massachusetts. In attendance at this special event was a 26-year-old man from Andover, Maine, who wrote: “It gave me such a shock that my hair seemed to start from the roots rather than to stand on end; and as I reflected in after years, the locomotive engine grew into a greatness in mind that left all other created things far behind it as marvels and wonders.” With this enthusiasm, and the fact that his own state of Maine was undeveloped, and its major city of Portland had been bypassed in the region’s commercial expansion, railways had become his life’s challenge.

John Alfred Poor was born on January 8, 1808 in Andover. He was the younger brother of Henry Varnum Poor of Standard & Poor’s (S&P), the American credit rating agency that publishes financial research and analyses of stocks, bond, and commodities. As a son of a local physician, Poor varied farm work with regular academic study with his brother-in-law, Rev. Thomas Stone in Andover. He then became a schoolteacher in Bethel before undertaking the study of law. At the age of 19, he entered the law office of his uncle, Jacob McGaw, in Bangor. At 24, he was admitted to the bar, and became his uncle’s partner. He then practiced law for 14 years in Bangor.

During his time in Bangor, Poor earned a reputation as a brilliant lawyer and devoted citizen. According to Brian Young from the University of Toronto, “Over six feet tall and weighing

250 pounds, Poor impressed his contemporaries with his prodigious energy, his rapid manner of speaking, and his violent temper. As a young Bangor lawyer, Poor served as counsel for the great New England politician, Daniel Webster.” He was also active in the city government and was “a founder of the local literary and debating society as well as the Bangor Social Library.”

After the first railway in Maine was built from Bangor to Old Town in 1836, railroads gradually became his life-long focus. As stated earlier, Portland had been bypassed in the region’s commercial expansion, which brought prosperity to cities such as Montreal, New York, and Boston. In 1844, Poor publicized a plan for two lines, one with a terminus at Halifax, and the other with a terminus at Montreal, with both converging on Portland. As stated by Young, this would “provide Montreal with an ice-free port on the Atlantic and link Montreal and Halifax by a trunk line from Montreal to Maine, intersecting in Portland with another trunk line from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia.”

Subsequently, the Montreal Board of Trade weighed the advantages of a rail connection to either Portland or Boston. In this case, Portland was 100 miles closer to Montreal and it was a half-day closer to European ports. However, Portland’s population of only 16,000 could barely match the financial support for railroad construction pledged by a group of Boston businessmen. Accordingly, as the Boston representatives presented their case, Poor made a 300-mile trip through the White Mountains during a February 1845 blizzard to make his case. According to the book The Grand Trunk in New England (1985) by Jeff Holt, “Poor left Portland shortly after midnight, but the wind-driven snow made it difficult to follow the road. His sleigh only covered 7.5 miles in three hours.”

After reaching Falmouth, he “traveled 40 miles, and had frostbite on his nose and one ear by the time he reached South Paris. He then traveled to his hometown of Andover, after obtaining help from the residents of Rumford to break a path through snowdrifts higher than a horse’s back.” He continued and traveled another 40 miles to Colebrook, New Hampshire, where the residents helped carry his sleigh through 20-foot snowdrifts. Poor then “rested in Sherbrooke, Quebec, before venturing forth through unbroken snow 18 inches deep in minus 18 degrees weather and crossed the ice-covered Saint Lawrence River at dawn on February 9. After resting for three hours in his Montreal hotel room, Poor addressed the Montreal Board of Trade. He convinced them to delay support, and the subsequent debate resulted in approval of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad to Portland. Poor had frostbitten (cont. on page 46)

(cont. from page 45) feet and developed pneumonia upon his return to Portland.”

Poor’s success only increased his interest in railways, as shown in the following examples. First, in 1846, he focused on building locomotives for Portland’s railway. Following discussions with Norris Locomotive Works, which he organized, he became the first president of the Portland Company, which built locomotive equipment. Second, he moved to New York in 1849, where he purchased the New York Railroad Journal. After returning to Portland, he became involved in several railways and to promote his projects, he edited a newspaper, the State of Maine from 1853 to 1859. He eventually merged it with the Portland Daily Advertiser

Despite all his efforts, Poor’s dream of a commercial empire focused on Maine never materialized. According to Young, “Political instability in the Maritimes, and the failure of Cana- dian politician Joseph Howe to win guarantees from the British government for lines from Halifax to Quebec and Portland made progress difficult.” Meanwhile, the Intercolonial Railway emerged as another competitor for Poor’s international railway. As Young added, “Nor did Poor have great success in promoting the railway in his native state; as one scribe noted, the Poor plan, ‘though it might dazzle talkers, did not necessarily convert investors.’”

However, after receiving a loan of 800,000 acres and a $500,000 loan from Bangor, New Brunswick granted a charter to build from Saint John to the Maine boundary. Construction finally began in Maine in 1867 and the railway was completed in 1872. Although Poor witnessed the beginning of the construction of his European and North American Railway, he never saw its completion, since he died from heart failure at his home in Portland on September 6, 1871. He was 63 years of age. His railway eventually became the eastern end of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway.

As for his legacy, perhaps The New York Times article, The Late John A. Poor of Maine (September 8, 1871) stated it the best:

Mr. Poor was the father of the railroad system of Maine, particularly in its relations to British North America. Long before the mass of his fellow citizens was awake to the fact, he announced that ‘Portland is the natural seaport of the Canadas.’ — A declaration repeated by him so often as to cause amusement among those who did not comprehend the true interest of their State. Mr. Poor, however, never faltered before ridicule nor succumbed to indifference. He urged his ideas, until he had the satisfaction of seeing them embodied in the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Road, the nucleus of what is now better known as the Grand Trunk Railway.