For the Love of Uncle

Abstract

Henry Huntington lived to work, to build, and to collect. He was very good at all three. In a career devoted to corporate management and railroad building, he inherited one fortune, made another, and married a third. At his death in 1927, he left a legacy that includes much of the credit for the integrated growth of early Los Angeles suburbs and railway networks as well as the extraordinary treasures that make up the Huntington Library, its art collections, and botanical gardens. In describing Huntington's limitless energy and drive, William Friedricks proposes a reasonable motive: raised in the shadow of, and tutored by, his famous uncle, Collis P. Huntington, Henry devoted a life's work trying to outdo or at least live up to his uncle's example. Remarkably circumspect, ever the stoic man of business, Huntington rarely gave in to personal reflection. But he did, on occasion, reminisce about Collis, the standard he set, and the inspiration he instilled. And, not incidentally, Henry married his aunt Arabella, Collis's widow, about a decade after Collis P. Huntington's death in 1900. Something inspired Henry Huntington to do all he did in this world, and Friedricks makes a good, albeit tentative, case that Henry tried his damndest to equal or surpass his uncle in all sorts of endeavors, business or otherwise. No doubt Collis Huntington proved a tough act to follow. He had already made a great deal of money as a Gold Rush merchant even before helping to incorporate the Central Pacific Railroad of California in 1861. But it was in the railroad-building world that the elder Huntington thrived, as would his nephew. Together with his partners -Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker-Collis Huntington spent the last quarter of the nineteenth century building an immense rail network that eventually webbed the western United States. Spending most of his time in New York, Huntington presided over business affairs for the Southern Pacific railroad empire, raising