Samuel Morse Felton, Railroad President and Civil War Hero

Samuel Morse Felton, West Newbury’s most And so Felton called on Allan Pinkerton to unlikely Civil War hero, was born in a house investigate. Pinkerton and his team of agents near the corner of Coffin and Main Streets arrived in Baltimore in early February, 1861, on July 17, 1809, two years after his brother assumed anti-Union identities, and began Cornelius Conway Felton, whose historic infiltrating groups of southern sympathizers. marker is on Main Street not far from Felton When Lincoln’s travels were announced, in Street. His mother, Anna Morse, had deep Baltimore the death threats against the new Newbury roots as the daughter of David president became serious, and, thanks to the Morse and Abigail Bailey. His father, Pinkerton team’s undercover operations, Cornelius Conway Felton, Sr., was a carriage specific: Lincoln would be shot and killed maker. Around 1815, he moved the family when greeting crowds at Baltimore’s Calvert south, becoming a toll-keeper in Chelsea. Street train station. According to Currier’s Ould Newbury, Samuel Pinkerton told Felton of the plot, adding that Felton followed his brother to Harvard, if it succeeded, the railroad would be where he graduated with high honors in destroyed to prevent retaliation from the 1834. After two years studying law, Felton north. With help from Felton in rearranging trained as a civil engineer. He laid out and train schedules and from Pinkerton agent supervised construction of the Fitchburg Kate Warne, who acted as decoy to take Railroad, and in 1845 became general possession of a sleeper car, Lincoln passed superintendent. In 1851, he was elected through Baltimore in secret in the dead of president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & night on February 23, 1861. Baltimore Railroad. On April 19, just after outbreak of war, a Felton’s railroad served as the vital link secessionist mob in Baltimore attacked the connecting Union states to Washington, 6th Massachusetts regiment during a change D.C. When in early 1861, newly elected of trains. Four soldiers and twelve rioters President Lincoln planned a 2,000-mile were killed in the first bloodshed of the Civil whistle-stop tour from Springfield, IL to his War. Felton was credited with conceiving inauguration, Felton became concerned. and opening a new train route through Maryland, a slave-holding state, was a hotbed Annapolis, preserving the Capitol and of confederate sympathizers. allowing passage of troops and supplies to points south. He also chartered vessels and Excerpted in Smithsonian Magazine, the book secured supplies for the Union cause. The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War, described Felton In 1865, Felton suffered a paralyzing stroke, as a “stolid, bespectacled bluebood whose which was attributed to the strain of his brother was president of Harvard,” who service during the war. He retired from the grew alarmed at rumors that “secessionists railroad but recovered after a few months’ might be mounting a ‘deep-laid conspiracy to rest. He then became president of the capture Washington, destroy all the avenues Pennsylvania Steel Company. Samuel Morse leading to it from the North, East, and West, Felton died on January 24, 1889 at his home and thus prevent the inauguration of Mr. in Philadelphia. Lincoln in the Capitol of the country.’” Samuel Morse Felton, Railroad President and Civil War Hero

Source: Ould Newbury, by John James Currier

Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore RR Station in Baltimore Source: Wikipedia.com

Samuel Morse Felton Source: Ancestry.com