Theodore D. (“Ted”) Judah was born in 1826 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After earning a degree at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, he became a railroad engineer, designing railroads around the country. From 1844 on, he worked on a number of projects including the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield Railroad and the Connecticut River Railway. During that last project he met and married Anna Ferona Pierce, the daughter of a Greenfield, Massachusetts, merchant. In 1854, he went to California where he worked on several railroad projects. There he became convinced of the necessity and feasibility of a transcontinental railroad. The scale of such a project meant that only the federal government could afford to finance it, and Judah became one of the project’s biggest promoters, traveling back and forth from California to Washington, DC, to lobby for it. In the summer of 1860, Judah was pleased to find that the Republican party had put a plank in its election platform for full government support for a transcontinental railway. The “letter” referred to in this newspaper piece from December, 1860, refers to a pamphlet Judah had published in November in California. The pamphlet claimed that building the line from Sacramento to Nevada would be short and that it would face “no serious engineering difficulties.” Both turned out to be untrue.
Greenfield Gazette and Courier. “A Letter from T. D. Judah.” December 10, 1860. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l02-116/. Accessed on November 23, 2024.
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