they were named after him and have the descriptive suffix Van Hornei in paleontological encyclopedias.
Inspired by the establishment of the Illinois Natural History Society at Bloomington, Illinois, Van Horne and his comrades founded the Agassiz Club of Joliet in 1859, named after Jean Louis Agassiz, a famous geologist, naturalist, and teacher. Members were expected to go on weekend trips to places as far distant as twenty-five miles away. When not scavenging the countryside for new fossils, Van Horne and his pals carried on an extensive correspondence with geology authorities and arranged their collections, carefully observing the Smithsonian Institution’s directions for the care and preservation of specimens. But Van Horne was the only real leader of the group: once he moved away from Joliet, the club dissolved, and with it his dream of establishing a local museum. Decades later, however, his own fossil collection would be given to the University of Chicago.
Van Horne was working as a telegrapher in the dingy Cut Off office when the American Civil War broke out in the spring of 1861. Before this bitter conflict ended four years later, it would devastate a third of the country, claim more than six hundred thousand lives, and hopelessly maim thousands of others in body or mind. In the early days of the war, however, it would never have occurred to most Americans, including Van Horne, that the conflict would turn the entire country into “one vast central hospital,” as Walt Whitman, America’s renowned poet, described the war’s impact. Like so many young people of his day, the combative Van Horne was stirred by tales of battle. Even late in life he argued that universal peace was neither “possible nor desirable” and that “all the manliness of the civilized world is due to wars or the need of being prepared for wars.”
Illinois and the other free states were gripped by a groundswell of patriotic fever when the Confederate flag was raised over Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 14, 1861. Predictably, when news of the fort’s surrender reached Joliet, its citizens acted with shock and outrage. An old fairground was quickly converted into a camp, and by mid-May it boasted a full regiment, including two companies from Will County. Almost four thousand men from that county alone volunteered for service in the war, and more than five hundred of them would die in battle, from wounds or disease, or during internment in prison camps.
Among those eager to assist the Union cause was eighteen-year-old William Van Horne. One morning, without consulting anyone in the Cut Off office, he enlisted for service in the federal army. As soon as the news reached his work place, however, the assistant superintendent interceded to have his registration cancelled. He was determined that Van Horne would remain on the job: not only was he the principal support of his widowed mother but, as an exceptionally capable telegrapher, his services were indispensable to the Cut Off office.
Despite this praise, Van Horne became alarmed early in the war when rumours began to circulate that the declining traffic and drop in earnings caused by the conflict would force the Michigan Central to lay off some of its workers. But when Van Horne’s boss realized that the office was fast becoming an important centre for troop transportation, he decided that his telegrapher was an essential staff member. The young man was so relieved to keep his job that, when the assistant superintendent asked him how much additional work he could take on, he promptly replied that he could do any task at all. He immediately set out to prove himself: drawing on his ample store of initiative and knowledge of the office, the shops, and the yards, he quickly became the assistant superintendent’s right-hand man.
His new responsibilities should have kept Van Horne more than fully occupied, but they did not. He still needed outlets for his surplus energy and inventiveness, and every so often he played practical jokes on his work mates or even the townspeople. Unfortunately, some of them were in bad taste. On one occasion he sent an authentic-sounding telegram announcing a great Union victory on the battlefield. When the excited citizens heard the news, they hastened to run up flags and celebrate. The festivities ended abruptly once the Chicago newspapers arrived and the war-weary residents realized that they had been duped. An angry party went in search of Van Horne at the Cut Off office, only to discover that he had wisely headed for home.
Van Horne climbed another step up the railway ladder in 1862, when he accepted an offer from the Chicago and Alton Railroad to become its telegraph operator and ticket agent at Joliet. The substantial increase in salary that came with the job reflected just how demanding his duties and responsibilities were. This was especially true of the telegrapher’s job, which required an even-tempered individual with superior organizational skills and the ability to cooperate and work effectively with a whole team of people.
In this new position, Van Horne quickly demonstrated his resourcefulness. He noticed that butter deteriorated when it was left in a warm storage shed while awaiting shipment, so he arranged for it to be stored in a primitive cold-storage chamber he designed. He reasoned that if cold temperatures preserved the quality of the butter, farmers would obtain higher prices for their product and ship more of it by the Chicago and Alton, thereby increasing the railway’s earnings. His resourcefulness and foresight paid off — and the company quickly introduced his invention at other freight sheds on the line.
Two years later, in 1864, Van Horne was promoted to train dispatcher at Bloomington, a Chicago and Alton divisional point located in a rich agricultural area in central Illinois some ninety miles southwest of Joliet. This new position represented a considerable advance in his railway career, as it paid much better than the one he had held at Joliet. The Civil War was still raging, and trains were busy hauling troops, foodstuffs, horses, forage, ordinance, lumber, equipment, and supplies southward and returning soldiers and prisoners northward. Van Horne was therefore kept extremely busy helping to direct the flow of people and supplies from Chicago to St. Louis on the one main line then operated by the Chicago and Alton. Some twenty years later, during the North-West Rebellion of 1885 in Canada, he drew on the valuable experience he had acquired during this earlier wartime period.
In the early days on the railways, before messages could be sent by telegraph, train schedules and other orders were communicated verbally by the managers and then memorized by the crews. The system worked reasonably well so long as everything went as planned. When a train could not keep to its assigned schedule because of mechanical failure, a shortage of fuel, track damage, or some other unexpected development, however, no one except those operating the train knew exactly where it was on the line. Once the telegraph became a common communication tool in the 1860s, a dispatcher could establish the location of any train in his jurisdiction at all times. Skilled telegraphers like Van Horne were therefore much in demand.
Van Horne’s exceptional abilities led his superiors to assign him the night shift, normally worked by only the most competent dispatchers. Between 6:30 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., he watched and directed the movement of up to twenty trains at any one time on almost three hundred miles of track. When all the trains were “on time,” there was little, if anything, to do; but when one or more of them fell behind schedule, he had to plot new locations and times for trains running at different speeds, or in opposite directions, or both. It was exacting, complicated work that he likened to playing a game of chess, though not nearly so fascinating. Still, he was quick to agree that a single error in dispatching could pose a serious threat to life and property, or both, and result in an abrupt end to a dispatcher’s career.
Van Horne had a lot going for him by now: an impressive expertise in telegraphy and train dispatching, plus a wide knowledge of the workings of other train departments. These skills, together with his personal magnetism and wit, helped to make him a recognized leader on the railway. Whenever disputes arose involving the interpretation of train rules and other related matters, he was always asked for his opinion. Such respect, of course, fed his self-confidence and made him feel at ease in his relationships with his superiors.
One day he was in the room as the Chicago and Alton’s general superintendent devised a new railway schedule: the system back then was to arrange strings and pins on charts to indicate where trains should run and cross paths. When he could no longer contain his impatience with this laborious display, Van Horne muttered, “That’s
