William Cornelius Van Horne family name Van Horne
Ancestry and early life
Born in 1843 in rural Illinois, Van Horne moved with his family to Joliet, Illinois, when he was eight years old.
He was the eldest child of Cornelius Covenhoven Van Horne (1794–1854) by his second wife Mary Minier Richards of Sandusky, Ohio. Cornelius studied law at Union College, but took his family out west to seek his fortune farming. Misfortune followed as his house, barns and law books were destroyed by fire, and his first wife died shortly afterwards. Abandoning farming, he returned to the law and became Recorder of Will County, Illinois, moving his family to Joliet, Illinois. Cornelius was active in getting the city its first charter, and because of this he was elected Joliet's first mayor. When the city later built a new bridge it was named the Van Horne Bridge.Van Horne's grandfather, Abraham Van Horne, graduated from Queens College (now Rutgers) with avocation for the ministry, and received his license to preach in 1792 from the Reformed Church of America. He held three pastorates, one at Wawarsing, one near Kingston, New York and his last at Caughnawaga (now Fonda, New York), from 1796 to 1833.Career
At the age of fourteen, Van Horne began working on railroads, serving in various capacities on the Illinois Central Railroad until 1864. He went on to work for the Chicago and Alton Railway, serving as general superintendent 1878–1879. In 1882, he was appointed general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway, becoming its vice-president in 1884 and president in 1888, finally becoming chairman of the board in 1899. He is most famous for overseeing the major construction of the first Canadian transcontinental railway, a project that, under his leadership, was completed in under half the projected time.
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