My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

In Short

This autobiography records the dynamic life of an American entrepreneur who moves from a rural Massachusetts childhood to international finance, shipping, and railway construction. Dictated at age seventy-four after thirty years of self-imposed seclusion, the narrative chronicles the author's involvement in launching Boston shipping lines, establishing street-car systems across England, funding the Union Pacific Railway, and participating in revolutionary movements abroad. It remains a notable historical text as a vivid, highly eccentric first-hand document of nineteenth-century American expansion, global travel, and the volatile intersection of private ambition with public affairs.

The Story

The narrative begins with an orphaned childhood spent on a Massachusetts farm following a devastating yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans that claimed the author’s immediate family. Raised by relatives under strict New England discipline, he receives a basic education before entering the commercial world of Boston as a young clerk. His instinct for organization and rapid enterprise elevates him quickly within the shipping house of Enoch Train & Company, where he helps manage packet lines, coordinate Irish immigration, and establish foreign trade routes.

By his early twenties, his commercial pursuits expand internationally. He travels to England to oversee shipping interests, subsequently embarking on journeys to Australia during the gold rush era. In Melbourne, he establishes a lucrative merchant house, introduces American goods, and observes the local culture before continuing his travels through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. His early career establishes a pattern of rapid commercial setup followed by swift movement to new projects.

Returning to Europe and the United States, he pivots from maritime shipping to urban and transcontinental infrastructure. He champions the introduction of horse-drawn street railways in Great Britain, navigating municipal resistance in Liverpool and Birkenhead to construct early tramway lines. Simultaneously, he engages in complex financial arrangements involving Spanish royal capital to develop American rail links. These efforts culminate in his primary industrial project: the promotion and organization of the Credit Mobilier and the Union Pacific Railway, intended to complete a direct trade highway across North America.

As the late nineteenth century progresses, his focus shifts from corporate enterprise to public agitation and political crusades. His world travels and public lectures draw him into international political conflicts. While in France during the Franco-Prussian War, he allies himself with revolutionary figures in Marseilles, resulting in his arrest and deportation. Back in the United States, his outspoken advocacy for controversial figures and his publication of taboo material lead to an arrest in New York under obscenity charges. Refusing to pay bail or accept compromised legal exits, he spends months in the Tombs prison before a court declares him legally insane—a verdict he vociferously protests. The memoir closes with his retreat from public life, settling into quiet routine at a modest New York hotel, reflecting on his legacy while conversing with local children in public parks.

How It Unfolds

An orphaned start in New England Sent north after yellow fever strikes his family in New Orleans, the boy grows up on a farm in Waltham, Massachusetts, learning rudimentary academic skills alongside rigorous manual labor.

Rising through the shipping trade Entering a Boston counting-house as a youth, he demonstrates an extraordinary memory for accounts, quickly rising from clerk to partner while helping build a major transatlantic packet line.

Commercial ventures in southern seas Arriving in Melbourne during the gold boom, he builds a successful trading enterprise, introduces modern American business methods, and documents the unfamiliar customs and fauna of Australia.

Pioneering transit in Great Britain Overcoming fierce municipal skepticism, he secures permissions to build England's early street tramways in Birkenhead, demonstrating urban rail transit to a cautious public.

Promoting the transcontinental railroad He organizes financial backing and public support for the Union Pacific Railway, envisioning a continental transit route designed to redirect global trade across the American mainland.

Revolutionary politics and prison cells Involvement with the Marseilles Commune leads to foreign arrest, followed years later by imprisonment in New York's Tombs prison after he prints controversial texts, ending in an unwanted verdict of legal insanity.

The People

• George Francis Train: The author and protagonist, driven by a desire for grand enterprise, public attention, and personal independence. He transforms from an energetic merchant into an international promoter and radical agitator, ending his life as a quiet recluse who refuses to compromise with legal authorities.
• Enoch Train: A prominent Boston merchant and relative who provides the author his initial start in the shipping business, facilitating his rise into high-level transatlantic commerce.
• John Laird: The Birkenhead shipbuilder and civic leader who grants the author the initial opportunity to lay down street-railway tracks when other English municipal authorities reject the concept.
• General Gustave Paul Cluseret: A military figure involved in the American Civil War and European uprisings, whom the author and French revolutionists seek out to lead military forces during the turmoil in Marseilles.
• Judge Davis: The presiding judge in the New York Court of Oyer and Terminer who handles the author's obscenity trial, ultimately discharging him by directing a verdict of acquittal on the grounds of insanity.

In Its Own Voice

"From that day to this I have done everything I have undertaken in my own way, and have found that it was the best way--at least, for me."

Context: Reflecting on his early success collecting bills across Boston without relying on written ledgers.

"He told me almost the same things that Bridges had said, and thus confirmed the first chart of my head."

Context: Describing his lifelong fascination with phrenology and his visits to famous skull-readers in Europe.

"I felt that I was in the same plight as Paul."

Context: Protesting in court after being declared legally insane following four months of imprisonment in the Tombs.

What It's Really About

The memoir functions as an extended defense of a controversial career, attempting to reframe a reputation often dismissed as eccentric or erratic. At its core, the text explores the boundless confidence of nineteenth-century American commercial expansion, where individual ambition routinely crossed national borders and legal boundaries. It contrasts the rigid institutions of the old world—and the cautious legal apparatus of the new—with the author's restless drive to build, travel, and agitate. Beneath the record of corporate charters and political speeches lies a persistent questioning of authority and public sanity, asserting that the true madness lay not in the visionary individual, but in a society bound by bureaucratic timidity and conventional thought.

Why Read It Today

This autobiography appeals to readers interested in Gilded Age entrepreneurship, global travel narrative, and the history of American eccentricities. The prose moves at a rapid pace, dictated directly by an aging man whose memory retains sharp details of financial deals, celebrity encounters, and international crises. Reading it offers an unfiltered glimpse into the mindset of a nineteenth-century projector who counted figures like Daniel Webster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and foreign revolutionaries among his acquaintances.

The text presents distinct period challenges. The narrator's unyielding self-assurance can border on vanity, and his historical judgments reflect the unvarnished cultural biases of the Victorian era. Moreover, the narrative frequently jumps between business schemes, personal grievances, and detailed accounts of legal battles, requiring the reader to navigate a dense landscape of forgotten nineteenth-century controversies. What remains compelling, however, is the sheer energy of the narrative voice—a vivid portrait of a man who lived at the absolute center of his era's material expansion, only to view it at last from the quiet isolation of a park bench.