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By Arthur G. Umscheid, Ph.D. Rugged individualism, practicality, realism, courage, fortitude, perseverance, initiative, integrity, the capacity to dream and to behold visions -- rarely are all these characteristics blended within a single personality. When they are, the product will be an exceptional man. Such was Edward Creighton. Born in Belmont County, Ohio, August 31, 1820, Edward was the fifth of nine children springing from the union of James Creighton and Bridget Hughes, immigrant parents who departed the Emerald Isle and first glimpsed the shores of the promised land in 1805. Six years later they were married in Philadelphia, spending their first year in Pittsburgh, then, yielding to the lure of the west, they occupied a farm in Belmont County, near the town of Barnesville. Moving again, they secured a second farm near Somerset, Licking County, Ohio, where John Andrew, the last of their children, was born October 15, 1831. Eleven years junior to Edward, in later days they would be closely associated. Like the majority of immigrants departing the shores of Europe, the Creightons were people of modest means, not wanting in the necessities of life, neither were they endowed with its luxuries. Farming in the days before agricultural mechanization, was strenuous and onerous, with stubborn earth yielding its fruits only at the cost of backbreaking labor. At an early age the Creighton children learned responsibility and the meaning of work. On the death of James Creighton, March 5, 1842, when the youngest child was not quite eleven, Edward assumed the duties that ordinarily fall upon the head of the household. Much had to be learned quickly for in an environment scarcely beyond the frontier educational opportunities were all but nonexistent and Edward received little or nothing in the way of formal schooling. Like many another, in the days when the nation was young, he would carve his career and attain success as a "self-made man." Journeying to Dayton, in his native Ohio, on October 7, 1856, Creighton married Mary Lucretia Wareham. Bringing his bride to Omaha, they built a solid but modest home on Chicago St., between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, where they spent their entire married life. Two years later Mrs. Creighton returned to Dayton for the birth of their only child, Charles David, destined to live but five years, a tragedy leaving a dark and somber shadow. Creighton laid the foundations of his later considerable fortune by joining the Kountze brothers in banking ventures, in mercantile endeavors and the highly profitable wagon freighting between Omaha and Denver, then the center of the Colorado gold rush. Creighton's commercial and financial activities reflected the varied interests and dynamic energy of the man -- wagon freighting, merchandising, real estate, banking, railroading, ranching -- but his name will always be most intimately associated with the telegraph. Renewing his ties with the Western Union, he made extensive survey of a southern route, rejecting it in favor of a central line that would run through Nebraska Territory. Leaving Omaha by stagecoach on November 18, 1860, he passed through Fort Kearney, then began the survey to Salt Lake City, proceeding to Carson City, Nevada and on to Sacramento. He arrived in Carson City, appearing more dead than alive, traveling 600 miles in twelve days of mid-winter, a test of physical endurance incredible even by pioneer standards. Actual construction began at Julesburg, where Creighton supervised a veritable army of workers, wagon trains, coordinated the massing of supplies, resolving the challenge of providing thousands of poles for construction over hundreds of miles of treeless plains. On July 2, 1861, Creighton personally dug the hole for the first pole. An astounding spectacle it must have been as the crews moved at a rate of ten to twelve miles daily through the untamed West. Confronted with the problems of supply, mid-summer heat, obstacles of terrain, and the threat of hostile Indians. The Red Man must have watched with awe and amazement at the strange antics of the palefaces, setting pole after pole and attaching to them the "singing wire." Another crew worked east from Salt Lake, narrowing the gap with each sunrise and sunset, completing the line by October 17, 1861, when Edward Creighton telegraphed his wife from Fort Bridger, informing her that in a few days the continent would be spanned by wire. This came to pass one week later, October 24. Creighton had selected the route, surveyed nearly all of it, constructed a major portion of it. It was a truly phenomenal accomplishment which has never received a due tribute, as circumstances dictated that it would be overshadowed only eight years later by the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. But Creighton must have found solace in knowing that when the golden spike was driven, May 10, 1869, a wire was attached to it and his telegraph recorded every blow of the hammer. Over the vast organized and unorganized territories of plains and mountains of California was now securely bound to the Union by a ribbon of wire and bands of iron. The arduous and demanding task of telegraph construction now lay for the most part behind him, though he would later supervise construction of the first line from Salt Lake City to Virginia City, Montana, along with the installation of the Union Pacific line from Laramie, both lines terminating at Promontory [Summit], Utah. Creighton was now permitted to spend much more time in Omaha, where he was soon regarded as the community's leading citizen. In accordance with the National Bank Act, passed in 1863 and amended the following year, in association with the Kountze brothers, he founded the First National Bank of Omaha, opening for business on August 26, 1863, with Creighton as its first president. Demonstrating an incredible drive and energy, he plunged into civic activities, taking a major role in the steamy politics of locating the the terminus of the Union Pacific in Omaha, one of the few struggles in which he was less than successful. His close association with the Great Plains brought him to sense the possibilities for livestock ranching and with two partners he was wintering 8,000 head of cattle and 3,000 sheep in southeastern Wyoming. Adding to his real estate holdings in Omaha, he turned his attention to railroading as one of the incorporators of the Omaha and Northwestern Railroad, soon becoming its president. By 1874 there were indications that Creighton's rugged physique, which had withstood the rigors of the mid-winter journey from Salt Lake to Carson City, was weakening under the strenuous demands he had placed upon it over the passing years. Warning came with a mild stroke, from which he recovered, but on November 3 in his office at the First National Bank, he suffered a severe recurrence, dying in his home two days later at the premature age of 54. One can only speculate on what he might have accomplished later, had not the sands of time run out too soon. It is strange anomaly that one of Creighton's business experience and acumen should die intestate but, fortunately, this did not preclude the erection of what would become his most enduring monument. It may well be that Creighton appreciated the incomparable blessing of an education because, in the formal sense, he never had one. His wife, who survived him barely more than a year, knowing his intention and desire, provided in her will the bequest that laid the foundation of Creighton University. It was, then, Mary Lucretia Creighton, who transformed the dream and vision of her husband into reality. The inexorable hand of time and change has left little untouched in the institutional landscape since Creighton's day and it may seem that many of his accomplishments no longer reflect the luster they once displayed. He would no doubt, be mystified by the complexities of modern banking; he would not recognize the patterns of the contemporary livestock industry; he would be puzzled to observe how the once great power and influence of the railroads have faded; it might depress him to realize that the telegraph, to which he devoted every fiber of his being, has largely been superseded by long distance telephone and the instantaneous projection of voice, sound and image through ether. But the university, bearing his name, arising from humble origins to its present imposing proportions, stands as a monument and memorial, reminding us that a man of titanic stature once passed this way and in passing carved a deep and lasting imprint not only on Omaha, not only on Nebraska, but upon much of the American West. Well merited and richly deserved is the crown often bestowed upon him in reference -- "a King among Nebraska pioneers." |
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