The Mischief part 2
“13 Foot Coal Seam, Three Miles West of Coal Harbor, BC” from an article written by Andrew Smith Hallidie for the Mining and Scientific Press, January 23, 1897.
The man we know as Andrew Smith Hallidie, father of the San Francisco cable cars, was born Andrew Halliday Smith on March 16, 1834[2]. “Junior” to the family, he was the sixth child and fourth son of civil engineer Andrew Smith and Juliann Johnstone[3]. He was born at 69 Princes Street near Leicester Square, now the heart of London’s Theatre District in a building that served as residence for the family and his father’s factory. The neighbors were mechanics: upholsterers, plumbers, jewelers, boot and belt makers, metal workers, and a coach maker. Engineering was the family vocation–his father, uncles, and nearly all of his brothers would describe themselves as civil engineers. Hallidie would when he came to manhood half a world away in the frontier of California.
Virtually all that is known about Hallidie’s life comes from essays, lectures, and stories that he wrote for his many public appearances, magazines, and journals as well as his autobiography for business directories and encyclopedias of worthwhile men. He mentioned the barest of facts about his origins and personal life, choosing to focus instead on his adventures and achievements, but explaining his family’s long history with invention. He was proud of being a self-made man and adopted son of California. The California Historical Society, which has the bulk of Hallidie’s personal papers, houses a penciled jotting from 1886 that sums up his feelings and perhaps his reasons for keeping his background mysterious:
California that has become so endeared to me was an accidental love and brought about by circumstances over which I had no control. I was a passenger in the bark that carried me on the voyage of life and took me to a land in which my experiences and early youth were not accompanied by the gentleness or polish of the family surroundings which sweet memory still treasures of in the dim shadows of boyhood.
What’s most interesting when reading these autobiographies is not what’s included but what’s deliberately left out. This blog will attempt to fill in these gaps with research into Hallidie, his family, and compatriots, plus a close examination of Hallidie’s own stories, essays, and speeches. Whenever possible his own words will be used to provide a sense of his own voice and the times.
[1] Hallidie, Andrew Smith, Vancouver Island, Mining and Scientific Press, January 23, 1897, p. 68
[2] Hallidie would assert his entire life that he was born on March 16, 1836 though amongst his papers at the California Historical Society is a baptism record that he requested from London in 1879. This baptism record corroborates other facts that support the 1834 birthdate: Hallidie’ had a brother Thomas Howard Smith born on 28 September 1835 (a mere six months before), the 1841 census lists him as being age 7, and the 1851 census shows Andrew Hallidie as living with his older brother William and aged 17.
[3] There was a previous child born in May 1832 and died in February 1833 also named Andrew Halliday Smith. The duplicate name indicates the importance of the Hallidie connection.
