Joy, James F. (James Frederick), 1810-1896

James F. Joy was born in Durham, New Hampshire in December 1810. He was a teacher in a country school before entering Harvard Law School. Joy was an instructor of Latin at Dartmouth College. He came to Detroit in 1836 and was admitted to the Michigan Bar one year later. For many years, beginning in 1837, he was a law partner of George F. Porter, in the firm Joy & Porter. Joy presently became involved in banking matters, and, in about the 1840s, in railroad activities, which were to dominate his career until its end. He developed a marked talent for financial and executive enterprises and became one of the great railroad builders of his century. The papers shed light upon his connections with scores of railroads and with the multifarious legal, real estate, monetary and industrial aspects of their promotion and upon political activities designed to promote or influence railroad construction and consolidation. Joy bore a major role in pushing the Michigan Central Railroad west from Kalamazoo to Chicago, and he was associated more or less importantly with dozens of railroad promotions in both the United States and Canada. He served as counsel of the Michigan Central Railroad in 1846, becoming president of it in 1865. Before his retirement in 1877, Joy was active in building several other lines. He died in Detroit on September 24, 1896. The papers in this vast collection are chiefly legal and business, and there is comparatively little personal material. Joy was a pronounced anti-slavery man, and some of the earlier papers pertain to the Cassopolis fugitive slave case of the early 1850s.

Detroit, Michigan attorney, railroad magnate, and regent of University of Michigan.