Winter, Edwin W. (Edwin Wheeler), 1845-1930

Edwin Wheeler Winter was born on November 18, 1845 in Bloomfield, Vermont. Sometime prior to 1848 his family moved to Compton, New Hampshire, where they remained until their 1856 move to Wauconda, Illinois. There Winter attended both the Wauconda and Lake Zurich academies. At age fifteen he left home and found employment on area farms for nearly two years. He then attended Dyrengurth's School of Trade in Waukegan, Illinois and became an assistant teacher when the school moved to Chicago. He also worked as a wagon driver and bookkeeper at Chicago's Mechanical Bakery and as a bookkeeper at several shipping warehouses before he became an office boy in the Chicago American Express Company office in 1862. Except for a short period of service with an Illinois regiment during the Civil War, he remained with American Express until 1866. In that year he joined the newly organized Merchant's Union Express Company, but left in 1867 to join the Union Pacific Railway Company (UP). He was employed in the UP's construction department, serving in several capacities, including paymaster, in Chicago, Wyoming, and Utah. In 1870 he left the UP and returned to Chicago where he became a general agent for the American Art Association in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. In 1871 he again returned to Chicago and became a bookkeeper with the railroad construction firm of Seymour, Wallace and Company. He served at construction sites in Moberly (Missouri), Atchison (Kansas), and Marinette (Wisconsin). In 1873 he left the construction firm to become the general claim agent of the Chicago and North Western Railway Company (C&NW) in Chicago. He moved to Hudson, Wisconsin in 1876 when he became general superintendent of the West Wisconsin Railway Company. In 1878 the West Wisconsin Railway Company was acquired by the Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis Railway Company (CSPM), and Winter was named general superintendent the following year. In 1880 the line became the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway Company (the Omaha) and Winter was made assistant president in 1881. In that same year he moved to St. Paul. In 1885 he was named the Omaha's general manager, a position he held until he became president of the Northern Pacific Railway Company (NP) in July 1896. His resignation the following April took effect on August 31 and was attributed to a conflict over the railroad's ownership.

Winter moved to New York City in 1899 where he became known as a builder of "sick" railroads, participating in the reorganization of the Cleveland, Lorain and Wheeling Railway Company and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). He served as president of the latter from 1903 through 1911. He was also president of the Chicago Transfer and Clearing Company in the late 1890s.

Winter married Elizabeth Cannon of Louisville, Kentucky in 1870. He died at his summer home in Little Compton, Rhode Island on June 28, 1930.

Biographical data was taken from the collection and the St. Paul Dispatch, June 28, 1930, p. 1. See Minnesota History, 40:16.

From the guide to the Edwin W. Winter papers., 1870-1923., (Minnesota Historical Society)