Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/281

 NEW HAMPSHIRE MEN IN MICHIGAN.

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��Cambridge, Mass., where, during the years of 1833 and 1834, he enjoyed the benefit and example of the teach- ing of Story and Greenleaf ; and where he laid, broad and deep, the founda- tions of the structure he has since raised. Being poor, however, he was compelled to leave the law school and enter the academy at Pittsfield as its preceptor. He was next employed as tutor of Latin classes at Dartmouth. After spending a year there he returned to the law school in Cambridge, where he completed his studies and spent an- other year.

Mr. Joy was a thorough classical scholar, and during all the labors of his profession, and in those vast rail- way enterprises which he has founded and constructed with such eminent ability and success, has never failed to keep up his early studies.

Although he is the "railway king of the north-west," he is more than this — he is a ripe scholar, a man of great literary attainments, and a most emi- nent and able lawyer. He has few superiors in this country in all that vast code of law that has grown up as a part and parcel of the railway system of the United States. He is also a thorough master of constitutional law.

In September, 1836, he went to De- troit and entered the law office of Hon. Augustus B. Porter. At that time he was not worth a hundred dollars. During the year that he remained in the office with Mr. Porter he .attracted attention to his character for industry, steadiness of purpose, de- votion to business, and high moral principles ; and when admitted to the bar, in 1837, he at once entered on a large practice. Soon after he com- menced practice he became part- ner of George F. Porter, a man of great practical business knowledge, who became an invaluable help to Mr. Joy. Joy and Porter soon became attorneys and counsellors to large busi- ness houses in Boston and New York. In 1847 a Mr. Brooks came from Bos- ton to Michigan to purchase the then Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad ; he

��was sent to Mr. Joy as the man to take the legal charge of all the nego- tiations, and to act as counsel for the new stockholders in that great enter- prise. Mr. Brooks entrusted the entire business of the negotiations, purchases from the state, drawing up and passing the acts, and securing the purchase money, by which the Michigan Central Railroad, now one of the best in the country, was secured, to Mr. Joy ; and it was through his faithful performance of the business entrusted to him, that the road came into existence. With the completion of the new line to Chi- cago, he at once started to extend it to the Missouri river, and, organizing the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, he built up one of the most lucrative and best regulated and man- aged roads in the United States. This road has more than quadrupled its stock out of its earnings. Mr. Joy is president and director of the Michigan Central, and the Hannibal and St.Joseph roads, the Missouri and Council Bluffs road and their branches, and is an officer and stockholder in several others. He and Mr. Brooks also or- ganized the company for the construc- tion of the St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal, connecting the navigation of Lake Superior with that of the lower lakes, for all classes of vessels — a work of great national importance.

Since the close of the war Mr. Joy has mainly devoted himself to the construction of railoads in Michigan. The Detroit, Lansing and Lake Michi- gan Railroad owes its present prosper- ity to his efforts. The road from Detroit to Bay City, and also the Chi- cago and Michigan Lake Shore Rail- road, extending from New Buffalo to Pentwater, with branches to Grand Rapids and Big Rapids, have been built by his means and influence. He did much, also, to promote the con- struction of the Jackson, Lansing and Saginaw road, and the Grand River Valley road. Perhaps it is not too much to say that no single man in the West has done so much to promote and push forward public improvements,

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