The construction of the transcontinental railroad brought engineers, survey teams, and Irish and Chinese laborers into the Plains and Mountain West at the same time as the Civil War. The project culminated in May 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, with a public ceremony linking the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. Railroad work both for construction and operation constituted one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States, yet it also provided thousands of jobs across the nation. Apart from the military, railroad employment became one of the largest common experiences for American men.
Samuel Reed served as the lead surveyor and construction engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad between 1864 and 1869. Born in 1818, Reed was a civil engineer and worked on the Michigan Central, the Chicago and Rock Island, the Burlington and Missouri, the Union Pacific, the Illinois Central and the Canadian Pacific, as well as several other roads in his career. Reed's work for the Union Pacific included surveying the line from Omaha west into Utah, especially the mountain passes around the Salt Lake.
Claudius Crozet served as the chief engineer for the Commonwealth of Virginia in the 1850s and supervised the construction of the Blue Ridge Tunnel. He employed a crew of hundreds of Irish and enslaved black workers to build the line and carve out the tunnel. The Blue Ridge Tunnel was the longest tunnel in the world at the time it was built. Crozet filed quarterly reports on the construction and wrote detailed descriptions of the laborers and the engineering challenges.
Civil War payrolls of the U.S. Military RailRoad shops in Tennessee reveal the detailed records of machinists work. For other payrolls from the Union Pacific Railroad, the Blue Ridge Railroad, the U.S. Military Railroad, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, search our Employee Database.
Railroad companies contracted with independent contractors to build the lines and issued detailed descriptions of the work. In the South these companies hired slaves.
Railroad work varied greatly by type of job and setting. Railroad workers also became one of the most visible archetypes of modern American industry and labor.
In 1857 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad recorded every employee on the line. Over 6,000 individuals worked for the B & O in a variety of roles. Our database will track these individuals over time and across the railroad network, and in coming months we will add more data from different railroads on slave laborers, Irish, Chinese, and other workers. We include payroll records from the Illinois Central, the U.S. Military Railroad, the Union Pacific, and the Blue Ridge Railroad.
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