Frederick Stark Pearson

Frederick Stark Pearson ( born July 3, 1861 in Lowell, Massachusetts, † May 7, 1915 in the Atlantic Ocean ) was an American engineer and entrepreneur.

Family and private life

Dr. Frederick Pearson was the son of civil engineer Ambrose Pearson and his wife Hannah Amelia (born Edgerly ). On January 5, 1887, he married in his hometown of Lowell Mabel Ward ( born January 16, 1863 in Boston); from the marriage had three children: Ward Edgerly Pearson ( born November 8, 1887) (later treasurer of the Pearson Engineering Company ), Natalie Stark Pearson ( born December 19, 1889) and Frederick Ambrose Pearson ( born November 27, 1891). The principal residence of the family was Great Barrington, Massachusetts; However, the Pearson also had more property like Coombe House, Kingston Hill, Surrey, England or the house at Carrer Mallorca 271, Barcelona, Spain.

Career

Pearson in 1883 went from Tufts University and developed in the coming years in Boston, an electronic transport system. 1894 Pearson was appointed head of the Metropolitan Street Railways in New York City. Gradually he created in the United States with a reputation for innovation and integrity engineer and was quickly taken by businessmen, companies and even the government as a consultant under contract. As a forward-looking, technically adept and financially sophisticated thinker, he carried out many large projects in North and South America. He was also manager of the Somerville Electric Light Company.

In Montreal, Canada, he built a friendship with the young lawyer and stockbroker James Dunn. Pearson was able to persuade him to move to London, then the largest and most important stock market in the world. Using Dunn's skyrocketing profits in the stock market succeeded Pearson to build a huge business empire to the São Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Company in Brazil, the Mexican North Western Railway, the Mexican Tramway Company, the Mexican Light and Power Company in Mexico and the British American nickel Company of Canada included.

Unstable governments and corruption in public authorities in Mexico made ​​very Pearson to create. The government of President Venustiano Carranza nationalized its Mexican Tramway Company and ultimately he lost everything he had invested in Mexico. In 1912 he organized a syndicate in Hale County, Texas. While working there he founded the city of Natalia, who is named after his daughter Natalie.

Should be acted Pearson 1913 an agreement with the Spanish government to build a hydraulic system and a dam on the Rio Ebro and founded the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, which plan to build, organize and carry out. The construction work lasted until 1915.

Death on the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915 Frederick and Mabel Pearson went along with her secretary David Walker in New York the first - class passengers on board the British ocean liner Lusitania, to visit her now married daughter in England. The ship should arrive in Liverpool on May 8. Pearson's colleague Major F. Warren Pearl and his good friend George Kessler, the " Champagne King of New York ", were also on board. The trip was uneventful, the couple strolled on deck and Pearson himself often played cards with the Irish art collector Sir Hugh Lane and Lady Marguerite Allan, wife of Montagu Allan. On the evening of May 6, the pair was a guest at George Kessler's Party in the luxury suite where met many prominent passengers. On May 7, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk without warning by a German submarine U20. Frederick Pearson and his wife arrived in the disaster life. Both bodies have been recovered and identified, Dr. Pearson was corpse # 16, Mabel Pearson was corpse # 216

The Texas town Pearson was named after him.

• Engineer
• Americans
• Born in 1861
• Died in 1915
• Man