Railroad Telegrapher Extraordinaire: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Trains”

 

James L Elliot’s Role as a Railroad Telegrapher Led to a Union Position

James Leslie Elliott: 1889-1958 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)

While James Elliott was a fairly distant ancestor, his occupation was an interesting part of American history. He worked as a railroad telegrapher in the early 1900s. Railroad telegraphers were critical to the efficient running of the railways. As Wikipedia noted, “railroad telegraphers played a role in the operation of the railroads that was not unlike the role of air traffic controllers in the modern airline industry; they enabled the trains to run safely and on time.[2]” The telegraphers communicated actual arrival and departure times of the locomotives, and transmitted orders from railway headquarters to train engineers. James eventually left working for a railroad company to take positions with a union that represented railroad telegrapher workers.

Railroad telegrapher at work, circa 1916.

James Elliott was born November 24, 1889 in Owensboro, Kentucky. His parents were James Franklin Elliott and Emma Ara Moseley. He was the third of their eight children. At some point in his early childhood, the family moved to Kansas. James learned the telegraphy trade there.

At the time of James’ marriage to Maude VanRiper, a young divorcee, on December 10, 1915, he was serving as the local manager of the Western Union Telegraph Company in Dodge City, Kansas. Maude had two children by her first husband, and James and Maude added a daughter, Dorothy, to their family on October 14, 1922. 

By the time James completed his World War I draft card on June 5, 1917, he was a telegraph operator for the Acheson Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. He continued in that role for several years, and was based in Topeka, Kansas.

Rail telegraphy equipment

Many telegraphers moved from positions with the railways to telegraph companies like Western Union, which tended to pay more. James, however, moved from Western Union to the AT&SF Railroad.

James probably joined the Order of Railroad Telegraphers early in his career. The Order began in the late 1800s as a fraternal organization, but grew to become a powerful labor union that by 1946 had 75,000 members and was influential in railroad labor issues.

James apparently rose through the union’s ranks, eventually leaving his telegraphy job to work for the union. On the 1940 census, he is listed as the “General Chairman” of the “Telegraphers Union”. He was living in Topeka, Kansas and earning $3600 a year. That doesn’t sound like a princely sum until you compare it with the earnings of a lawyer, an auditor and a civil engineer on the same census page, who each earned between $2100 and $2800 annually, nearly $1000 less than James. By this time, James and Maude had divorced, and James had remarried to Jeanette Elliott (I have yet to find her maiden name), who was fifteen years his junior.

By 1950, James had moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and was working at the headquarters of the union. The census shows his occupation as “Executive” and his employer as “Railway Brotherhood”. His income was listed on a printout below the main page as $9000. As Vice President of this union, Elliott was probably involved in negotiations with the railways on behalf of the union’s members as well as other managerial duties.

James died at age 68 on January 29, 1958, and was buried in Maryland, far from his Kentucky birthplace. His obituary noted that in addition to his union work, he served in the Defense Manpower Administration, which may have been a wartime agency. He also worked in the Philadelphia area before returning to serve as the Vice President of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers in Washington D.C. He was still working for the union at the time of his death. His second marriage had also failed, so he was only survived by his daughter, Dorothy.

Following James’ death, the Order of Railroad Telegraphers shrank as the need for telegraphers waned with the growth of the telephone industry. The union was eventually absorbed by the Brotherhood of Railway & Airline Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees (BRAC) in 1969.

 

 

Sources:

Order of Railroad Telegraphers. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Railroad_Telegraphers#:~:text=The%20Order%20of%20Railway%20Telegraphers%20was%20initially%20intended%20to%20be,strike%20except%20in%20extreme%20conditions.

Photo of Railroad telegraph equipment.   https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=railroad+telegraph+operator&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image

Photo of Railroad Telegrapher, circa 1916. Courtesy of San Diego History Center.