Alan Pinkerton & President Lincoln

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(Alan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, General McClellan)

Allan Pinkerton, founder of the internationally known Pinkerton Detective Agency, was born in Scotland, August 25, 1819, the son of a Glasgow police sergeant. As an apprentice cooper, young Allan became involved in the Chartist Labor Movement of the day. When threatened with arrest he left Scotland at the age of 28, with his wife, Joan Carfrae, a Scotch Lassie, one day after their marriage. Although shipwrecked on the way, the young couple reached Canada, but instead of settling there, they pressed on to the United States, and eventually arrived in Chicago by a horse drawn vehicle in 1842.

Chicago had been incorporated only nine years and was fast outgrowing its humble start of 43 houses and fewer than 200 inhabitants. Allan Pinkerton worked as a cooper in Chicago for a year and then moved to a Scotch community on the Fox River, at Dundee, Illinois, 38 miles northwest of Chicago, where he set up a cooper's shop. Soon after this his mother and his brother, Robert, joined Mr. Pinkerton's family in Dundee, and both brothers worked together for a time at the coopers' trade.

One day while cutting staves and hoops on an uninhabited island, Mr. Pinkerton detected signs that led him to suspect the place was the lair of a band of thieves. Instead of thieves, he discovered and later captured a gang of counterfeiters. It was the first step in his long career of crime detection, a career in which his uncanny insight into the motives of mankind, his courage, and his organizing ability, were all to flower in dazzling achievement.

This chance encounter with the law awakened his inborn talent for police work, and he acted as a part time deputy sheriff for Kane County. A series of successful cases, plus considerable acclaim, led him to take up detective work as a career. He moved back to Chicago and in 1846 became assistant to the sheriff of Cook County, where he was very successful. The U. S. Post Office put him on as a special agent, and in the reorganization of the Chicago Police Department he became the first official detective in the history of the city. In 1850 he opened his own detective agency, the forerunner of the world renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency.

Railroad management soon learned of the young detective and turned to him for help. Train robberies were all too frequent and at that time gold was transported only by railroads. The method of protection employed for the safety of such shipments was costly and unsatisfactory. In the early fifties a group of railroads asked Mr. Pinkerton to organize an agency of his own to provide the protection they needed to safeguard their gold and other valuable shipments. Three of such railroads were the Rock Island, the Galena and Chicago Union (later incorporated into the Chicago and Northwestern), and the Illinois Central.

In 1857, Capt. George B. McClellan, a brilliant young engineer who later led all of the armies of the North, became associated with the Illinois Central Railroad and formed an early working arrangement with Mr. Pinkerton. In a letter dated December 5, 1858, Capt. McClellan himself requested Mr. Pinkerton to assign "a smart detective" to hunt out "sundry small thefts of begars, wines, etc., that have occurred along the line."

In 1861, Allan Pinkerton was called upon to guard President Elect, Abraham Lincoln, from assassination. There had been a rumor going the rounds for several weeks that Mr. Lincoln would be assassinated as his train passed through Baltimore. Timothy Webster, one of Pinkerton's most trusted men, and other members of the organization were sent to various towns along the route Mr. Lincoln's train was to take him to Washington for the inauguration. These operatives obtained the information that certain elements planned to destroy sections of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, between Wilmington and Baltimore, the route over which Mr. Lincoln's train would travel. They also learned of the plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln as he transferred from one train to another in Baltimore.

President-Elect Lincoln was informed by Pinkerton, Webster, and some of the other operatives, of the above plans. After much persuasion Mr. Lincoln boarded another train, protected by Mr. Pinkerton and his crew, arrived in Washington a day ahead of schedule, thus foiling the attempt on his life. This accomplishment brought Mr. Pinkerton national and international fame.

Shortly after the start of the Civil War, Allan Pinkerton, in 1861, was instrumental in founding the United States Secret Service and was appointed by the Federal Government as its Chief. General McClellan appointed him as Major, and it was at this time that he assumed the name of "E. J. Allen." Major Allen's agents ranged over the South, and his book, "The Spy of the Rebellion" portrays their activities quite vividly. The spy of the Rebellion, Timothy Webster, was hanged in Richmond, Virginia, by Confederates, and buried there in a pauper's grave. Sometime after the close of the War Between the States, Mr. Pinkerton secured the remains for reburial in the Onarga Cemetery.

In 1866, $700,000 stolen from the Adams Express Company was recovered and his agents in 1876 drove the Molly Maguire murderers from the Pennsylvania coal fields.

During the latter years of Mr. Pinkerton's life he wrote several books, probably the best known being "The Spy of the Rebellion," which contained considerable autobiographical material. The famous detective died on July 1, 1884, in Chicago and was buried in Graceland Cemetery.