Second cousin twice removed James Richard Beard emigrated from the UK to the US, got to know Buffalo Bill, and was in at the start of the communications giant now known as ITT.
James was born in Newington Surrey to James and Louisa Beard, who was the nephew of our great-great-grandfather, Joseph Guyer Beard. At the tender age of 19, he set off across the Atlantic and settled in Omaha, Nebraska. He would have found it a very different place to Surrey – the weather alone is very un-British, with hot summers and very cold winters. It was still very much a pioneer city – the ‘official’ pioneer period ended just two years before James arrived. The railway also arrived shortly before James, and the city experienced a ‘rail boom’ and an early culture supported by a majority male population, which fed the development of bars, gambling houses and brothels. During his time in Omaha, James got to know ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, who at that time was a mail carrier and a scout for the US Government.
One of the most famous and well-known figures of the American Old West Buffalo Bill’s legend began to spread about the same time that James knew him, and he went on to perform in shows displaying cowboy theme and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars.
But James had had enough of frontier life, and in 1870, he returned to New York and eventually took a position with the Western Union Telegraph company on the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street. Western Union was in at the start of the communications industry, and was the largest provider of telegraphic services in the United States. Within a few years of James joining the company, it moved up the road to 185 Broadway, building one of New York’s first skyscrapers.
But while it was an early corporate giant – when the Dow Jones Index was first set up on the New York Stock Exchange, it was one of the 11 original companies listed – it didn’t always get it right. Western Union was originally offered the patent for the telephone, referred to as the ‘talking telegraph’, by Alexander Graham Bell for $100,000 but the company declined the purchase.
Meanwhile, James had taken up the study of Pitman shorthand – making him one of the fewer than a dozen such stenographers in the whole of the city. He became secretary to D H Bates, who was then the superintendent of Western Union in Philadelphia. James also became one of the first few people to operate the original Remington Typewriter (there were only two in the city).
He went on to become secretary to Western Union’s vice president, Dr Norvin Green, in the new building on Broadway. In 1876, he was appointed assistant secretary of the International Ocean Telegraph Company of which Captain James Alexander Scrymser was then a director and in 1878 he was elected secretary. Later, that same year, he obtained permission from Dr. Green to assist Capt. Scrymser in organizing the Mexican Cable Company and the Central and South American Cable Company, being appointed secretary-treasurer of both companies at the time of their organisation. He continued in the service of these companies until 1881.
In that year he accepted the secretaryship of both the Mexican Telegraph Company and the Central and South American Telegraph Company, which position he held for forty-two years.
In June 1919, he was appointed vice president of both companies, and went into semi-retirement a year later.
He was the only living official of the original companies, of the All America Cables, Inc, and he saw those companies start from their original beginning to their present magnitude. These companies are now what is known as the International Telegraph and Telephone Company.
James was a keen golfer, and had married twice. His first wife, Maria Martha Tong, whom he married in Kings, New York, in October 1874 when he was 24 years old, passed away in 1900 after 25 years of marriage. A year later, he married Florence Nellie Nightingale.
James died in July, 1931 at the age of 81.
Meanwhile ITT went from strength to strength. During the 1960s and 1970s, the company rose to prominence as the archetypal conglomerate, deriving its growth from hundreds of acquisitions in diversified industries. ITT has approximately 10,000 employees in more than 35 countries and serves customers in well over 100 countries. It’s come a long way since James was operating his Remington 1 Typewriter.