YOUNG JOHN OSGOOD
1851 - 1892
by Mary Boland
John Osgood was born in Brooklyn, March 6,1851 to Samuel Warburton Osgood and Mary Hill Cleveland Osgood. The family was already distinguished in America, his paternal forebears having been among the seventeenth-century founders of Andover, Massachusetts, and his maternal forebears having included the founder of Cleveland, Ohio. However, John Osgood found himself orphaned at the age of seven when his father died of a fever, his mother having died early in his infancy. He was taken in by relatives in Rhode Island and educated at a Quaker school in Providence until the age of fourteen, when he struck out on his own, beginning as an office boy in a Providence cotton mill. He headed for the big time just two years later, going to New York City and obtaining a job as a clerk in a produce exchange commission firm and attending night school at the Peter Cooper Institute. By the age of nineteen, he had been recommended for the important position of bookkeeper to an Iowa mining company. In succeeding years he held increasingly responsible positions, finally acquiring an interest in a coal company which was a major supplier to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
It was at the request of that railroad that Osgood came to Colorado in 1882 to survey the state’s coal potential. It is said that he visited every known actual and potential coal property in the state during his 1882 tour. Certainly he recognized the potential value of the state’s seemingly unlimited coal resources and determined that he had the opportunity here to build himself a veritable empire. He began this work the very year of his first Colorado tour by entering into an agreement to supply coal to the Burlington and Missouri road, a Chicago, Burlington and Quincy subsidiary that operated between Omaha and Denver.
During the next decade, he expertly cultivated his contacts with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and other railroads, and also assiduously cultivated the friendship and support of the Denver and Iowa capitalist who had funds to invest in his growing Colorado coal empire. He also recruited, mainly from among his former business associated in Iowa, a very able management team, including Julian Abbot Kebler, Alfred C Cass, and David C Beaman. These men, along with two Denver lawyers whom Osgood recruited to his cause, came to be known as the “Iowa Gang.”
Thus by 1892, Osgood had developed a record that contrasted sharply with that of the management of the older Colorado Coal and Iron Company, based in Pueblo. During the past ten years that company’s earnings had not been commensurate with its very large investment. While the company’s coal and coke operations had been profitable, as had been its real estate activities, the large investment in and small return from its iron and steel manufacturing had kept overall results down to a level that resulted in much dissatisfaction among investors.
As Osgood’s firm grew so did the potential for competition between his outfit and the Pueblo company that would be harmful to both. Thus negotiations for a merger were begun. Initially, Osgood planned to combine only the coal and coke operations of the rival enterprises. But after obtaining considerable expert advice, he came to the conclusion that with better management and some additional investment in improvements, the iron and steel manufacturing could also be made profitable. After long negotiations, consolidation of the two companies was approved by the stockholders on Oct 21, 1892 and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company was born with Osgood as president and Osgood’s associates holding most of the key posts. …. To be Continued
Author Mary Boland (1936-2017), moved to Carbondale in 1973. She was Glenwood Bureau Chief for the Grand Junction Sentinel, a Professor at Colorado Mountain College and prolific writer for many national and local publications. This is one article, reprinted with permission, from her publication The History of the Crystal Valley.