Sleeping car innovator, and founder and President of the Pullman’s Palace Car Company, 1867-1897. Under George M. Pullman’s guidance the company expanded to hold a virtual monopoly on the construction and operation of railroad sleeping cars in the United States. In 1880 Pullman also constructed an entire town, Pullman, on Lake Calumet, south of Chicago, to accommodate workers in his newly built Pullman Car Works. Pullman died in 1897, three years after a disastrous strike convulsed the company town; he was survived by his wife, Hattie Sanger Pullman, and four children.

Business papers, 1867-1897, and family papers, 1886-1897. The business papers, though a scattered and incomplete record of Pullman’s presidency, do provide a cross section of Pullman’s official activities. They include statements, reports, financial notes, and incoming correspondence regarding railroad associations, car construction, legal cases, investments (corporate and personal), patents, railroad company contracts, the Pullman Car Works, and town of Pullman. Family papers include a record of S. S. Beman’s improvements to Pullman’s Prairie Avenue residence in the 1890’s, together with Nathan F. Barrett’s landscape design. There is also an itemization of the wedding expenses and trousseau of daughter Florence in 1896, and a description of Pullman’s real estate holdings in the 1890’s.

See also a significant collection of George M. Pullman Pullman’s Palace Car Company presidential records located at the South Suburban Genealogical Society, Hammond, Indiana, and the majority of Pullman family papers located at the Chicago Historical Society.