The Last Spike is Driven, Utah Historical Quarterly, Winter 1969

Now online at the CPRR Museum:

"The Last Spike is Driven." Utah Historical Quarterly, 37(1), Winter 1969.
"Copyright Utah State Historical Society, used by permission."
Courtesy Stan Layton, Utah State Historical Society.

The entire journal issue is online as a searchable pdf file. (Note that details in photographs included in these articles can be best seen by zooming your pdf viewer to 300% magnification.) The contents are below; two of the articles are also reproduced as web pages:

Contents

The Transcontinental Railroad and the Development of the West.
By Leonard J. Arrington ..... 3

Contracting for the Union Pacific.
By Robert G. Athearn ..... 16

Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific.
By George Kraus ..... 41

Golden Spike National Historic Site: Development of an Historical Reconstruction.
By F. A. Ketterson, Jr ..... 58

Rendezvous at Promontory: The "Jupiter" and No. 119.
By Gerald M. Best ..... 69

Driving The Last Spike at Promontory, 1869.
By J. N. Bowman ..... 76

Corinne, the Fair: Gateway to Montana Mines.
By Brigham D. and Betty M. Madsen ..... 102

The Undriving of the Golden Spike.
By David H. Mann ..... 124

Mid-Century Crossing by Rail.
By Jack Goodman ..... 135

Question: My great grandfather, Adolph de Jongh, was there in 1869-1870

From: RucMar@t-online.de

Rüdiger Marwede
Ingenieur
Humboldtweg 11
31535 Neustadt
Germany
Tel/Fax: 0049 5032 / 61451

We are glad to see some things about the old railway construction from the 19. Century.

The father of my own grandfather, his name was Adolph de Jongh, lived in Hamburg (Germany) and was an engineer for building railways. He received New York at the 06. June 1868 by the Hapag Steamer "TEUTONIA": As we know, he worked at a railway company on the way from San Francisco to New York.

Here we can give you some dates:

He married on the 17 of July 1869 in San Francisco his wife Elisabeth York, who was also born in Germany. His son was born at the 15 May 1870 in Bloomington.

His daughter (my grandmother) was born at the 23 February 1872 in Indianapolis.

Adolph de Jongh (my grand grandfather) died at the 25 January 1873 in Piqua, Miami Country, State Ohio. His wife Elisabeth York died before him at the 26 August 1872 of typhoid fever.

Also we have some original certificates about this time.

As you will understand the children of them were very small and had no parents in America, so their stepfather John York brought them back to Germany, to Hamburg.

Now we would like to know, if you have the name of the company in which Adolph de Jongh worked and also if you know some things about his profession at this company.

—R. Marwede