WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY:

The telegraph was developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, with the assistance of Alfred Vail, in the 1830s. Their first crude working model was constructed in 1835-1836.

The New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company was organized at Rochester, New York in 1851 by Hiram Sibley and Samuel L. Selden, who sought to acquire and unite all the telegraph companies then located west of Buffalo, New York into a single unified system. In 1856 the company's name was changed to Western Union Telegraph Company, and in 1861 its headquarters was moved from Rochester to New York City.

Western Union completed America's first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. The company introduced stock tickers in 1866, and money transfer service in 1871. In 1884 Western Union was named one of the original stocks in the first Dow Jones Average.

Western Union was controlled by the American Telephone & Telegraph Company from 1908 to 1913. In 1945 Western Union merged with longtime rival Postal Telegraph Company.

In 1994 Western Union Financial Services, Inc., was acquired by First Financial Management Corporation. First Financial Management Corporation merged with First

Data Corporation in 1995, and Western Union Financial Services became a subsidiary of First Data Corporation.

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The ledger contains information about offices that apparently were operated jointly or in cooperation with the Northern Pacific and other railroad companies, and what appear to be larger Western Union Telegraph Company offices in Minneapolis and St. Paul. It gives names of offices and the dates that they were opened and closed, names of employees and their positions, rates of pay for each individual, dates each employee began and left service, and miscellaneous remarks.

The volume is contemporary with the period following an agreement between the Northern Pacific and the Western Union and Northwestern telegraph companies for the construction of telegraph lines along the railroad's new route to the west coast (1880), and with organizing of telegraph operators by the Knights of Labor and a subsequent nationwide telegraph strike (July 1883).

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Western Union Telegraph Company Salary Ledger. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 15,337

Processing Information:

Processed by: David B. Peterson, September 1998

Catalog ID number: 990017349430104294

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Records of the Western Union Telegraph Company are located at the Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Records of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railway companies, the Soo Line Railroad Company, and their subsidiaries are in the Minnesota Historical Society manuscript collections.

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Telecommunication -- Employees.

Telegraph -- Employees.

Telegraph stations.

Telegraphers.

Wages -- Telecommunication.

Organizations:

Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway Company.

Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad.

Chicago and North Western Railway Company.

Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company.

Northern Pacific Railway Company.

St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Company.

St. Paul and Duluth Railroad Company.

Wisconsin Central Railway Company.

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