Fred Sweetman:

First Conductor For The Northern Pacific Railway

Fred Sweetman, the first conductor for the Northern Pacific Railway, was born March 4, 1831, and when asked where, replied, "In the best country in the world" Tipperary, Ireland. His service with the railroad started in 1870, in construction, when A.A. Fell and Sweetman were the only employees. Fell was Superintendent and Sweetman, as he described it "was man of all work." Later Sweetman became conductor and had the distinction of being the first man to occupy that position on the Northern Pacific. He outlived all the others who were connected with the road's birth. Later his work took him through Laurel from Billings to Livingston. He was a very reserved man, but became a friend of Nels Vordahl, Laurel road-master, who drew from him his life story. "To leave this man out of my story, of railroad experiences, would be like leaving out the first chapter of the Bible. Time and again, we read about men who offered their all for the benefit of future generations, but are forgotten by those who succeed them to carry on.'

Fred Sweetman's father was Jesse Sweetman, a brewer. His mother's name was Mead and she was born in Edinburgh. Fred Sweetman came to America on his first voyage when he was a lad of sixteen. He accompanied an aunt, Martha Williams, a Quaker missionary from China. She was a well educated woman and entertained the boy with tales of her thrilling experiences in foreign lands. Young Sweetman was here four or five months and then returned to his home and spent three years. He attended Queen's College in Dublin and was expelled for fighting. When he was about nineteen, he came a second time to America. "That was about 1851," he said, "a few years before the Russian War broke out." His uncle, brother of his father, was killed in China in 1850.

On his second trip to America, he settled at Buffalo, New York, and went to work in a quartz mine. The mine was at Rochester near Buffalo, and Sweetman worked for Tom Martinsdale. The men were getting $19 or $20 a month "and a man had to be good if he earned it." He was in the mine fourteen months and received double pay for double work, "If a rock weighed a ton, it went anyway," he pridefully said, describing the strength of his youth. His employer was an Englishman, who had a fine daughter named, Sally. One day when young Fred was helping Sally milk the cows, someone caught him hugging the girl! He quit his job that night and left because the bunch was "guying” him. He then found employment "cradling grain." That job did not last long.

Railroading, still quite an experiment at that time, attracted him. He entered the employ of the New York Central as a news boy, but because he was too large for such a position he became a brakeman, a position he held for a year or two. He then went to Canada on the Buffalo and Lake Huron Railroad, which afterwards was a part of the Grand Trunk. He later worked on the Royal Mail, but said he couldn't stand "that Royal stuff." An American, Charles Whitehead, induced him to come back to New York Central. He ran a "rock train" near Buffalo off and on for eight years. Then he worked for the Michigan Central at Detroit and was running in and out of Chicago a year or two before the big fire.

His connection with the Northern Pacific started in 1870. The Northern Pacific was then building its first cars at the Detroit Car Works. Delivery was made at Medota Junction. They were used on the Lake Superior Road that was built in 1870 under the management of W.W. Hanaford. The Northern Pacific was not then surveyed definitely. They built 100 flat cars and 50 box cars that fall. He ran construction trains for two years when Northern Pacific started between Superior, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota, and at that time 194 miles of track had been completed between Duluth and Brainerd. He then ran passenger trains on the new road for five years, and stated that there were no uniforms and brass buttons in those days. The engines were 25 and 30 ton weight and then 37 and 50 tons. The cars (coaches) were 40 feet long; flats 32 feet; and the longest box cars were 38 feet long.

Sweetman first came to Montana in 1876, the year General Custer left Fort Abraham Lincoln. He left Fargo, North Dakota, on January or February 8th, and got to Bismarck on the 28th of March, 1876.

That, then, was the end of the road. Contrary to estimates of others, Sweetman found Custer "hard to get along with." He had little love for the general. Custer and his wife were to join the troops and the soldiers were to go from Fort Lincoln to fight the Indians. It seems that in bringing General and Mrs. Custer west, according to Sweetman's story, the general complained of the way the train was made up, as related to his car. The car stove fell over while the train was being handled and Mrs. Custer was slightly injured. Twenty eight miles east of Bismarck, Sweetman got into trouble with Custer. The train was forced to "buck" high drifts to open the track and General Custer demanded that his car be cut off until the bucking process was finished. This, conductor Sweetman refused to permit, as the storm was so heavy he feared that new drifts would form between the rear of the train and the General's car, which might maroon the car. Custer later used his influence to have Sweetman discharged, but the railroad at the same time told Sweetman he would be reinstated immediately! This offer Fred Sweetman refused to accept, and he turned to other pursuits. Not long after the incident, Sweetman was among the first to arrive at the battlefield where the bodies of Custer and his command lay as their Indian conquerors had left them.

Fred Sweetman headquartered at Columbus during his working years, but his work often took him into Laurel. He spent the declining years of his life, while still active, in a log cabin in Fromberg, Montana. There his friends cared for him until it was necessary for him to enter a rest home in Red Lodge. He died there at the age of ninety-nine years. He was buried in the Red Lodge Cemetery. Sometime before his death, he presented to the officials of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in St. Paul, the first switch key ever used on the railroad. He had never received a pension from the railroad. Nels Vordahl described Fred Sweetman as "a giant of a man, six feet, six inches tall, well built and walked slightly stooped."

Excerpt from “Laurel’s Story a Montana Heritage”, p. 685-686, By: Elsie Johnston and the Laurel Historical Research Committee, ©1979