The Express: The History of William H. Russell
A country, still drenched in the smell of gun powder and blood, forges ahead towards a brighter future on the west coast. Families pack up their belongings, load wagons, hitch horses and set out into the wilderness. What follows is the dark void between those on their journey, and those loved ones left behind.
Enter; a man with a vision. What if messages could reach across the country? What if those messages didn’t take months? Years? William H. Russell, descended from British nobility, takes the stage at a critical time in American history. Russell’s great grandfather, William Russell was executed for crimes against the crown in the mid-1600s. He would live to lose his father to the War of 1812, and soon after, his mother would move them from Vermont to Missouri.
Russell was from humble beginnings but always knew that if you wanted something in this life, you had to make it yourself. Cindy Daffron, Executive Director at the Pony Express National Museum in Saint Joseph, Missouri, has become very familiar with his story.
“Russell was an entrepreneur,” Daffron said. “Before he started with the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell, he owned a bank, a hotel and a Riverboat Casino that he named the ‘William H. Russell.’ He was a very resourceful man, and that’s very likely why Majors and Waddell were so keen on having him be the face of the operation.”
She goes on to explain how the construction of the transcontinental railroad was one of the major downfalls of “The Express.”
“What really killed it? The telegraph,” Daffron said. “Much like our phones today, the information traveled much faster than riders carrying the mail. So that’s how it went.”
The idea for the express mail delivery service started with the company’s initial endeavor in military supply contracts, Daffron states.
“Before the establishment of the Pony Express, Russell, Majors and Waddell outfitted military supply trains to replenish government outposts west of Saint Joseph, MO,” Daffron said.
She goes on to explain that Russell contracted supply and passenger cars that would take minors and rations through the Rocky Mountains and into the goldfields of Sacramento, CA.
After the Pyramid Lake War, a skirmish between Mormon settlers and the Paiute Native American tribe that cost the Pony Express many of their horses and riders, Russell would have to petition John Floyd of the state Treasury department for more funds.
“Our horses were better fed,” Daffron said. “We gave them adequate food and water for their rides across the country, and that’s why the Native Americans wanted them. The Mormon war only lasted a little while, but it was enough to make the route too dangerous and they had to find another way.”
That’s when Russell went to Floyd’s clerk to borrow funds from the “Indian Trust Fund,” which led to his arrest and shunning by his business partners.
In the end, Russell would die alone, in jail and full of regret. What many thought was a long-lived race, back-and-forth across the country for many years in the late 1800s, actually lasted for a brief 18 months. Russell, a self-made man from Vermont, succeeded in establishing a Pony Express mail service from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento California. Even if it was a short adventure, the firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell was a true testament to the spirit of early American Ingenuity.
