August 1910 to 1911 · Haitianspan
A five dollar string of pearls buys an American railway concession
›Read the full entryClose
James P. McDonald revived a dead railway venture in August 1910. The Chemin de Fer National was to join the north, the Artibonite and the west, and to pay for itself from export duties on the bananas McDonald would grow on public land. He got the contract through Celestina Simon, the president's daughter, who led a Vodou society and had her father's ear. The account that survives has McDonald asking her what jewels she owned, observing that the princesses of Europe had collections, and producing a string of pearls that would be hers when the concession was signed. Antoine Simon signed that afternoon. The pearls had cost five dollars. Three sections of track went down on easy ground and never crossed the mountains, so the line never linked the regions. The National City Bank of New York took the project over in 1911, and by 1913 one executive was president of the railway and American vice-president of the national bank. His name was Roger L. Farnham, and it stayed attached to American interests in Haiti for a decade.
A code like HT-WIB-000044 is a bates number. It marks one page of our stamped scan of the book, so the same page can be found again by anyone working from the same copy. Open one to see every entry drawn from that page.