Mr. Huntington was born in Harwinton, Litchfield county, Conn., Oct. 22, 1821, the fifth of nine children.  Leaving school at fourteen years of age, he began work for himself at a compensation of seven dollars a month.  Two years later, in 1837, he was in New York city, using the credit, which he had acquired through the letters of mercantile friends at home, to purchase goods, which he disposed of at a good profit.  The next that his friends knew of him, he was traveling through the South applying that faculty for negotiation, which was to be exercised later in life in the gigantic enterprises familiar to the whole world.

At the age of twenty-two, Mr. Huntington with his brother Solon opened a general merchandise store at Oneonta, Otsego county, New York, but when the gold excitement of 1849 came, young Huntington, who had already found Oneonta too limited a field for his talents and usefulness, sailed on the 15th of March of that year for the Golden State.  He was detained with many others three months on the Isthmus, but, unlike many others, he spent that interval in adding to the $1,200 which he had drawn out from his business for the expenses of the trip, and by the time he had reached Sacramento he had $5,000 in hand, in marked contrast with a great many who, 

being less usefully occupied on the Isthmus or for other reasons arrived "dead broke."

In Sacramento, he commenced business under the name of C.P. Huntington, but afterward established the well-known hardware house of Huntington & Hopkins, which has continued up to the present day. Numerous anecdotes are told of the marvelous genius for business evinced by Mr. Huntington while trading at No. 54 K street.  He studied the market carefully and bought in large quantities when supplies were low and sold in lesser quantities when the prices were high.  He was ready to buy almost anything, which was not perishable, at some price or another, and it used to be said of him in those days that if a man could not sell a thing any where else, he could always get cash from Huntington.  In 1856 the firm had a fortune.

Almost from the first, Mr. Huntington had realized the tremendous advantages which would accrue from a railroad connecting California with the East.  Believing in its feasibility, he led some of his neighbors in Sacramento to join with him, and these seven men bound themselves to do the initial work of an instrumental survey across the mountain.  Early in 1861, The Central Pacific Railroad Co. was organized with an original capital of $8,500,000, and Mr. Huntington started for Washington, armed with maps and charts, to prove to Congress the practicability of the plans devised and to secure from the Government substantial aid.  The result of his labors is summed up in the acts of Congress of 1862 and 1864, by which the Government agreed to give lands and bonds to aid in the construction of the road.  It was a great triumph for Mr. Huntington and his associates, although the elation of the man, who had done most to achieve it, seems to have been tempered by the thought of what was yet before him.  His telegraphic despatch to his co-directors was characteristic:  "We have drawn the elephant, now let us see if we can harness him up."

Mr. Huntington at once came on to New York to enlist the aid of capital; and in this field his persistence, courage, financial ability and knowledge of men were put to an exceptionally severe test.  The story of his experiences in Boston in the negotiation of bonds cannot be told in the brief outline of this sketch, but it offers an example of financial achievement, in the face of disbelief in the practicability of the great work and doubt of the value of the security proposed, which stamps the daring leader in the enterprise as one of the greatest financiers of the century.  The faith of the four men, Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford and Crocker, is illustrated by the characteristic way in which they solved the first problem of construction, when they agreed to pay personally for the labor of 800 men on the road for one year, and pledged their private fortunes to meet the obligations they assumed.  The construction race with The Union Pacific, which was rushed westward while The Central Pacific was pushed eastward, created unbounded excitement and enthusiasm as the wires flashed across the continent daily the progress made.  The tremendous strain, the anxieties and difficulties of this construction can never be adequately told. Freights, prices of material and wages rose enormously, and the necessity of paying in gold coin in California at a time when gold was at a high premium was an aggravating feature of these difficulties.  A hundred discouraging problems arose, under the burdens of which the builders, had they been ordinary men, must have been crushed; but with Mr. Huntington an unlimited capacity for work, natural powers which had never been impaired by the use of tobacco or liquors, and the rugged physical vitality which was the outgrowth of heredity and early training carried him safely through the ordeal.