Biography: William Edenborn, Caddo Parish La.
Submitted by: casteel@hiwaay.net (Thomas J. Casteel)



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WILLIAM EDENBORN.

ONE of the outstanding citizens of Louisiana, if not the greatest
benefactor of the state and the South, was William Edenborn, whose death in
Shreveport in May, 1926, stilled the personal activities of one whose
sturdy life had meant so much to our people, but did not, nor can time
efface, the achievement of this courageous philanthropic man whose works
will ever be a monument to his memory.

Born in Westphalia, Prussia, in April, 1848, he came to America while a
youth, financially poor, yet rich in vision, courage and a correct
viewpoint of a "life worthwhile."

Always honest, always dauntless, always tireless always a student and with
a vision of his possibilities and duties, he forged constantly onward and
upward from a penniless apprentice boy to the million dollar head of one of
the greatest steel and wire industries of the world, his inventions and
economics saving billions of dollars to humanity.

His most splendid achievement in Louisiana was the building of the
Louisiana Railway and Navigation Company from Shreveport to New Orleans,
which task was commenced in 1898 after he had be. held the garden-like
valley of the Red and Mississippi rivers where lack of transportation
facilities held the populace in industrial bondage. He completed this great
railroad at a cost of about twenty million dollars, and before his death
expended among the people of Louisiana, through payrolls, taxes and other
cost, more than fifty million dollars additional, notwithstanding these
expenditures were never fully repaid through the operation of his
properties. He was fearless in this giant undertaking and was entirely
unaided by finances other than his own.

He saw the need of this railroad and declared that the people should have
it. His faith was in their future and in the success that he knew would
come to them through his aid.

The Louisiana Railway and Navigation Company, through its service to our
citizenship, will always be a monument of the service to this great man
whose life was simple, whose deliberations and impulses were sane and whose
attitude and conduct toward his fellow man and himself were unaffected by
the multi-millions he created and possessed-its only use being to serve
humanity.

William Edenborn died May 13, 1926, in a local sanitarium here after a
stroke of appoplexy. He was ill but about eight days.

He was laid away in Forest Park Cemetery. Twelve truck loads of flowers
bore evidence of the love his friends and employees held for him and the
concourse was fifteen blocks in length.

Senator Henry E. Hardtner said of him: "Mr. Edenborn brought millions of
dollars to Louisiana, which he used for the development of latent natural
resources. He was honest, temperate, charitable, and above all a just man.
He asked only reasonable service of his employees and was never
fault-finding. Poor and Democratic in life; rich and powerful in death, he
approached the grave as one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him
and lies down to pleasant dreams."
Mrs. Sarah Edenborn, the widow of William Edenborn, was made the head of
the Louisiana Railway and Navigation Company May 19, 1926, being the only
woman so honored with such a long line.
                                                            -J. N.
CAMPBELL.

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From Chronicles of Shreveport and Caddo Parish, Maude Hearn O'Pry, 1928,
Page 349
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