Andrew Onderdonk was an American construction contractor who worked on several major projects in the West, including the San Francisco seawall in California and the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia.
11 Facts About Andrew Onderdonk
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Andrew Onderdonk was born in New York City to an established ethnic Dutch family.
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Andrew Onderdonk received his education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Andrew Onderdonk married Sarah Delia Hilman of Plainfield, New Jersey.
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Andrew Onderdonk died in Oscawana-on-the Hudson, New York, on June 21,1905.
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In 1879, Onderdonk won a series of contracts to build the western section of what is the Canadian Pacific Railway.
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Andrew Onderdonk got permission from the Canadian government to import Chinese workers from both California and China.
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Andrew Onderdonk told the Canadian government that if he could not use Chinese workers, the railway could not be built.
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Historians estimate Andrew Onderdonk arranged to bring in six and a half thousand Chinese from China and many more thousand from California.
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In 1895, Andrew Onderdonk obtained a contract from the Canadian government to build sections of the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario.
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Andrew Onderdonk won the bid to remove the rock and dirt from the tunnel beneath the Hudson River and used the debris to expand Governor's Island.