14 Facts About Enoch Train

Enoch Train is known for establishing a successful packet service between Boston and Liverpool that later became known as the White Diamond Line.

Enoch Train was born on May 2,1801, in Weston, Massachusetts to Enoch Train and Hannah Ewing Train, daughter of a Scotch chaplain in British army.

Enoch Train was the fourth of five children but only the second one living, because his oldest sister, Harriette, had died in her fourth year and his older brother, named Enoch, had died in his second year.

Enoch Train moved to Boston a couple of years later to learn the hide and leather business from his cousin Samuel Enoch Train, Ephraim's son.

Enoch Train gradually expanded the small shipping operation his cousin had established and by the 1830s had taken over the business, with multiple vessels trading with Cape Verde, Europe and South America.

On November 3,1823, Enoch Train married Adeline C Dutton in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.

Enoch Train was followed by four more children, Theodore, George, Caroline, and Enoch.

Enoch Train was an active member of the Whig Party and was elected to public office twice: first, to the Boston Common Council in 1840, and second, to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848.

On January 23,1855, Leon Lewis, a newspaper editor whom Enoch Train had once loaned money to, visited Enoch Train at his home in Dorchester.

Lewis informed Enoch Train he was armed with a Bowie knife and a revolver and demanded money from him.

Enoch Train was able to summon help from two servants who grabbed Lewis and after a violent struggle subdued him and tied him up with bed-cord until the police arrived.

Enoch Train spent his later years in his wife's hometown of Saugus, Massachusetts.

Enoch Train made further upgrades to the firm's small fleet during the 1830s and early 1840s, replacing small brigs with larger ships, mostly built in shipyards on the Mystic River in nearby Medford, Massachusetts.

Enoch Train was so delighted with this ship when she was launched that he invited McKay to move to Boston and establish his own shipyard there, for which Enoch Train would provide the financial backing.