George Francis Train was an entrepreneurial businessman who organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he organized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier in the United States, and a horse tramway company in England while there during the American Civil War. In 1870 Train made the first of his three trips around the globe, with the last in 1890. In 1872 he ran for President of the United States as an independent candidate; that year he was jailed for defending Victoria Woodhull against obscenity charges for an issue her newspaper had published... on an alleged adulterous affair. Despite his many business successes in early life, he was known as an increasingly eccentric figure in American and Australian history. Train was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1829. At the age of four, he was orphaned in the yellow fever epidemic, which killed his parents when his family were all visiting New Orleans. He was raised by his strict Methodist grandparents in Boston, who hoped he would become a minister. Throughout his life, Train was engaged in the mercantile business in Boston and in Australia.
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