Henry Villard

Henry Villard (1835 to 1900) was a German-American journalist and financier, born in Speyer in the Kingdom of Bavaria, who took the name Villard from a French classmate after emigrating to the United States as a teenager. He first worked as a newspaper and war correspondent, then turned to American railroads in 1874, overseeing German investment in the Oregon and California Railroad and acquiring rail and steamship interests in the Pacific Northwest. He served as the sixth president of the Northern Pacific Railway from 1881 to 1884, during which its transcontinental route was completed in 1883, although the project cost more than expected and a financial collapse followed. He also acquired the New York Evening Post and The Nation, was president of the Edison General Electric Company, a predecessor of General Electric, until 1892, and was the first benefactor of the University of Oregon.