William Keeney Bixby, 1857-1931, was born in Adrian, Michigan, the
son of Alonzo Bixby, a lawyer native to Batavia, New York. His father's
interest in the South seems to have been a determining factor in his
career. The senior Bixby, Adrian's prosecuting attorney, had lived in
Texas and fought with the Texas Rangers at Reseca de la Palma,
Monterrey, and Buena Vista. He became intensely Southern in his
sympathies and was considered a “copperhead” during the Civil War.
In 1875, after graduation from high school, William Bixby went armed
with a letter from Jefferson Davis to the Governor of Texas, a
Confederate veteran, who got the sixteen-year-old a job as night
watchman and baggageman for the International Great Northern Railroad at
Palestine, Texas. An Algerish touch to this story is the part played by
the roughly dressed old man who frequently dropped around at night and
pestered the boy with apparently idle questions about railroading.
Because the boy was courteous and intelligent, at the end of a year the
old man revealed himself as H. M. Hoxie, president of the railroad. The
result was promotion to the post of general baggage agent in San Antonio
for young Bixby. Now he could afford to marry Lillian Tuttle who was
visiting her brother in San Antonio, from Bolton, New York. Mr. Hoxie's
benign influence was not over. When he became president of the Missouri
Pacific Railroad, the couple moved with him to St. Louis, where Bixby
became printing and stationery buyer for all the Gould lines.
After several years in St. Louis, William McMillan, president of the
Missouri Car and Foundry Company, offered the rapidly rising young man a
still better job. Within the now-traditional year he again attracted
signal attention to himself. His employers had made a ruinous contract
for the purchase of pig iron and by his direct honesty Bixby
renegotiated the contract, making a long-range, profitable ally for his
company. At the age of thirty-one he became vice-president and general
manager.
Soon the company became such a large factor in freight-car building
that it found it advantageous to merge with the Peninsular Car Company,
the first step in a series of mergers out of which came the American Car
and Foundry Company, of which Bixby became President, and soon
thereafter was elected chairman of the board. At the age of forty-eight,
in 1905, he retired.
His aesthetic appreciation had always been keen and he was a
voracious reader, reading books by the paragraph and the page rather
than the sentence. He now devoted himself to collecting books,
autographs, and paintings, with the same avidity with which he had
pursued his business career.
Inevitably he accumulated duplicates of his books, and, in
combination with Henry E. Huntington, he disposed of these by auction in
1916 and 1917. In 1918 he sold his English and American autographs to
Huntington. Hardly slowed down, he started collecting again in 1920 and
in 1929 sold the new collection to Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.
Among his better-known treasures were the Mary Wollstonecraft copy of
Queen Mab, the manuscripts of Burns's To Mary in
Heaven, Kipling's Recessional,
Thoreau's Walden, AndrÉ's Journal, Burr's Journal,
Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth,
Shelley's Note-Books, Ruskin's Seven Lamps
of Architecture.
His art collection was no less impressive. It included a fine
Rembrandt, several paintings by Corot, a Franz Hals, and a portrait of
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart.
Mr. Bixby was a quiet but vigorous supporter of educational and
charitable foundations in St. Louis, Washington University being a
particular beneficiary. He was also generous in making available to
scholarship his manuscript material. Thus the Bibliophile Society
reproduced twenty-eight manuscripts, the Franklin Club of St. Louis
reproduced two, the Society of Dofobs of Chicago two, and the Burns Club
of St. Louis one. At Christmas he frequently distributed facsimiles of
his manuscripts to his friends. The considerable rare book collection at
Washington University had its basis in gifts from Mr. Bixby.
After his retirement as Chairman of the Board of the American Car and
Foundary Company, Mr. Bixby's life seems to have been fuller than ever.
He was a very active director of the St. Louis Union Trust Company. He
served for a while as president of the Laclede Gas Company of St. Louis
and later, in 1909, as receiver of the Wabash Railroad. From June 1928
to June 1930 he was president of the Washington University Corporation
in St. Louis. While president of the City Art Museum he had a large part
in persuading the city of St. Louis to set aside a portion of each tax
dollar for support of the Museum. When president of the Missouri
Historical Society he gave that organization Thomas Jefferson letters,
the original Burr-Hamilton correspondence, Eugene Field letters,
autograph material relating to the activities of Andrew Jackson and Sam
Houston. He was a director of the St. Louis Public Library, an original
incorporator of the American Red Cross, vice-president of the American
Federation of Art, and a director of the National Gallery of Art. He
spent part of his time in foreign travel, which included big-game
hunting in Africa and lacquer and jade hunting in China. However, most
of his time and energy were devoted to the promotion of art, education
and literature.
Howard S. Mott
