WI BIO - Price Co - WINTER, Thomas

History of Northern Wisconsin. Chicago: Western Historical, 1881, vol II, p 
767

Thomas WINTER, railroad and express agent, Phillips [Price County, 
Wisconsin], was born 17 February 1837 in the Province of Ontario, Canada, of 
English parentage. His father was a ship builder in Hamilton [Canada]. 
Thomas left home in 1850. He followed bookkeeping for awhile, having learned 
under a clerk of Rothschild's. Later he learned telegraphing and worked for 
the Grand Western Railroad. He then assumed the management of the Montreal 
Telegraph & American Express Company until 1865, when he opened a private 
bank. Meeting with reverses in 1869, he went to work for the Montreal 
Telegraph and Canadian Express. In 1875 he took the agency for the Montreal 
Telegraph Company, together with the Canadian and American Express Companies.

In 1878 Thomas WINTER came to Milwaukee [Milwaukee County], Wisconsin, and 
from there to Stevens Point [Portage County, Wisconsin], and in 1880 he came 
to take charge of the [Wisconsin Central] railroad business at Phillips, as 
well as the American Express. [Platted in 1876, Phillips was located in 
Chippewa County until Price County, Wisconsin, was created 20 March 1879. 
The author has stated that Thomas WINTER came to Phillips in 1880. Logging 
on the Flambeau River was the major source of employment there. If Thomas 
WINTER, who would have been fifty-seven years old at the time, was still 
residing at Phillips on 26 July 1894, he would have witnessed the great fire 
of the northern Wisconsin pineries. Drought and piles of dry tree branches 
left by loggers were thought to be primary contributors to that fire, which 
consumed 100,000 acres of forest, along with Phillips and its surrounding 
logging camps.] 

In 1865 he [Thomas WINTER] married Miss Emma CALDER, of Canada, who died in 
1880, leaving one child, Charles M. Mr. [Thomas] WINTER is a proficient 
swordsman, having acquired the art while in Volunteer Corps. He is also a 
member of the Royal Arch Masons of Canada.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly