Biography

George Francis Train (1829-1904), merchant and entrepreneur, was born on 24 March 1829 at Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, son of Oliver Train and his wife Maria, née Pickering. His parents and three sisters died in a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1833 and he was raised in Waltham, Massachusetts, by his maternal grandparents, who were staunch Methodists. Train remained a life-long total abstainer from alcohol and tobacco. From the age of 16 he worked in Boston and Liverpool with the White Diamond Line of Enoch Train, his father's cousin, and gained experience of both American and English commerce. On 5 October 1851 he married a Southern belle Wilhelmina Wilkinson Davis; on 23 May 1853 they arrived in Melbourne in the Bavaria.