Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,160

This is the grave of William Rand.

Born in 1828 in Quincy, Massachusetts, Rand grew up in a religious household. His father was a minister. He grew up in the town of East Milton and he went to the local schools, pretty normal childhood. His older brother ran a print shop, so he was apprenticed to them. Maybe not much would have changed for Rand, but the California Gold Rush happened. It’s hard to overestimate what California meant for so many American men. It wasn’t just the money–of course the idea of getting rich quick was at the core of it. It was also the adventure. These men were quite conscious that they lived in remarkable times and the idea of crossing the continent to mine gold in this new frontier on the Pacific blew their minds. One way you can tell what it meant is that many people who went to California kept diaries who never wrote a thing down about their personal thoughts before. But they knew that future people would want to know about their experiences. As such, we have quite a rich set of a primary sources to analyze this event.

Unsurprisingly, when a 20 year old Rand heard about California, he wanted to go too. Rather than cross by land, he chose the long path by ship, around South America. There was a third option too, which was ship to Panama, then across the Isthmus, and then back by ship. Equally unsurprisingly, Rand did not make any money panning for gold. Few did, especially by 1850. But like so many of these gold rushers, the experience changed his life. Running a family print shop back in the Boston area no longer appealed much. But if he wasn’t going to get rich in the gold fields, he had usable skills that could be applied wherever he lived, especially as whites tried to turn California into a “civilized” part of the United States.

So Rand went down to Los Angeles in 1850 and opened a newspaper there. A more sensible move than standing in a freezing creek. This became the first paper in southern California. Eventually, Rand decided to go back to Massachusetts. That was early 1856. He decided immediately he didn’t want to stay. He tried his hand in another new town–Chicago. He started a print shop. He also met an Irish printer who had just come to the city named Andrew McNally. Rand hired him and they started printing the Chicago Tribune in 1859.

In 1868, Rand sold his business and brought McNally into partnership with him. They formed Rand, McNally, & Company. You know where this is going by this point. They became some of America’s leading printers. Among the things they got the contracts for was the American train schedules, which was a big contract since of course every train stop needed their own. They also started printing railroad guides, travel books really. They took on all sorts of big printing contracts, such as business directories, that don’t have much salience in contemporary culture but sure did then.

Rand had some health issues and in 1871 retired from the company. But he returned in 1876 and ran it for nearly twenty more years, so I guess he got them figured out. He was rich enough by that time to spend those five years with his family in Europe, where he took the cure for whatever ailed him and traveled around and lived the life of a rich guy. 1871 was also the year of the Great Chicago Fire. Seeing what was likely, the company moved two of their printing machines to Lake Michigan and buried them into the sand to protect them from burning. So they were publishing again two days later.

In 1880, Rand McNally moved into maps. This of course is what the company became known for. It became a lucrative business for them. Much later, and this is the reason most of us know this company today, is that Rand-McNally became the publisher of car atlases. Anyone over the age of 40 or so probably still has expreience with them. I still found them useful up til a few years ago, largely because I like seeing what I am doing and where I am going and sometimes they would have information on them I hadn’t seen elsewhere, but with the rise of the phone and then the Apple CarPlay technology, they became antiquated. I assume they are still made. The company still exists.

Rand retired for good in 1894. He was happy to be a rich guy after that, the best I can tell. There’s a ton of information on him, which is true of many capitalists, even pretty big ones like him. He wasn’t a plutocrat exactly and so real info is thin. In any case, he died in 1915, at the age of 87.

William Rand is buried in Milton Cemetery, Milton, Massachusetts.

If you would like this series to visit other people associated with American mapmaking, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Henry Peter Bosse is in Davenport, Iowa and Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler (good name!) is in Trenton, New Jersey. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.