Walter Chrysler
Walter Chrysler
Walter Percy Chrysler (April 2, 1875 – August 18, 1940) was an American industrial pioneer in the automotive industry, automotive industry executive, and the founder and namesake of American Chrysler Corporation.
Ancestry
Walter Chrysler's father, Henry (Hank) Chrysler, was a Canadian, of German, English and Dutch ancestry. He was an American Civil War veteran who was a locomotive engineer for the Kansas Pacific Railway and its successor, the Union Pacific Railroad. Walter's mother was born in Rocheport, Missouri, and was also of German ancestry. Walter Chrysler was not especially interested in his remote ancestors; his collaborative author Boyden Sparkes says that one genealogical researcher reported "that he had a sea-going Dutchman among his forebears; one Captain Jan Gerritsen Van Dalsen", but that "as to that, Walter Chrysler made it plain to me he was in accord with Jimmy Durante: 'Ancestors? I got millions of 'em!'." However, he thought enough of genealogy to include in his autobiography that his father, Hank Chrysler, "Canadian born, had been brought from Chatham, Ontario, to Kansas City when he was only five or six. His forebears had founded Chatham; the family stock was German; eight generations back of me there had come to America one who spelled his name Greisler, a German Palatine. He was one of a group of Protestants who had left their German homeland in the Rhine Valley, gone to the Netherlands, thence to England and embarked, finally, from Plymouth for New York."
Railroad career
Chrysler apprenticed in the railroad shops at Ellis as a machinist and railroad mechanic. He then spent a period of years roaming the west, working for various railroads as a roundhouse mechanic with a reputation of being good at valve-setting jobs. Chrysler moved frequently, first to Wellington, Kansas, in 1897, then to Denver, Colorado for two weeks, and finally Cheyenne, Wyoming. Some of his moves were due to restlessness and a quick temper, but his roaming was also a way to become more well-rounded in his railroad knowledge. He worked his way up through positions such as foreman in Trinidad, Colorado, superintendent, division master mechanic, and general master mechanic.
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