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George H. Nettleton (George Henry Nettleton;November 13, 1831 – March 26, 1896) was an American railroad pioneer and civil engineer from Chicopee, Massachusetts. He served as civil engineer for the Hannibal Bridge on Hannibal and St. Joseph line. He would go on to organize the first Kansas City Missouri Stockyards, and built the Livestock Exchange building. He also served as president of the Fort Scott & Memphis Railway.

Early years
George H. Nettleton was born in Chicopee, Massachusetts to Alpheus and Deborah (Belcher) Nettleton. The son of a Congregational church leader...

George would leave Massachusetts to study civil engineering and mathematics in Troy, New York at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After a year of studying, and his family struggling to afford the school, and he returned home.

Career
With a passion for the railroad industry, George would work for the the New Haven & New London Railroad as laborer. Upon completion of the New Haven and New London line, Chief Engineer Josiah Hunt hand-picked Nettleton to head west to work on the Terra Haute & Alton Railroad.

In 1872,  Nettleton  became  the  general  superintendent  of  the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and from his headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, supervised the line’s extension as far as the state’s western border.

At the age of 64, on March 26, 1896; George passed away.

Personal life
Nettleton married  twice:  he  met  his  first  wife,  Sarah  Taylor,  in Chicopee  Falls. She died  a  year  and  a  half  after  their  marriage in  1858,  and  he  married  his  second  wife,  Julia  Augusta  Hearne, in  1862.

George H. Nettleton Home
In the  early  1890s, he built a 12-room mansion looking over his industrial land. It was a large grey brick mansion in the Quality Hill district at 7th Street. After the death of Nettleton, his wife Julia donated the structure to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union to be used as a home for elderly women, until they left in 1917.