Married: Jennie Field on 16 Jan 1890 San Bernardino Co., CA at
the house of her father, Dexter Field 1827-1904

Children: Arthur Field Humphrey 1891-1974
Frederick Dexter Humphrey 1902-1981

Parents names: Father - Arthur Kingsbury Humphrey 1815-1891
Mother - Huldah Orcutt 1822-1870

Born in Holland, Erie Co., NY in June 1860, Arthur's parents moved to Maquoketa, Jackson Co., IA in the fall of that year. His father was a farmer, and his mother died of consumption when he was just 10 years old. Arthur then moved to Grand Island, NE to live with his eldest sister Eliza Alithea Humphrey (Mrs. Michael Murphy). There he did farm work for a few summers and then took a job working for a local druggist who hired him because he took a unique interest in the mechanical operation of his store's soda fountains. He was impressed by the owner of this store enough that he decided to become an Episcopalian like him.

Eventually his curiosity about things mechanical led him to a job working for the railroads. At a very young age of only about 19, he moved to Rawlins, WY and worked for a year or two there in the Mechanic Department of the Union Pacific Railway. There he experienced life in the wild west simply by observing the characters who came through this town - outlaws, settlers, and all. He witnessed bank robberies and train wrecks, and later in life he decided to write an autobiograhy of his life in the west knowing that he had witnessed a unique chapter in American history (it was published just for his family).

After 2 years he travelled to San Francisco, then up to Seattle and Bellingham, WA. Speculating in land and starting a mechanical repair company there. But his wandering spirit took him back to California and landed him a job as a mechanic with the railroads again in the mid 1880's.... in Needles, CA. While there, his youngest sister Bertha Julia came out from Iowa to visit him for a month, and with her went to visit San Bernardino to visit friends from Iowa who had moved there. There he met and married his wife, Jennie Field, in 1890.

From California the young couple moved to Colorado City, CO (now Colorado Springs) in the early 1890's, where Arthur landed a job as Master Mechanic for the now fabled Colorado Midland Railway. A line that connected Leadville to Grand Junction, passing high over the Rockies over a very perilous route. It was a line built for ferrying ore across the mountains. This line was never profitable - and probably should never have been built. During the great blizzard of 1898, a train he was on became stuck high in the mountains - and was there for nearly a week. With little to feed the passengers and no fuel - save for trees they could fell to feed the boilers and snow they could melt for drinking water. At one point the train lurched forward and nearly went over a cliff called Hell's Gate. During this horrible ordeal, one of the employees went beserk, such that Arthur had to threaten him with an ice axe and get others to restrain him and lock him in a railway car. All these experiences led him to believe that one's success in life is derived from challenges and failures such as this - things that make one's mettle.

By 1901 Arthur and Jennie had moved to Denver where he became Speaker of the House of the Co. House of Representatives (all the while still working for the railroads). He then moved to Chicago and got a job with Westinghouse Air Brake, and by 1904 George Westinghouse had offered him a job as President of this company at its headquarters in Wilmerding. A position he held for many years.

Arthur was a kind man, greatly loved by his employees, and always believed that to succeed in life one needs the help and assistance of others - no one man can do anything all alone. By the early 1920's he was named President of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, and took an interest not only in local business but also in local history (assisting with the creation of Bushy Run Battlefield, and unveiling a portrait of the composer Stephen Foster, Pittsburgh's native son - at Federal Hill - My Old Kentucky Home in Bardstown, KY when it was dedicated in the early 1920's).

Arthur's photo and obituary appeared on the front page of the Pittsburgh newspapers in 1939, such was the love of Pittsburgh for this man. But despite all of his adventures and travels, he came to love Pittsburgh just as much himself.