Henry Fink (29 November 1831–15 July 1912), railroad executive, was born in the town of Lauterbach in the German principality of Hesse and was the son of a locally prominent architect, Andreas S. Fink, and Margherita Jacob Fink. He received his formal education at the Polytechnic School of the University of Darmstadt. Spurred by the German revolutions, in 1849 Fink and his elder brother, Albert Fink, moved to New York and then to Baltimore looking for work. They found it in northwestern Virginia with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which was constructing a line from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, West Virginia. Albert became construction manager of the Parkersburg connecting line and developed the Fink Truss, an elegant iron framework that permitted long bridges to carry heavy trains. The invention made it possible to complete a railroad bridge spanning the Monongahela River, which at the time it was built stood as the longest iron bridge in the country. Their younger brother Rudolph Fink later joined them in the railroad industry.

Henry Fink began his career working on survey crews for the Western Maryland Railroad but within a short time became a typographer and draughtsman for the Baltimore and Ohio. In 1852 he became resident engineer for the Baltimore and Ohio's Parkersburg branch and for the next three years helped design and build the branch line through western Virginia. In 1855 Fink and his brothers moved to Norfolk, with Henry as resident engineer in charge of construction for the Norfolk and Petersburg Railway. After completing the line in September 1858, Fink became master of transportation for the Norfolk and Portsmouth Railroad, supervising new construction and branch lines. His brothers moved west to Kentucky and also had distinguished careers in railroading. Albert Fink was president of the Louisville and Nashville during and after the Civil War and became a pioneer in cost-accounting and the formation of price-controlling combinations. Rudolph Fink was later president of the Mexican Central Railway that was a branch of the Santa Fe Railroad.

During the Civil War, while the Norfolk and Petersburg's president and chief engineer, William Mahone, served as a general in the Confederate Army, Henry Fink oversaw the repeated massive repairs to the rail lines, bridges, and buildings damaged by the intense fighting in the region. After the war, Mahone resumed management of the railroad and acquired the South Side Railroad that linked Petersburg with Lynchburg. He also acquired the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad that linked Lynchburg with Tennessee railroads at the border town later renamed Bristol. In 1867 Mahone appointed Fink superintendent of transportation of the three companies that stretched from the Atlantic coast to northeastern Tennessee.

Consolidation and frequent collapse of railway companies defined the last three decades of the nineteenth century. In 1870, the year of Virginia's restoration to the Union, the General Assembly passed an act allowing Mahone to consolidate these three railroads as one, the ambitiously named Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad Company. Fink was the new line's superintendent of transportation and resided in Lynchburg. The company focused on track improvements and westward expansion into Kentucky until the aftermath of the financial Panic of 1873 forced it into receivership. In 1876 a Virginia court appointed Fink one of the receivers for the company. Fink served as general manager and co-receiver until 1881.

At a public auction in February 1881, Clarence Clarke led a consortium in purchasing the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio. The group was already building the Shenandoah Valley Railway south from Hagerstown, Maryland, toward a planned connection with the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio near the town of Big Lick (later the city of Roanoke). In May Clarke organized the Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, and the stockholders elected Fink second vice president and general manager.

From its corporate headquarters in Roanoke, the officers of the Norfolk and Western expanded their operations to connect northern and southern markets and reach untapped coal fields in western Virginia and southern West Virginia. In 1881 the Norfolk and Western signed a contract with the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad to create a shared passageway from Norfolk to New Orleans. Fink resigned as second vice president of the Norfolk and Western in 1883 and for most of the next decade was general manager and vice president of the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad. He also worked during the 1880s and early 1890s for a number of southern railways in Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana, often as a receiver for companies that had defaulted on their debts as he had for the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio. His supervision of the finances and operations of troubled railroads earned him the nickname, the Railroad Doctor.

The depression that began in 1893 resulted in the financial reorganization of many railroads including the Norfolk and Western. On 6 February 1895, the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia appointed Henry Fink and Norfolk and Western president Frederick Kimball as co-receivers of the bankrupt company. Reporting on the receivership, the Norfolk Dispatch described Fink as "one of the brightest railroad managers in the United States, and no man has a more intimate knowledge of the Norfolk and Western." It emerged from bankruptcy and reorganized in September 1896 as the Norfolk and Western Railway Company, with Fink as president and Kimball as chairman of the board. Fink remained president until 1902, when he resigned to become chairman of the board.

Fink often spoke out or wrote about issues relating to railroad financing, and in 1910 he published a pamphlet, Federal Regulation of Rail-Road Securities and Valuation of Railroad Properties in opposition to proposed federal regulation of railroad securities. Henry Fink died in his New York apartment on 15 July 1912. The following day Norfolk and Western officials lowered the flag at the Hotel Roanoke to half-staff. To coincide with his brief funeral at the Plaza Hotel on 17 July 1912, all Norfolk and Western trains stopped for five minutes out of respect for Fink. His body was cremated and the ashes shipped to Louisville, Kentucky, where his brother Rudolph then lived. Henry Fink was buried in the city's Cave Hill Cemetery.

Sources Consulted:
Brief biographies in E. B. Jacobs, History of Roanoke City and History of the Norfolk & Western Railway Company (1912), Ellen Fink Milton, A Biography of Albert Fink (1951), esp. 19–25, and New York Times, 21 July 1912 (with portrait); T. Addison Busbey, ed., The Biographical Directory of The Railway Officials of America (1906), 198; some letters in William Mahone Papers, 1853–1895, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Norfolk and Western Railroad Company, Annual Reports for 1881, 1883, 1894; Norfolk Dispatch, 7 Feb. 1895 (quotation); Norfolk and Western Railway Company, Annual Report for 1912; E. F. Pat Striplin, The Norfolk and Western: A History, revised edition (1987); Joseph T. Lambie, From Mine to Market: The History of Coal Transportation on the Norfolk and Western Railway (1954); Frank Helvestine, "History of the Norfolk & Petersburg," Norfolk and Western Magazine 1 (Sept. 1923): 13–14, 77, 79, and "The Fifth Link in the N. & W. Chain," Norfolk and Western Magazine 1 (Oct. 1923): 18–19, 84; obituaries in New York Times, Roanoke Evening World, and Roanoke Times, all 16 July 1912; account of funeral in Roanoke Times, 17 July 1912.

Portrait in George S. Jack, History of Roanoke County, History of Roanoke City, and History of the Norfolk & Western Railway Company, by E. B. Jacobs (1912), p. 143.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Aaron D. Purcell.

How to cite this page:
Aaron D. Purcell, "Henry Fink (1831–1912)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Fink_Henry, accessed [today's date]).

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