Allan Pinkerton Was Born in Glasgow, Scotland

Allan Pinkerton was born in Glasgow, Scotland on August 25, 1819, and he died on July 1, 1884, in Chicago. Pinkerton's father was a police sergeant who was killed in a street riot early in Allan Pinkerton's childhood, which left the Pinkerton family in dire straits financially, according to Biography.com. Pinkerton found work at a young age as a cooper (making barrels) and later (at age 22) he became involved in "Chartism," a mass movement in Scotland that was trying to promote "political and social reform" (Biography.com). The campaign that Pinkerton was involved with -- trying to achieve suffrage and fairness for the poor -- eventually organized strikes. When Pinkerton was about to be arrested for his heavy involvement in the strikes -- a warrant was out for his arrest -- he left Scotland with his wife and headed for Canada (Champkin, 2004, p. 1).

Pinkerton's Life and Times in the United States

Pinkerton's ship was tossed about in a terrible storm on the way to Canada, his intended destination, and it was wrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia, Champkin explains (p. 2). When a rescue ship came and secured the safety of the passengers, the ship took Pinkerton and his wife to the United States rather than Canada. Soon Pinkerton settled in Chicago and established a cooper's shop, then moved on to Dundee, Illinois, and set up a successful barrel-making shop there. According to The Library of Congress, Pinkerton -- an abolitionist (actively opposed to slavery) -- allowed his shop in Dundee to be a "station" for slaves that had escaped their bondage in the South and were helped to freedom by the Underground Railroad.

It was because of his location on the Fox River that Pinkerton first came into contact with what would be his future career, according to The Library of Congress (LOC). There was an island in the middle of the river that had an ample supply of wood that he needed to make his barrels. In cutting wood one day he located a group of counterfeiters and with help from a local sheriff, the counterfeiting ring was arrested. This investigative work helped Pinkerton get his first job in law enforcement, as he was hired as deputy sheriff of Kane County; "and later, as Chicago's first full-time detective" (LOC).

Some references suggest that Pinkerton left the sheriff's duty because of poor pay, but the Library of Congress said he wanted to start his own detective agency, which he did in 1850. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was one of the first detective agencies in the country, and the major culprits that Pinkerton went after were train robbers and counterfeiters. "By the 1870s the agency had the world's largest collection of mug shots and a criminal database," and Pinkerton's logo, the "All-Seeing Eye," became the inspiration for the term "private eye" (LOC).