TREGO, William Henry, expressman, born in Middleburg, Carroll County, Nd., 18 February, 1837. He was educated at the Baltimore public schools, entered the service of Adams express company at Baltimore in 1852, and passed through various grades to the superintendency in 1856. During the civil war he had charge of the transportation of express matter for troops in the southern states. In 1877 he projected and organized on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad system the first trunk-line railway express in the United States, and he was intimately associated with its subsequent history. In 1887 he organized the railway express over the Erie system, "allied with the Baltimore and Ohio express, and he brought about other railway express alliances which, under rulings of the United States supreme court, acquired an area rivalling that of corporate expresses, and advantages that seemed to menace the existence of the latter. Previously all express business on railroads was done by express corn-panics as separate corporations, paying the railroads a certain percentage of the earnings for hauling, usually forty per cent. Under the railway express system the railway company performed the service directly, and secured tile entire profit. The large financial interests that were involved placed the wealthy corporate expresses on the defensive. The question promised to become important in American railway management. The railway express that had been founded by Mr. Trego grew to great proportions in spite of a combined corporate opposition of ten years, when peculiar circumstances banished it as an institution from the United States. Early in 1887 a new management of the Philadelphia and Reading road sold that company's express to corporate interests. Later, the same year, embarrassments impelled the Baltimore and Ohio railroad to part with its express, and in 1888 the remaining railway express, the Erie, succumbed to allied pressure, and was sold.