Albert Augustus Pope

Pope was born on May 20, 1843, in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were Charles Pope and Elizabeth Bogman Pope. His father descended from a line of New Englanders in the timber and lumber business since the 1660s, but Charles opted for speculating in real estate. His maternal grandfather, Captain James Bogman, disappeared at sea after sailing out of Norfolk, Virginia, when Elizabeth was a youth. Albert was one of eight children.

Around 1845, Charles Pope initiated his independence from the family business when he purchased his first lot in Brookline, Massachusetts, a nearby suburb of Boston. In 1846, he moved the family from Milton, Massachusetts, to a large house on Harvard Street in Brookline. He borrowed against his older landholdings to accumulate more lots at Harvard Place, and on Summer, Vernon, and Washington Streets. As these lots gained convenient streetcar access, or were even rumored to be so, he sold his Brookline properties at a hefty profit. He continued to accumulate property through 1850, but starting in 1851, the financial leverage caught up to him, and sales of his land holdings only paid his creditors.

William Pope, a brother of Charles, moved to Brookline prior to 1850, bringing some of Albert's cousins into the neighborhood. Albert attended Brookline Grammar School with his cousin George, who was just a year younger than Albert.

Charles Pope never recovered from his business downfall, according to the family story. Albert was already the breadwinner at age nine: first plowing fields, then selling produce, and at the age of fifteen, working the Quincy Market. A few years later he worked as a store clerk for $4 per week. Yet an Albert Pope biographer writes, "a study of his life suggests that his well-connected wider family helped him to get ahead and that his leaving school had less to do with providing for his needy family than with perceiving he could go, further, faster on his own." Another historian argues that Charles Pope invested with Albert in Boston real estate and was an original investor in Pope Manufacturing Company.

Pope Manufacturing Company

American Bicycle Company