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.

[1] 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.

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.

[2] William Pope, a brother of Charles, moved to Brookline prior to 1850, bringing some of Albert's cousins into the neighborhood.

[7] On August 27, 1862, at the age of nineteen, Albert Pope joined the Union Army attached to the 35th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment, commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.

The 35th Massachusetts confronted a Confederate crossfire and was stranded behind enemy lines with its ammunition exhausted before answering an order to retreat.

[9] Albert used $900 in savings from his military salary to invest in a shoemakers' supply business at Dock Square in Boston.

Though Albert left school at an early age, he supported the college education of three of his siblings: his twin sisters Emily and Augusta, and his youngest brother, Louis.

Later, Emily and Augusta would both graduate from medical school, complete post-doctoral studies in Europe, and practice at the New England Hospital for Women and Children (known today as the Dimock Center).

The following summer, he attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in his capacity as Newton Alderman, where he saw a display of English ordinary bicycles.

The English manufacturer Haynes & Jefferies was building and exporting copies of the Ariel model with the permission of James Starley and William Hillman.

Pope made arrangements to import eight model Excelsior Duplexes from Bayliss, Thomas and Company of Coventry, England.

Fairfield started tinkering with the design, improving the head and the front ball-bearing assembly resulting in the Special model.

[19] Two American firms formed a cartel around the United States patents of bicycles shortly after Pope entered the industry: Boston-based Richardson and McKee, and Montpelier Manufacturing of Vermont.

He filed lawsuits against rival bicycle marketers, then agreed to drop the suits in exchange for a $10 per unit royalty fee.

Three cyclists rode into Central Park to defy the law with the knowledge that Pope would pay their legal fees.

[25] Pope tried to re-enter the automobile manufacturing market in 1901 by acquiring a number of small firms, but the process was expensive and competition in the industry was heating up.