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ASA PACKER (1805-1879)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V20, Page 442 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ASA PACKER (1805-1879)  ,
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American capitalist, was born in Mystic,
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Connecticut, on the 29th of December 1805 . In 1822 he became a carpenter's apprentice at
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Brooklyn, Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania . He worked as a carpenter in New York City for a time and then in Springville, Pennsylvania, but in 1833 settled at Mauch Chunk, in the Lehigh Valley, where he became the owner of a canal-boat (carrying
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coal to
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Philadelphia), and then established the
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firm of A . & R . W . Packer, which built canal-boats and locks for the Lehigh Coal & Navigation
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Company, probably the first through shippers to New York . He urged upon the Coal & Navigation Company the
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advantage of a steam railway as a coal carrier, but the project was not then considered feasible . In 1851 the majority of the stock of the
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Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad Company (incorporated in 1846), which became the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company in
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January 1853, came into his control, and between November 1852 and September 1855 a railway
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line was built for the Company, largely by Packer's
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personal credit, from Mauch Chunk to
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Easton . He built
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railways connecting the main line with coal-mines in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties; and he planned and built the extension (completed in 1868) of the line into the Susquehanna Valley and thence into New York state to connect at
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Waverly with the
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Erie railway . Packer also took an active
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part in politics . In 1841 and 1842 he was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; in 1843-1848 was county judge of Carbon county; in 1853-1857 was a Democratic member of the
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national House of Representatives; and in 1869 was the Democratic
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candidate for the governorship of Pennsylvania . In 1865 he gave $500,000 and 6o acres (after-wards increased to 115 acres) in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a technical school for the professions represented in the development of the Lehigh Valley; Lehigh University was chartered in 1866, and its main
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building, Packer Hall, was completed in 1869; he erected a library building in 1877 as a memorial to his daughter, Mrs Lucy Packer Linderman; and his will bequeathed $I,5o0,000 as an endowment for the university and $500,000 to the university library, and gave the university an
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interest (nearly one third) in his estate when finally distributed .

He died in Philadelphia on the 17th of May 1879 . The Packer Memorial

Church (
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Protestant Episcopal) on the Lehigh University campus, given by his daughter, Mrs Mary Packer Cummings, was dedicated on the 13th of
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October 1887 .

End of Article: ASA PACKER (1805-1879)
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