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'Asa Packer' (December 29 1805 - May 17,1879) was an American businessman who pioneered railroad construction, was active in Pennsylvania politics, and founded Lehigh University.

Contents

Early life

Business Activities

Politics

Lehigh University

Family

Sources

Early life

He was born in Mystic, Connecticut; in 1822 he became a carpenter's apprentice to his cousin, Edward Packer, at 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 (present day Jim Thorpe), in the Lehigh Valley, where he became the owner of a canal boat (carrying coal to Philadelphia), and then established the firm of A. & R. W. Packer, which built canal-boats and locks for the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, probably the first through shippers to New York.

Business Activities

He urged upon the Coal & Navigation Company the 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 Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad Company (incorporated in 1846), which became the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company in January 1853, came into his control, and between November 1852 and September 1855 a railway line was built for the Company, largely by Packer's personal credit, from Mauch Chunk to Easton. He built 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 Waverly, New York with the Erie railway. Among his clerks and associates during this period was future businessman and soldier George Washington Helme.

Politics

Packer also took an active 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 under Governor David R. Porter; in 1853-1857 was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives; a Democratic nominee for the nomination of the Presidency in 1868; and the Democratic candidate for the governorship of Pennsylvania in 1869. One might say Packer learned one very important lesson in his political career which was never oppose a Civil War general. U.S. Grant becomes President in 1868, and Packer would lose to John W. Geary by a narrow margin, 4,596 votes, one of the closest races in Pennsylvania history.

Lehigh University

In 1865 he gave $500,000 and 60 acres (243,000 m²), later increased to 115 acres (465,000 m²) 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 building, Packer Hall, was completed in 1869. For the first 26 years of Lehigh's existence, the university was tuition free.

Family

Packer was married to Sarah Minerva Blakslee (1807-1882), daughter to Zophar and Clarinda Whitmer Blakslee. The Packers would have seven children: Lucy Packer Linderman (1832-1873), Catherine Packer (1836-1837), Mary Packer Cummings (1839-1912), Malvina Fitzrandolph Packer (1841-1841), Robert Asa Packer (1842-1883), Gertrude Packer (1846-1848), and Harry Eldred Packer (1850-1884)

Sources

★ The Asa Packer Mansion Museum.

★ Asa Packer at The Political Graveyard

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