Fitch, John (21 January 1743–June or July 1798), inventor and craftsman, was born in Windsor, Connecticut, the son of Joseph Fitch and Sarah Shaler, farmers. His father came from neighboring Hartford and his mother from Bolton. His mother died before he was five; his father married Abigail Church of Hartford two years later. Most of what is known about Fitch comes from an autobiographical sketch written between 1790 and 1792, when he was alone and embittered, convinced that he had been cheated by life. Although he had by then put aside the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of his upbringing and replaced it with a rationalistic deism, he still tended to pass judgment on those he felt had failed him. His memories of childhood were few and unhappy. He described his father as uncaring, even tyrannical. Unjust treatment by an older brother “forbode” his “future rewards,” he reminisced—with the irony intended ( ...
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Fitch, John (21 January 1743–June or July 1798), inventor and craftsman
Neil L. York
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Fulton, Robert (1765-1815), artist, engineer, and entrepreneur
C. M. Harris
Fulton, Robert (14 November 1765–23 February 1815), artist, engineer, and entrepreneur, was born on a farm in Little Britain (later Fulton) Township, south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert Fulton, a Scotch-Irish tailor and tradesman, and Mary Smith. Fulton’s father had left the prosperous market town of Lancaster to establish his family on the land, but like so many others with the same goal, he failed. The farm and the dwelling were sold at sheriff’s sale in 1772, and he took his family back to Lancaster. He died two years later....
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Fulton, Robert (1765-1815)
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Harriman, W. Averell (1891-1986), businessman and government official
Robert H. Ferrell
Harriman, W. Averell (15 November 1891–26 July 1986), businessman and government official, was born William Averell Harriman in New York City, the son of the railroad organizer Edward H. Harriman and Mary Averell (Mary Williamson Averell Harriman). He spent his early years in New York and on the family estate of Arden in the nearby Ramapo Mountains. He was educated at Groton and Yale. Harriman did poorly in preparatory studies, which brought admonishment from his father, and it is possible that his stammer, which he carried throughout his long life, resulted from this experience. At Yale he did better academically, and excelled socially....
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Harriman, W. Averell (1891-1986)
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Herreshoff, Nathanael Greene (1848-1938), steam engineer and yacht designer
Llewellyn Howland
Herreshoff, Nathanael Greene (18 March 1848–02 June 1938), steam engineer and yacht designer, was born in Bristol, Rhode Island, the seventh of nine children of Charles Frederick Herreshoff (pronounced Herr-es-off, with the stress on the first syllable), a gentleman farmer whose paternal grandfather had emigrated to Rhode Island from Prussia in 1787, and Julia Ann Lewis. Herreshoff escaped the disease that early blinded five of his siblings. But when his consumingly ambitious older brother John Brown Herreshoff became blind at age fourteen, Herreshoff was compelled to assist him in his sailing and boat-building endeavors. By twelve he was a proficient draftsman and boat modeler as well as a skilled yacht racing helmsman and navigator. By the time he graduated from high school (1865), he was playing an important role in the design of small craft being built at his brother’s newly formed Herreshoff & Stone boat works....
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Holladay, Ben (1819-1887), transportation magnate
Martha J. Bianco
Holladay, Ben (14 October 1819–08 July 1887), transportation magnate, was born in Nicholas County, Kentucky, the son of William Holladay and Margaret Hughes, farmers. At age seventeen, with little education or experience beyond that gained as the son of poor farmers on the Kentucky frontier, Holladay left home, sensing opportunity lying to the west. He moved to Weston, on the Missouri-Kansas border, where he began working as a courier for militia fighting against the Mormons in the town of Far West, Missouri. In this role of ferrying messages back and forth between the Mormons and the militia, Holladay was able to gain the Mormons’ trust. After this experience, in 1838 Holladay decided to settle in Weston and made a series of entrepreneurial investments, first as a saloonkeeper and then as a druggist and dry-goods merchant. Eventually he opened a hotel and was appointed local postmaster. With his profits, he purchased his first set of freight wagons, fitting them with the extra-wide tires that would become his trademark. In 1840 Holladay met and married Notley Ann Calvert, daughter of a well-to-do Weston family; they had seven children, one of whom died in infancy....
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Isherwood, Benjamin Franklin (1822-1915), marine engineer
Elizabeth Noble Shor
Isherwood, Benjamin Franklin (06 October 1822–19 June 1915), marine engineer, was born in New York City, the son of Benjamin Isherwood, a physician, and Eliza Hicks. His father died soon after the boy was born, and his mother married a civil engineer, John Green, in 1824. In 1831 Isherwood enrolled in Albany Academy, an exacting preparatory school that emphasized “mechanical pursuits” (Sloan, p. 6). At age fourteen, in his final school year, Isherwood was expelled for unspecified “serious misconduct.”...
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Plant, Henry Bradley (1819-1899), transportation executive
Edward L. Lach, Jr.
Plant, Henry Bradley (27 October 1819–23 June 1899), transportation executive, was born in Branford, Connecticut, the son of Anderson Plant and Betsey Bradley, farmers. His father died of typhus when Plant was only six years old, and upon his mother’s remarriage to Philemon Hoadley several years later the family relocated to Martinsburg, New York. Plant later returned to his native state and settled in New Haven, where he finished his education at a private academy. Although Plant’s grandmother offered to pay his way through Yale (hoping that he would enter the ministry), he declined the offer in favor of entering the world of work....
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Roosevelt, Nicholas J. (1767-1854), engineer and inventor
Ellsworth S. Grant
Roosevelt, Nicholas J. (27 December 1767–30 July 1854), engineer and inventor, was born in New York City, the son of Jacobus Roosevelt, a shopkeeper, and Annetje Bogard. Nicholas’s brother Jacobus was the great-grandfather of Theodore Roosevelt. As a boy Roosevelt developed a great love for mechanics and built a model boat propelled by paddle wheels turned by springs and a cord. This experiment proved to be the start of his career in manufacturing steam engines and building some of the earliest steamboats. He persuaded friends to purchase land in what is now Belleville, New Jersey, and erect a metal foundry and shop. It was called Soho after the famous works of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham, England. Managing the enterprise alone, with several skilled mechanics imported from England, at first he had some success, building an engine for the Philadelphia waterworks and winning a federal contract to establish a rolling mill for copper to be used in the construction of warships. Unfortunately, the ships were never built, causing him a great financial loss....
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Sewall, Arthur (25 November 1835–05 September 1900), shipbuilder and railroad and bank president
Paolo E. Coletta
Sewall, Arthur (25 November 1835–05 September 1900), shipbuilder and railroad and bank president, was born in Bath, Maine, the son of William Dunning Sewall, a shipbuilder, and Rachel Trufant. Sewall received a common school education in Bath. He was subsequently sent to Prince Edward Island to learn how to cut ship timber, and soon he was able to perform every job required in a shipyard. In 1854, during a peak period of wooden shipbuilding, he founded the firm of E. & A. Sewall with his older brother Edward and took over his father’s firm. When Edward died in 1879, the name was changed to Arthur Sewall & Co. Beginning with the 1,000-ton ...
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Sewall, Arthur (25 November 1835–05 September 1900)
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Stevens, John (1749-1838), engineer and inventor
Ellsworth S. Grant
Stevens, John (1749–06 March 1838), engineer and inventor, was born in New York City, the son of John Stevens, a shipowner and merchant, and Elizabeth Alexander. In later years Stevens’s father entered politics, serving as treasurer of New Jersey and as president of the New Jersey convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. In 1766 Stevens entered King’s College, now Columbia, and graduated in 1768. He studied law for three years but never practiced it; instead, he joined his father in New Jersey politics and served as a special aide to Governor ...
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Thaw, William (1818-1889), transportation executive and philanthropist
Edward L. Lach, Jr.
Thaw, William (12 October 1818–17 August 1889), transportation executive and philanthropist, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of John Thaw, a banker, and Elizabeth Thomas. His father, after an earlier career as a merchant seaman, entered the banking business and relocated to Pittsburgh from Philadelphia in 1804. In Pittsburgh the elder Thaw served as the chief clerk in the newly established branch of the Bank of Pennsylvania. His son received his early education at local schools before entering the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh); it is unclear whether he graduated. At the age of sixteen Thaw entered the workplace as a clerk with his father’s firm, which had since been taken over by the Bank of the United States. While employed at the bank, he traveled on horseback throughout the Ohio River valley making collections. During this trip Thaw not only gained knowledge of the area but also became aware of the tremendous potential benefits that improved transportation could bring to the region....
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Vanderbilt, Cornelius (1794-1877), steamship and railroad promoter and financier
John F. Stover
Vanderbilt, Cornelius (27 May 1794–04 January 1877), steamship and railroad promoter and financier, was born in Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York, the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Phebe Hand. His father, a poor farmer with nine children, increased his income with some boating around the New York harbor. In 1795 the family moved to Stapleton, on the eastern shore of Staten Island. Cornelius hated both schools and books and had no formal education past the age of eleven, when he became his father’s helper. The husky, robust boy was an expert swimmer and adept at identifying most types of sailing ships. At an early age he helped his father transfer farm produce by boat to New York City. At the age of sixteen his parents lent him $100 to purchase a small sailboat. Cornelius Vanderbilt at once set up a ferrying and freight business between Staten Island and New York City that earned more than $1,000 in the first year. The fare for the trip to New York City was eighteen cents one way or a round trip for a quarter....
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