Henry Farnam (November 9, 1803 – October 4, 1883) was an American philanthropist and railroad president.

Biography

He was born in

Scipio, New York Scipio is a town in Cayuga County, New York, United States. The population was 1,713 at the 2010 census. Scipio is centrally located in the southern half of the county, south of Auburn. History Scipio was part of the Central New York Military T ...

, and grew up working on his father's farm. By his teenage years, he had begun studying

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

on his own and in 1820 he gained employment initially as a camp cook on the

Erie Canal The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east-west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing t ...

. Under the wing of

Benjamin Wright Benjamin Wright (October 10, 1770 – August 24, 1842) was an American civil engineer who was chief engineer of the Erie Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. In 1969, the American Society of Civil Engineers declared him the "Father of America ...

, America's most famous Civil Engineer at the time and a man who encouraged many young men to study Civil Engineering, Henry Farnam learned Surveying and was soon employed as a Surveyor on the

. In 1825 he began working for the New Haven and Northampton Canal, becoming construction superintendent in 1827. He moved to

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, in 1839 and was instrumental in building the railroad that replaced the canal there in 1848. In 1850 he moved to

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

where he partnered with

Joseph E. Sheffield Joseph Earle Sheffield (June 19, 1793 – February 17, 1882) was an American railroad magnate and philanthropist. Sheffield was born in Southport, Connecticut, the son of Paul King Sheffield, a shipowner, and his wife Mabel (née Thorpe). H ...

to build the

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (CRI&P RW, sometimes called ''Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway'') was an American Class I railroad. It was also known as the Rock Island Line, or, in its final years, The Rock. At the end ...

. In 1854 he became that railroad's president, an office he held until his retirement in 1863. In 1868 he moved back to

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

where he remained until his death in 1883. His son Henry Walcott Farnam was an economist, and served as president of the

American Economic Association The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals acknowledged in business and academia. There are some 23,000 members. History and Constitution The AEA was esta ...

in 1911.

References

1803 births 1883 deaths 19th-century American railroad executives Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad People from Scipio, New York {{US-rail-bio-stub