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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Ezra Cornell Biography CORNELL, Ezra (1807–74). An American capitalist and philanthropist, the founder of Cornell University. He was born in West-chester Co., N. Y., of Quaker parentage; removed with his father, a potter by trade, to De Ruyter, N. Y., in 1819; received a scant education and for some time taught a district school, besides assisting his father in farming and the making of pottery. He also learned the carpenter's trade, spent a year as a mechanic at Homer, N. Y., and in 1826 removed to Ithaca, where for eight years he managed a flour mill. In 1839 he joined his brother in the lumbering and farming business, but his attention being turned accidentally in 1842 to the project of constructing a telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington, he invented a machine for laying the wires underground and was subsequently put in charge of the work. The insulation being poor, however, the plan had to be abandoned, and on Cornell's suggestion the wires were strung on poles, and the line was thus speedily completed. Subsequently Cornell devoted his attention almost wholly to the construction of telegraph lines and the organization of telegraph companies, and was instrumental in forming the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1855. In 1858, having accumulated a large fortune, he settled on a farm at Ithaca, N. Y. He was a member of the first Republican National Convention in 1856, was president of the New York State Agricultural Society in 1862, and was a member of the State Assembly in 1862–63, and of the State Senate in 1864–67. After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act in 1862 he succeeded in getting a bill through the Legislature assigning the whole of New York's land scrip to one institution, and in addition contributed an endowment of $500,000 towards building such an institution at Ithaca, N. Y. He subsequently (in 1866) bought up the scrip then remaining unsold and located it with great care in the timberlands of Wisconsin, of which the later advance in value greatly increased the endowment of the university. In 1868 "The Cornell University," so founded, was formally opened. Cornell also built a public library at Ithaca. Consult The Life of Ezra Cornell, by his son, A. B. Cornell (New York, 1884). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 94.
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