Cornell, Ezra
pioneer, was born Jan. 11, 1807, in Westchester, N. Y. When congress had appropriated $30,000 to build a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, and Mr. Cornell invented a machine to be drawn by eight mules for laying the wires underground and was employed as superintendent to carry out his idea. Next year a line was built by him under contract from New York to Philadelphia, and in 1846 one from New York to Albany. In 1847 he organized a company and built a telegraph line from Troy to Montreal, and in 1848 formed the New York and Erie and the Erie and Michigan Telegraph companies, to construct lines from New York to Lake Erie and thence to Milwaukee. He gave a $75,000 building to Ithaca for a free library and made a further gift for books. For the founding of Cornell university he gave nearly a million dollars and so located the agricultural college land grant, which New York state had transferred to the university, that it produced three or four times its original value.