Samuel Morse Felton Sr.
Samuel Morse Felton Sr. (1809–1889) was a civil engineer and railroad executive. He was the Superintendent and engineer of the Fitchburg Railroad 1843-1851 and president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad from 1851–1865, during the pivotal American Civil War era (1861-1865). Felton left the P.W.& B.R.R. to become President of the Pennsylvania Steel Company. While at Pennsylvania Steel, Felton also served on the boards of directors of several railroads, including his former Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad. In 1869 he was appointed by 18th President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885, served 1869-1877), as a Commissioner to inspect the trans-continental and Pacific Railroads.[1]
Felton was the brother of Harvard College / Harvard University president Cornelius Conway Felton in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attorney John B. Felton [2] and the father of Samuel Morse Felton Jr. (1853-1930), who was also involved like his distinguished father with engineering and railroading with several different lines and supervised railroad operations in France on the Western Front in World War I (1914/1917-1918).[1]
External links
- Samuel Morse Felton Family Papers, 1841-1930 Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
- Samuel Morse Felton (Sr) Collection at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School
References
- Samuel Morse Felton Family Papers, 1841-1930 Archived 2006-02-03 at the Wayback Machine
- William Bentinck-Smith (1982). The Harvard Book: Selections From Three Centuries. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674373013.