Samuel Marsh

Samuel Marsh (1786–1872) was an American businessman and president of the Erie Railroad from 1859 to 1861. Biography Samuel Marsh was born in 1786, at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and died in 1872, at the Astor House, New York, at which place he had resided a greater portion of his long and useful life. His New England ancestry, a long-lived and estimable family, traced back through the landing of the Pilgrims in 1638, becomes in the twelfth century, not Marsh, but de Marisco, with Marsh quaintly written as a parenthetical alternative in the manuscripts. Samuel Marsh came to New York during the War of 1812, and from that time made the metropolis his home. After the cessation of hostilities with Great Britain, he travelled long in Europe for the purpose of completing his business education and familiarizing himself with the usages of European trade. In 1819 he established the New York Dyeing and Printing Company, with factories on Staten Island, and was its president until his death. The development of the canals of the United States greatly interested him, and in the early part of the century, in connection with Erastus Corning, Horatio Seymour, and others, he projected a canal system by which the waters of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River were to be connected. The name of the enterprise was the Fox River Improvement Company. Many millions of dollars have been expended on it. The project greatly aided the material growth of the State of Wisconsin, although as yet the canal is not available for vessels of deep-water draught.