Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
When Ezra Cornell was working as a plow salesman in the 1830s, the young Ithaca resident was assigned the states of Georgia and Maine as his territories. Cornell made the decision to travel to Maine in the summers and Georgia in winter. In 1842 he discovered that the telegraph industry needed a new type of plow to enable them to bury telegraph lines below ground, shielded in lead pipes. Cornell designed a suitable plow, but condensation damaged the underground lines, and they were soon being strung overhead.
It was Cornell who hit upon the idea of installing insulators made of glass to the poles, protecting the wire from shorting to ground. Cornell supervised the construction of numerous lines, receiving compensation in the form of salary and company stock. When smaller companies began to consolidate Cornell realized handsome profits from the stock. When one company in which he held interest merged with another to form Western Union Cornell received $2 million in stock in the new company.
One of the great achievements of the Lincoln administration overshadowed by the Civil War was the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862. The act awarded federal lands to the states for the purpose of establishing colleges, with 30,000 acres awarded for each member of Congress as of the 1860 census. For example, a state with four members received 120,000 acres. Cornell, who had always been keenly interested in education, retired from Western Union and focused his fortune and time on a new university.
After endowing the Cornell Library in Ithaca, Cornell partnered with Andrew Dickson White to obtain a charter for a new school with the status of New York’s land grant college. The charter was obtained in 1865 and Cornell University was born. Under the act states lacking sufficient federal land were allowed to claim lands in states which had an excess. Cornell personally owned vast lands in which he had invested in the upper Midwest, which were transferred to Cornell University.
Ezra Cornell provided his Ithaca farm for the site of the first campus, and $500,000 to begin construction. In 1868 its first classes began on the site. He continued to maintain the lands in the west owned by the University, which when finally sold realized an endowment for the school of $5 million (nearly $105 million today). Cornell is buried at the Sage Chapel at the main Cornell campus in Ithaca.