Background
Anson was born on April 20, 1825 in Ontario County, New York, United States, but was brought up in Rochester, where his father was engaged as an edged-tool maker.
Anson was born on April 20, 1825 in Ontario County, New York, United States, but was brought up in Rochester, where his father was engaged as an edged-tool maker.
By the age of sixteen he completing his education in the public schools.
After school he became a printer's devil in the office of the Rochester Daily Advertiser, owned and published by Henry O'Reilly.
By 1845 Stager had become the Advertiser's bookkeeper. About this time O'Reilly contracted with Samuel F. B. Morse and his associates to raise the capital to build a line of Morse's electro-magnetic telegraph from Philadelphia to the Middle West.
His activities undoubtedly aroused Stager's interest, and while O'Reilly was constructing the first link of the telegraph line to Pittsburgh, the younger man was learning telegraphy in his spare time, and upon the opening of the telegraph office at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1846, he was installed as operator. In the succeeding three months he was transferred to Chambersburg and from there to Pittsburgh, serving as manager of the latter office during most of 1847.
With the extension of the O'Reilly lines to Cincinnati late in that year, Stager was made manager of the operating department of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & Louisville Telegraph Company. During the succeeding four years he conducted the office skilfully and originated the system by which telegraph wires were worked from a common battery on a closed circuit. His reward came in 1852 when he was appointed general superintendent of the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company. With the formation of the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1856, Stager was immediately appointed its general superintendent and assigned the work of rearranging the many telegraph lines, strengthening the organization, and establishing favorable relations with the great railroad interests.
He was the originator of the cunningly devised contract which for many years gave the Western Union an iron-bound monopoly of the privilege of stringing wires along the railroads. After 1856 Stager made his headquarters at Cleveland, Ohio, and upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was asked to take the management of the telegraphs in the military department of the Ohio. Appointed captain and assistant quartermaster general on November 11, 1861, he was placed on duty in Washington as chief of the United States military telegraphs.
On February 26, 1862, he was promoted to colonel and subsequently assigned as aide-de-camp to General Halleck at the War Department. After 1864 his headquarters were in Cleveland, Ohio, and continued there until he was honorably mustered out September 1, 1866. For his meritorious services, which included the originating and development of the military telegraph cipher system, he had been brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers on March 13, 1865.
He had not broken his connection with the Western Union Telegraph Company, and upon its reorganization following the war he was tendered the general superintendency of the whole system. When he refused the offer, the system was divided into three great divisions, Central, Eastern, and Southern, and Stager accepted the superintendency of the Central Division, with headquarters at Cleveland. In 1869 these were transferred to Chicago, Illinois, and there Stager lived for the remainder of his life. He became a vice-president of the Western Union, which office he resigned in 1881.
Anson Stager died in Chicago, Illinois on March 26, 1885.
On November 14, 1847, he married Rebecca Sprague of Buffalo, and at the time of his death in Chicago was survived by three children.