Background
Asa Packer was born on December 29, 1805 in Groton, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of Elisha Packer, Jr.
builder philanthropist politician
Asa Packer was born on December 29, 1805 in Groton, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of Elisha Packer, Jr.
Asa Parker's formal education was limited to the rudiments secured in the local district school.
As a youth Asa Packer entered the tannery of Elias Smith at North Stonington and so conducted himself that his employer planned to take him into partnership but died before the arrangements were completed. As a result, young Asa, after experimenting with farming in Connecticut and finding conditions unsatisfactory, determined at the age of seventeen to seek his fortune in Pennsylvania. Setting out on foot with a knapsack on his back he arrived in 1822 in Brooklyn, Susquehanna County, where he served as an apprentice to a relative who was a carpenter and joiner.
Asa Packer followed this trade for several years and even worked at it for a time in the city of New York while still maintaining a residence at Springville, also in Susquehanna County, where he purchased land in 1823 and built with his own hands a cabin that served as his home for ten years. Mauch Chunk on the Upper Lehigh at this time acquired real importance owing to the completion of the Lehigh Valley canal, and Packer became the owner and master of a canal boat that carried coal from this place to Philadelphia. Saving his earnings he purchased coal lands on the Upper Susquehanna and in this way laid the foundations of the fortune that he came to possess.
In 1831 Asa Packer also began to operate a store and boatyard in partnership with his younger and only brother, R. W. Packer, and subsequently took a contract for the construction of canal locks on the upper navigation of the Lehigh which he completed in 1837. The year following he was at Pottsville, building boats to transfer coal to New York by way of the New Canal. He engaged in mining and transporting coal for the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company and also purchased and operated on his own account mines at Hazleton. In 1843 Packer entered public life upon his election to the state legislature. As a member of that body he was able to secure an act for the creation of the county of Carbon with Mauch Chunk as its county seat.
For five years subsequent to the erection of the county he was associate judge of the county court. In politics he was a Democrat and in 1852 he was elected to Congress from the thirteenth district and served for two terms. While fairly constant in his attendance he made no speeches. He was inclined to be regular, usually voting with the majority of his party, and supporting both Pierce and Buchanan. His power within the ranks of the Democratic party cannot be measured by speeches and public appearances. In the National Democratic Convention of 1868 he received the votes of the Pennsylvania delegation for president; in 1869 he was the Democratic nominee for governor. But he was not destined to enter public office again, although he accepted in 1876 a post as commissioner for the Centennial Exhibition and was especially influential in connection with the Centennial Board of Finance.
The year preceding his election to a seat in Congress he acquired a controlling interest in a projected railroad incorporated in 1846 under the name of the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad Company, which in 1853 became the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company. This he not only financed but built in spite of the unwillingness of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company to support a project that seemed doomed to failure. Although he was financially embarrassed at times before the completion of the road he shared largely in the profits of the mining and transportation business that was developed and the richest man in Pennsylvania.
At the close of the Civil War Packer decided to establish an institution for the education of the youth of the region that had for over forty years been the scene of his chief business activities. To achieve this end he set aside $500, 000 and also donated a considerable body of land. In 1866 the new institution, Lehigh University, was chartered by the Pennsylvania legislature and opened for instruction in temporary buildings. Packer added greatly to his original gift to this foundation during his lifetime and in his will made it a beneficiary to the extent of $1, 500, 000. In addition, he liberally endowed the university library. He also gave most liberally to various activities of the Episcopal Church of which he was a member and by his will his great wealth was largely distributed.
Asa Packer was a member of Democratic party.
Asa Packer possessed an indomitable will, unusual foresight, and business judgment. He knew the value of money and never allowed himself to divert it to channels that would not be generally profitable or beneficial. Accordingly he never indulged in extravagances but always lived with rigid simplicity.
On January 23, 1828 Asa Parker married Sarah M. Blakeslee, the daughter of a farmer of Schuylkill township in Susquehanna County.