Background
Cornelius Henry Delamater was born on August 30, 1821 at Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York, United States; the only child of William and Eliza (Douglass) Delamater.
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Cornelius Henry DeLamater
Edit ProfileEducation
When he was three years of age his parents took him to New York City and there he received a common-school education.
Career
DeLamater had neither profession nor trade, but being studious and very fond of reading, he acquired more than most boys who had only his advantages.
At the age of fourteen he left school to become an errand boy in the hardware store of Schuyler & Swords, where he remained for two years.
At sixteen he entered the office of James Cunningham who had established the Phoenix Poundry on West St. , New York City, and who had as his associates Peter Hogg, an engineer and draftsman, and Cornelius’s father, William Delamater, as cashier and confidential adviser.
Cornelius started as a clerk but he made himself so useful and gained such an insight into the work that Cunningham, desiring to retire, offered the business to him and his cousin, Peter Hogg. The offer was very promptly accepted and the two young men found themselves at the head of a fairly prosperous business, doing repair work and building boilers and engines for side-wheel steamers. Their capital was small but their friends were many and warm and they prospered.
When in 1839 John Ericsson settled in New York he was persuaded by Samuel Risley of Greenwich Village to give his work to the Phoenix Foundry. There he met Cornelius Delamater and a friendship was formed which was to be life-long. Rarely thereafter did either of them enter upon a business venture without consulting the other. Delamater’s foundry built, after designs developed by Ericsson, the first iron boats and the first steam fire-engines used here. The 36-inch cast-iron pipe used for the Croton Aqueduct was made at the Phoenix Foundry and before the end of 1840 over fifty propeller steamers were also constructed.
At the end of eight years when the lease on the foundry expired, Hogg and Delamater bought property at the foot of West Thirteenth St. , on the North River, and in 1850 they built the large establishment in which they conducted their business until 1856, when Hogg retired from the firm. Delamater continued alone with the business for many years, the firm thereafter being known as the Delamater Iron Works.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, the firm entered upon a new and interesting chapter of its history. When in August 1861 the government, in response to the news that the Confederates were building the Merrimac, advertised for proposals to build iron-clad vessels, Delamater at once called upon Ericsson to determine a method of approaching the government with the latter’s plans for an armed iron-clad turreted steamer. The contract on the basis of Ericsson’s plans was received in October 1861, the keel of the Monitor was laid the same day at the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, I (now Brooklyn, New York), and the engines were built at the Delamater Iron Works. The Monitor left New York harbor on March 6, 1862, and three days later engaged in the famous battle with the Merrimac.
The men who actually operated the boilers and engines of the Monitor on that occasion were workmen from the Delamater Iron Works.
In 1869 the Delamater Works constructed thirty gunboats, each armed with a 100-pound bow-chaser, for the Spanish government. The firm was notable too for its propellers; for the manufacture of air compressors; and for constructing in 1881 John P. Holland’s first successful submarine torpedo-boat.
In fact a complete enumeration of the important productions at these Works would prove that they were a veritable school of invention, contributing greatly to the history of the country.
At one time in his career he became bankrupt through no fault of his own, but his creditors had such faith in him that they helped him to continue the Works.
In later years he invited them all to a banquet at which each of them found under his plate a check with com pound interest for what was owed him.
Achievements
Personality
Delamater, the guiding genius, was a man of deep, kindly, tolerant sympathies, well-known for his genial disposition, and his warm and lasting friendships. He believed in human nature and as an employer invested in it.
Connections
Early in life DeLamater married Ruth O. Caller of Poughkeepsie, New York, who with five daughters and one son survived him.
References
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Born
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Died
February 7, 1889 (aged 67) -
Resting place
Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City, New York, United States -
Nationality
American