Curtis Miranda Lampson

Background

Curtis Miranda Lampson was the fourth son of William and Rachel (Powell) Lampson and was born in New Haven, Vermont.

Education

He received an ordinary school education.

Career

Being averse to farming with his father, Lampson went to work as clerk in the general store of his native town. After spending several years there, but before he had reached his majority, he went to New York for further experience as a merchant and gradually worked into the exporting business. In view of the fact that he dealt largely in trade with England, he presumably decided that the business could be conducted to better advantage in England, and in the year 1830 he removed with his wife to that country.

Beginning alone in London, he gradually built up a successful importing business which in the course of time he reorganized as the C. M. Lampson Company, with himself as senior partner. Having decided, too, to remain in England, he became a naturalized citizen of Great Britain on May 14, 1849, and purchased the estate of "Rowfant" in the parish of Worth and county of Sussex.

By this time he had became a wealthy man and in addition to his own business was an active deputy-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1856 he met Cyrus W. Field who had gone to England from the United States for the purpose of interesting British capital in the project of establishing telegraphic communication by cable between England and America. Field was successful in this undertaking and brought about the organization of the Atlantic Telegraph Company of which Lampson was a most interested member of the board of directors, both financially and otherwise.

He was one of the five directors who held out for continuing the attempt to lay a cable after the first failure in 1858 and was even more active after being made vice-chairman of the company. Lampson worked almost seven years to build up sufficient confidence to attempt another laying of a cable. He was rewarded for his labors when with the refinancing and reorganization of the original company as the Anglo-American Company and with the aid of the steamship Great Eastern in laying the cable, a transatlantic telegraph service was finally established in 1865-66.

For the great aid which he rendered to this undertaking Queen Victoria created him a baronet on November 16, 1866, the citation of Her Majesty reading, "To whose resolute support of the project, in spite of all discouragements, it was in a great measure owing that it was not at one time abandoned in despair. " Lampson was one of the trustees of the fund that was given by his friend George Peabody for the benefit of the poor of London. He died in London.

Achievements

• Lampson was famous Anglo-American fur merchant, best remembered for his promotion of the transatlantic telegraph cable. It was undersea cable running under the Atlantic Ocean used for long-distance transmission of textual or symbolic messages. He was also the founder of the C. M. Lampson Company and Anglo-American Company.

Connections

Lampson was married on November 30, 1827, in New York, to Jane Walter Sibley of Sutton, Massachussets. They had three sons and a daughter.

Father:

William Lampson

Mother:

Rachel (Powell) Lampson

Spouse:

Jane Walter Sibley