Edward Collings Knight was born on December 08, 1813 on a farm in Collingswood, New Jersey, United States, the son of Jonathan and Rebecca (Collings) Knight. He was of Quaker stock, being descended from Giles Knight of Gloucestershire, England, who came to America on the Welcome with Penn's first colonists in 1682. When he was only ten his father died, leaving five other children, and the family went to live with the maternal grandfather.
At fifteen, Edward commenced a period of eight years as a grocery clerk, the first half in New Jersey and the rest in Philadelphia, which thereafter was his home. In 1836, he went into the wholesale and retail grocery business with his mother. She soon withdrew, and he subsequently formed the firm of E. C. Knight & Company, with his former clerk, Charles A. Sparks, as partner. The firm became sole agents for the large Philadelphia sugar-refining firm of Kusenberg & Bartol, whom Knight later joined, about 1861, in establishing the extensive Southwark Sugar Refinery.
Twenty years later this plant had a capacity of 1, 500 barrels a day. While sugar was the basis of his fortune, Knight had many other irons in the fire. He was a shipowner and conducted an extensive foreign trade--to Cuba and the West Indies for sugar, and to Chile and California with general groceries. In 1849, he was interested in the venture of sending to California on the deck of a bark the little steamer Islander, the pioneer steamboat in the river above Sacramento.
He invested heavily and shrewdly in Philadelphia real estate, building several profitable business structures and owning numerous others. His most original achievement resulted from a business trip to New Orleans. The discomforts of the railroad journey prompted him to ponder the idea of a sleeping car, and in 1859, while Pullman was experimenting at Chicago, Knight contracted with Murphy & Allison to build a sleeper with a fixed triple tier of berths along one side. He took out patents (No. 24563, June 28, 1859; No. 25570, Sept. 27, 1859; No. 27297, Feb. 28, 1860), formed a company, and sold many of his "Knights, " as they were punningly termed, to the Baltimore & Ohio and the Camden & Amboy railroads. About 1868 he sold out to Pullman, for some two million dollars.
Knight became president of the American Line of steamships, formed by a group of Philadelphians in 1873 under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Railroad to revive the American merchant marine and the port of Philadelphia. This concern ran four liners between Philadelphia and Liverpool, and finally merged with the Inman Line. He promoted the construction of the Delaware & Bound Brook Railroad (opened 1876), which provided a new line between New York and Philadelphia by joining the Central Railroad of New Jersey at Bound Brook with the North Pennsylvania just above Trenton. He was its president from its organization in 1874 until his death. In 1879, the road was leased on very profitable terms to the Philadelphia & Reading.
In 1887, Knight became president of the North Pennsylvania Railroad, also leased by the Reading. He helped to develop coal properties at West Pittston, Pennsylvania, and the Camden Woolen Mills at Camden, New Jersey, and was at one time or another director of several banks and several railroads, including the Pennsylvania.
He received an unsolicited nomination for Congress in 1856, but was defeated. In 1860, he was a Republican presidential elector, and in 1873 sat in the Pennsylvania constitutional convention. He was a member of the Philadelphia Park Commission and was an active promoter of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and the Pennsylvania bicentennial celebrations of 1882.
Knight was described as "quiet, persevering, steady-going. "
Knight was married, July 20, 1841, to Anna Marie Magill, and had five children.
