Background
George Law was born in Jackson (now Shushan), New York, between Saratoga and the Vermont border, one of the five children of John Law, a native of the County Down in Ireland who had come to America in 1784 and become a dairyman-farmer.
George Law was born in Jackson (now Shushan), New York, between Saratoga and the Vermont border, one of the five children of John Law, a native of the County Down in Ireland who had come to America in 1784 and become a dairyman-farmer.
He attended winter night school.
In 1824 the approaching completion of the Erie Canal tempted him away from the cows and churns. He trudged to Troy to seek his fortune. Starting as a hod-carrier, he soon learned stone-cutting and masonry. The mania for canal construction gave him a series of opportunities and he worked in turn on the Dismal Swamp, Morris, Harlem, and Delaware & Hudson canals.
At the age of twenty-one he undertook his first work as a contractor, building a small lock and aqueduct. Then he constructed an inclined plane for the Lehigh Canal. By 1830 he had saved $2, 800. This was increased tenfold in the next four years by successful contracting in canal and railroad construction in eastern Pennsylvania. In 1837 he moved to New York City, which became his home for the rest of his life.
He secured two contracts for work near Tarrytown on the new Croton Water Works and in 1839 undertook his greatest piece of contracting, the High Bridge. His experience had revealed financial as well as engineering ability. Turning from contracting, he thenceforth applied his capital and skill to other fields. Elected president of the Dry Dock Bank in 1842, he rescued it from the brink of insolvency. Then, for a while, he devoted his attention to railroads. He helped to extend the Harlem Railroad twelve miles from Williamsbridge to White Plains, nearly doubling its earnings in two years and raising the value of its stock from five to seventy-five. He then took over the Mohawk & Hudson, doing away with its inclined planes, improving its roadbed and trebling the value of its stock. His next and most spectacular venture was in ocean steamships, which promised to become profitable with the federal policy of mail subsidies.
In 1847, with Marshall O. Roberts and Bowes R. McIlvaine as junior partners, he formed the United States Mail Steamship Company and took over the federal contract awarded to A. G. Sloo for a biweekly mail service between New York, Havana, New Orleans, and Chagres. The company was to provide five ships and receive $290, 000 annually. Their first ship reached Chagres in 1848, with passengers for California. The gold rush gave a tremendous impetus to the business; but the opposition developed when William H. Aspinwall's Pacific Mail Steamship Company started a rival line from New York to Chagres. Thereupon, Law secured four ships to compete with the Pacific Mail between Panama and San Francisco in 1850. A year later, the companies divided spheres of influence, Law keeping the Atlantic, and Aspinwall the Pacific.
Law was also actively interested in the Panama Railroad. Several of his ships became involved in the Cuban troubles and in 1852 he sprang into fame. One Smith, purser of his Crescent City, had furnished the New York Herald with material which angered the captain-general of Cuba who forbade any ship bearing Smith aboard to enter Havana harbor. Though urged by President Fillmore to avoid trouble and penalized by the removal of the mails, Law sent the ship with Smith aboard into Havana time and again. This started a presidential "boom" for Law. Though only one generation removed from County Down, he was prominently associated with the Know-Nothing party and in 1855 received the support of the Pennsylvania legislature for that party's presidential nomination. When Fillmore received it instead in 1856, Law supported Frémont and attacked Fillmore in two widely circulated "North American" Letters. By that time he was a millionaire.
He had sold his steamships just before the slump in the American merchant marine set in and had shifted from liners to prosaic but profitable horse cars. When the Eighth Avenue Railroad in New York City faced forfeiture of its contract in 1854 unless it completed its five miles of track within ten weeks, Law advanced some $800, 000, completed the road within the given time, secured fifty cars, and then served as president of the road until his death. The road paid dividends averaging twelve per cent. during all that period.
He was also promoter and president of the Ninth Avenue Railroad, started in 1859, but that line paid almost nothing. During his later years, his son took over the active management of the lines, and also of the Brooklyn and Staten Island ferries which he acquired. Law died at his home on Fifth Avenue after a period of failing health.
In 1834 Law married Miss Anderson in Philadelphia.