engineer military Soldier telegrapher
Marshall Lefferts was born in Bedford, which later became a part of Brooklyn, New York, the son of Leffert and Amelia Ann (Cozine) Lefferts. His father was a descendant of Leffert Pieterse who came with his father, Pieter Janse Hoogwout (or Van Haughwout), from Holland to New Amsterdam in 1660 and settled on Long Island. The next generation adopted Lefferts as a surname.
Marshall had only such schooling as was available to farmers' sons in that period, although living within the bounds of what eventually became Greater New York.
At fifteen Lefferts was a clerk in a hardware store. For three years he was on the staff of engineers engaged in the survey of Brooklyn. He was also employed in laying out Greenwood Cemetery, but left engineering to enter an importing house, in which he soon became a partner. Because his firm dealt extensively in zinc wire and other commodities used in the erection of telegraph lines, he interested himself in such operations and in 1849 was president of the New York & New England and the New York State telegraph companies.
After the consolidation of the Morse and Bain interests, however, he withdrew from line management for ten years and engaged in the manufacture of iron and in perfecting the process for galvanizing that metal. By 1860 he was back in telegraph construction work, planning lines for the automatic system, and was made electrical engineer for the American Telegraph Company. His work at this time was still largely experimental, for comparatively few scientific investigations had been made in this field since the invention of the magnetic telegraph. The practical men in charge of construction had to depend on their own resourcefulness for ways and means to achieve results. Most of the makeshift devices that Lefferts employed were of course superseded within a few years; his was the trail-blazing of the pioneer--often rough and incomplete, but necessary in its day. He introduced measuring instruments to detect electrical disturbances. As executive manager for the American Telegraph Company he built up an efficient organization, his unfailing good humor helping to make him successful in dealing with subordinates.
The Civil War put a period to Lefferts' construction activities. He was colonel of the New York 7th Regiment, a unit that had unusual prestige. It attracted the notice of the whole country when its services were offered to the government at Washington in April 1861, since it was thought significant that a body of men including so many citizens of wealth and high social position in New York should rally to the support of the Union. The regiment's service was of short duration, however, and its colonel had little opportunity to prove his military prowess. After the war, on the merging of the American Telegraph Company with the Western Union, he was put in charge of a bureau for collecting and disseminating commercial news.
In 1871 he resigned his connection with the Western Union and became president and general manager of the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company. For several years, also, he was consulting engineer of the Atlantic Cable Company. He died while on his way to Philadelphia with his comrades of the 7th Regiment Veteran Corps to take part in the observance of the centennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Lefferts married Mary Allen on June 4, 1845. He had five sons and two daughters. One of his sons was George Morewood Lefferts.
