Background
Samuel Sloan was born on December 25, 1817 in Lisburn, County Down, Ireland, a son of William and Elizabeth (Simpson) Sloan. When he was a year old he was brought by his parents to New York.
Businessman executive politician
Samuel Sloan was born on December 25, 1817 in Lisburn, County Down, Ireland, a son of William and Elizabeth (Simpson) Sloan. When he was a year old he was brought by his parents to New York.
At the age of fourteen, the death of his father compelled Samuel to withdraw from the Columbia College Preparatory School.
Initially, he found employment in an importing house on Cedar Street, with which he remained connected for twenty-five years, becoming head of the firm. He was chosen a supervisor of Kings County in 1852, and served as president of the Long Island College Hospital.
In 1857, having retired from the importing business, he was elected as a Democrat to the state Senate, of which he was a member for two years.
As early as 1855 he had been made a director of the Hudson River Railroad (not yet a part of the New York Central system). Election to the presidency of the road quickly followed, and in the nine years that he guided its destinies (including the Civil War period), the market value of the company's shares rose from $17 to $140.
Resigning from the Hudson River, he was elected, in 1864, a director, and in 1867, president, of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, then and long after known as one of the small group of "coal roads" that divided the Pennsylvania anthracite territory. Beginning in the reconstruction and expansion era following the Civil War, Sloan's administration of thirty-two years covered the period of shipping rebates, "cut-throat" competition, and hostile state legislation, culminating in federal regulation through the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Sloan's immediate job, as he saw it, was to make the Lackawanna more than a "coal road, " serving a limited region. Extensions north and west, and, finally, entrance into Buffalo, made it a factor in general freight handling. Readjustments had to be made. It was imperative, for example, that the old gauge of six feet be shifted to the standard 4'81/2". This feat was achieved in 1876, with a delay to traffic of only twenty-four hours. Although Sloan resigned the presidency in 1899, he continued for the remaining eight years of his life as chairman of the board of directors.
At his death, in 1907, at the age of ninety years. He died in Garrison, New York.
For twenty years Samuel Sloan was a successful business man who had weathered two major financial panics, later was the head of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad for more than 30 years, president of seventeen corporations. He extended the DL&W rail lines, and the company achieved great success, in part due to the traffic generated for transport of anthracite coal mined in the railway's expanded territory. The total cost of his improvement was $1, 250, 000. Samuel Sloan is the eponym of the city of Sloan, Iowa and the village of Sloan, New York. A statue memorializing Sloan was placed in Hoboken, New Jersey, originally facing the ferries in 1899.
On April 8, 1844, he was married, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Margaret Elmendorf. He was survived by six children.
