Background
Timothy Corser Eastman was born on May 30, 1821 in Croydon, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Joseph Eastman, a carpenter, and his wife Lucy Powers.
Timothy Corser Eastman was born on May 30, 1821 in Croydon, New Hampshire, United States. He was the son of Joseph Eastman, a carpenter, and his wife Lucy Powers.
His mother taught a family fireside school in the long winter evenings so that he received an average elementary school education.
His father taught him the carpenter’s trade at which he worked until he had enough money to carry him through the high school at Meriden, New Hampshire.
He had to begin work at an early age and therefore had little formal instruction.
He then taught school for a time and at the age of twenty-one was able to buy a farm.
Imbued with the western fever, he went to Wisconsin for a time, but returned, and in 1849 moved to Ohio.
He settled near Cleveland, where he began operating a dairy farm.
In 1859 his business had grown to such proportions that it w'as necessary to move to New York City.
It was at this time that he made the acquaintance of Commodore Vanderbilt and was put in charge of all the cattle business handled by the New York Central Railroad.
Soon after settling in New' York he began shipping cattle and other live stock out of the country and revolutionized the methods of supplying England and Scotland, in particular, with American beef.
He not only shipped thousands of live cattle but was the pioneer in the shipping of dressed meat in quantity as a commercial article in the refrigeration chambers of steamships.
His first shipment of this nature wras made on October 1, 1875.
Some of that beef was sent to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle for which transaction Eastman’s Ltd. , his English agency, received the Royal Seal.
For some time he was the only one shipping dressed meat in this manner, his weekly exports in 1877 averaging four thousand quarters of beef in addition to one thousand live cattle.
In 1889 he promoted retail meat stores in all parts of the United Kingdom and in the same year incorporated The Eastman’s Company to carry on his business in the United States and abroad.
He served as the president of this concern until his death. He was also a director in the West Side Bank of New York.
He was very successful, and in buying and selling cattle for his milk business he laid the foundation for the w'ork which occupied the last forty years of his life. He developed a marvelous gift for judging cattle, and it was not long until he began bringing live stock from Ohio and Kentucky to the East, making his headquarters at Albany, New York.
He was a member of the New York Produce Exchange.
He married Lucy Putnam in 1845 by whom he had one son and one daughter.
