Ezra Cornell

Ezra Cornell (; January 11, 1807 – December 9, 1874) was an American businessman, politician, academic, and philanthropist. He was involved in the founding of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University. He also served as president of the New York Agriculture Society and as a New York State Senator.

Cornell was born in Westchester Landing at what is now 1515 Williamsbridge Road in Westchester Square, Bronx in New York City to Elijah Cornell and Eunice (Barnard), a potter. He was raised near DeRuyter, New York. He was a cousin of Paul Cornell, the founder of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was also related to Ezekiel Cornell, a Revolutionary War general who represented Rhode Island in the Second Continental Congress from 1780 to 1782, and was a distant relative of William Cornell, who was an early settler from Rhode Island.

Cornell's earliest American patrilineal ancestor, Thomas Cornell (1595–1655), was a Puritan and a follower of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson before finally embracing Quakerism, the faith of his descendants.

Cornell initially pursued a career in carpentry and traveled extensively throughout New York State in the profession. Upon first setting eyes on Cayuga Lake and Ithaca, New York, in the spring of 1828, he decided that Ithaca would be his future home.

Cornell was hired as a mechanic by Otis Eddy to work at his cotton mill on Cascadilla Creek. On Eddy's recommendation, Jeremiah S. Beebe then hired Cornell to repair and overhaul his plaster and flour mills on Fall Creek. During Cornell's long association with Beebe, he designed and built a tunnel for a new mill race on Fall Creek, a stone dam on Fall Creek (which formed Beebe Lake), and a new flour mill. By 1832, Cornell was placed in charge of all Beebe's concerns at Fall Creek.

In 1831, Cornell married Mary Ann Wood in Dryden, New York. The young and growing family needed more income than he could earn as manager of Beebe's mills, so Cornell purchased rights in a patent for a new type of plow and began decades of traveling away from Ithaca. His territories for sales of the plow included the states of Maine and Georgia. He sold in Maine in the summer and the milder Georgia in the winter.

In 1842, Cornell happened into the offices of the Maine Farmer, where he saw an acquaintance, F.O.J. Smith, bent over some plans for a "scraper" as Smith called it. For services rendered, Smith had been granted a one-quarter share of the telegraph patent held by Samuel Morse, and was attempting to devise a way of burying the telegraph lines in the ground in lead pipe. Cornell devised a special kind of plow that would dig a 2 feet 6 inches (76 cm) ditch, lay the pipe and telegraph wire in the ditch, and cover it back up. It was later learned that condensation in the pipes and poor insulation of the wires impeded the electric current through the wire, so hanging wires from telegraph poles became the accepted method.

Cornell made his fortune in the telegraph business as an associate of Samuel Morse, and constructed and strung the poles for the Baltimore–Washington telegraph line, the first telegraph line of substance in the U.S. To address the problem of telegraph lines shorting out, he invented the use of glass insulators at the point where the lines were connected to supporting poles. After joining with Morse, Cornell supervised the development of many telegraph lines, including a portion of the New York, Albany & Buffalo line in 1846 and, along with his partners John James Speed and Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith, the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, which connected Buffalo with Milwaukee. Cornell, Speed, and Smith also built the New York and Erie line, which competed with and paralleled the New York, Albany and Buffalo line in which Morse had a major share. The line was completed in 1849 and Cornell was made president of the company.

Ezra Cornell was a birthright Quaker, but was later disowned by the Society of Friends for marrying outside the faith to a "world's woman", Mary Ann Wood, a Methodist, on March 19, 1831.

On February 24, 1832, Cornell wrote the following response to his expulsion from The Society of Friends due to his marriage: "I have always considered that choosing a companion for life was a very important affair and that my happiness or misery in this life depended on the choice."