CHAPTER X.

IN MEMORIAM.

SAMUEL VAUGHAN MERRICK.

WITHIN a period of fifty years from the time the Charter of

the Pennsylvania Railroad was granted the wonderful development of the railroad, with its great improvements in transportation and advancement in the luxury, safety and stability of its equipment, has taken place. These achievements, so far as the Pennsylvania Railroad is concerned, took place during five distinct periods, and under the direction of five Presidents, each in his own way and own time pre-eminently qualified for his position. The periods were Promotion, construction, organization, expansion, and development and preservation; and the Presidents, in their order: Samuel Vaughan Merrick, William Chamberlain Patterson, John Edgar Thomson, Thomas Alexander Scott and George Brooke Roberts.

These Presidents, possessing all the attributes necessary for ruling communities-knowledge, wisdom, judgment, liberality, keen insight, deft diplomacy, coolness, patience and industry-added to personal purity, would have made as wise and strong rulers of a nation as any that have been recorded on the pages of history; and yet they were modest, unassuming men, aspiring to neither place nor power. Nor have they at any time allowed the power and influence of the corporation to be used by any one for the furtherance of ambitious designs in partisan political contests.

The charter was granted to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on February 25, 1847. A man of large experience in business and public affairs was a recognized necessity to carry forward the project and head the enterprise. For this reason Mr. Merrick was called to the Presidency. He had been at the head of the Franklin In

stitute, had erected, as agent of the city, the gas works, and was at the head of the largest manufacturing establishment in the city. He possessed a great deal of practical knowledge of engineering, and was a man who stood so high in the community that he inspired confidence in the undertaking. He devoted his time and energies to the enterprise, but when it was well under way, money for construction fairly in sight, and the work actively progressing, he relinquished the office, although continuing to take an active interest in the Company's affairs and prosperity without shouldering the official responsibilities. At that period (1847) the wise movement of the Board in electing Mr. Thomson Chief Engineer of the road stamped the enterprise with a solidity of character which has made it remarkable above all railroad corporations. The profession of the engineer as we recognize it to-day was not then known, and the fact is that it is a profession created by the necessities for railroads, and it is another fact that railroads were created by the genius of men in whom the science of engineering was inborn. Mr. Thomson was of that class, and withal was a man of rare and well-matured judgment, and the one man of special experience for the work to which he was called.

Samuel Vaughan Merrick, born at Hallowell, Maine, on May 4, 1801, and who died at Philadelphia, August 18, 1870, was the son of John Merrick, an English gentleman of education and refinement, who came to this country in 1798. His mother was a daughter of Samuel Vaughan, a prosperous merchant of London. His mother's brother John had settled in Philadelphia, where he was not only a leading citizen, but a leading merchant, and to him Mr. Merrick was sent when but fifteen years of age to be trained as a wine merchant. In 1820, notwithstanding at that time the position of mechanic was looked upon as one beneath that of merchant, Mr. Merrick braved the terrors of threatened social ostracism and entered into partnership with Mr. Agnew in the manufacture of improved fire engines, and from that time until his death he was an important factor in building up Philadelphia as a great manufacturing as well as commercial city, and the handiwork of his own establishment found its way into the possession of the city, State and nation. By unflagging industry and unbending in

tegrity he reached a proud position in the city of his adoption, and was always to be found in the lead in whatever promised to advance his fellow-man and country. He was elected to the Presidency of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on March 31, 1847, and accepted the position, feeling the absolute necessity of the road to the trade of Philadelphia. The success of the construction of the road was largely due to his efforts, and he only laid down the Presidency on September 1, 1849, when that success was assured, as previously stated. Mr. Merrick took no further official position, other than Director in corporations for the furtherance of Philadelphia's transportation interests, until 1856. In that year the Sunbury and Erie Railroad Company, which was expected to open up the lumber fields of the Susquehanna and the business of the Great Lakes to the trade of Philadelphia, was on the verge of bankruptcy. In the emergency all appeals were turned to Mr. Merrick, and he was called upon by his fellow-citizens to organize an administration and adopt financial and other plans so as to secure confidence of investors and obtain financial aid. He accepted the Presidency of the Company on the 23d of February, 1856, and whilst he was in the midst of his labors in straightening out its tangled affairs the commercial crisis of 1857 swept over the land, and he only saved the Company from absolute bankruptcy by putting his private funds into the breach. For fourteen years he was a Director of the Catawissa Road, and during that period his wise counsels and vigorous policy kept the affairs of that corporation in a sound condition. Among the other positions he occupied was Manager of the Western Savings Fund Society, member of the Board of Trade, of the Board of Port Wardens and of the Board of Commissioners for the erection of South Street Bridge, of the Philosophical Society, and the Franklin Institute, which he founded. He was a consistent Christian, attached to the Episcopal Church, active in its benevolences and charities, and one of the Wardens of Grace Church.

The late Rev. Dr. D. R. Goodwin, in summing up his character, said: “He was a man of quick perception, of clear intelligence, of singular forecast, of large and liberal views, of rare sagacity, of imperious, even overbearing, will, and of indomitable energy; a just man, of honorable sentiments, of strict integrity, to be trusted any

where and in anything, faithful in the least and in the greatest alike; a man of a kindly nature, of ready sympathy, instinctively and in principle benevolent, always benevolent—his benevolence was not stinted by increasing years nor by increasing wealth, but grew rather with his means and his habit of exercising it; a man of ardent patriotism, he identified his own life with that of his country; of an ever-generous and ready public spirit, he was in all relations a good citizen; religious, not without profession, but without cant, and beneficent without ostentation; his character, like his person, was of a noble and massive, rather than of a graceful make. He was every inch a man."

WILLIAM C. PATTERSON.

William Chamberlain Patterson, son of Francis and Ann Graham Patterson, was born in Claiborne County, Tenn., February 1, 1813, and of that Scotch-Irish stock which has done so much for this country. His father was "out" in the Rebellion of 1798 under the leadership of Theobald Wolfe Tone, and fled to this country with the wreck of his possessions after the collapse of that brave effort for independence. His mother was a Graham, the men of whose family in Ireland were also "out" in that Rebellion. Other Grahams had come to this country in time to help in our Revolution, one of them, a clergyman, having a school called "Liberty Hall," which Washington mentions in his will because of the distinguished services rendered our country by its students. In fact, it was the nucleus of Washington College, Virginia.

With the inheritance of excellent traditions there came little money to the sons of this couple. They had "early to fend for themselves," which they did most capably; at their father's death they were in a position to turn over his entire estate to their sisters, and by their own capacity and integrity had made for themselves a position in the City of Philadelphia of which their descendants are to-day proud. The estimation in which he was held in the community was indicated when, with Eli K. Price, he was chosen to manage the bill for the consolidation of the City and County of Philadelphia. They went to Harrisburg and succeeded in effecting the consolidation with credit to themselves and economy to the city.