The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-06-07 00:00:00

DEATH OF JUDGE PACKER.

The death of Asa Packer, at the age of 73, on May
17, in the city of Philadelphia, has caused profound
sorrow and attracted great attention, for his life has
pointed out more than any other that has closed in
recent years the possibilities of individual growth
which exist in the United States, Simply by his
own assiduity and foresight, Asa Packer accumulated
a fortune of 15,000,000 dole. to 20,000,000 dols. during
his lifetime; and though larger fortunes have been
made in the States, yet there is, perhaps, no instance
more demonstrative of the potentiality of individual
energy.—The Correspondent of The Times gives the
following outline of Packer's career :

"Packer walked with a knapsack on his back when
17 years old, in 1822, from Connecticut, where he was
born, to the forests of the Upper Lehigh River in
Pennsylvania, and he became a carpenter and after-
wards a canal boatman, No origin could have been
more hnmble or lees likely to fashion a man to fitl the
large part in life that fell to the lot of Asa Packer.
With scarcely any schooling, without any advantages,
but, in fact, in spite of many disadvantages; in
a secluded, rural region, far removed from any
large city, but through the exercise ef sound common
sense and a business ability that seemed almost
like prescience in the success it produced for every
venture, Packer ultimately became almost the sole
arbiter of the anthracite coal trade of the Atlantic sea-
board, and in this way the indirect ruler of the capital
and fortunes of eight or ten huge corporations, whose
business was the mining and transporting of coal.
Accident, as it were, placed him in the region of
Pennsylvania, where the beat anthracite coal was pro-
duced; and as a boatman he carried coal down the
Lehigh canal to market—a trade then in its infancy.
He foresaw its possibilities, and worked them out.
He acquired the ownership of coal-lands, and built
the Lehigh Valley Railroad to carry the oual to sea-
board. At times almost ruined by his ventures,
they ultimately worked out successfully, and he
died the owner of about one-third of the stock and debt
capital invested in the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which
has a total par investment of 52,500,000 dole., and he
was also personally the owner of large possessions in
coal-mines and coal-lands. He had served in Con-
gress and had been a Judge, and he was in former
years a wise counsellor of the Democratic party and
had been its candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania.
He founded the Lehigh University with an endow-
ment of 1,000,000 dols., and in it is given a free educa-
tion to young men desiring to enter upon a prac-
tical scientific career. But the great fact that will
be chiefly remembered about this typical American
is the possibilities of life in the United States which
his career demonstrates, He recently celebrated his
golden wedding at Mauch Chunk, and at it, dis-
played among the splendid evidences of fortune, were
to or three brightly-scoured copper pots and pans
hung on the wall. They were the utensils the newly-
married pair had used a half century before, when
they first set up housekeeping in the humble cabin of
a canal boat with plenty of youth, health, and hope,
but little money. Judge Packer was proud of his
origin and career, and always ready to help others up;
and his death has caused a genuine grief throughout
the anthracite coal region."