HON. ASA PACKER, or Judge Packer, as he
was more generally known, was a philanthropist, a politician and
a business man of the highest order. Few men in this community
have become more widely and favorably known than he, for his
name was famous not only in this, but, in many adjoining
states. To him is due the honor, to a large extent, of having
opened up the riches of the inexhaustible beds of the anthracite
coal regions.
The birth of Judge Packer occurred in
Groton, Conn., December 20, 1806, and he departed this life in
Philadelphia, May 17, 1879. After receiving common-school
advantages he commenced learning the tanner’s trade, but in 1822
went to Susquehanna County, Pa., where he learned the
carpenter's trade with a relative, and he afterward worked at
this calling in New York City. Re-
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turning to the Keystone State, however,
when the Lehigh Valley Canal was opened in 1823, he established
his home in Mauch Chunk, becoming the owner and master of a boat
which carried coal to Philadelphia. He also acquired an
interest in other boats, but in 1831 gave up the business in
order to carry on a store and boatyard. In 1837 he completed a
contract for locks, becoming well known as a contractor in this
line. A year later he began to build boats at Pottsville for
the transportation of coal to New York by way of the new canal,
which soon attracted all the traffic that had before passed
through Philadelphia. Judge Packer became extensively engaged
in mining and the transportation of coal, working the mines of
the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company and operating new mines
at Hazleton.
In 1844 the Judge was elected to the
Legislature and secured the creation of the separate county of
Carbon, with the county seat at Mauch Chunk. Afterward he
filled for five years the post of County Judge, and projected
the Lehigh Valley Railroad, for which he secured the necessary
subscription, and by 1855 had the line completed from Mauch
Chunk to Easton, with branches to Hazleton and Mahoning.
Subsequently he procured its extension northward to connect with
the Erie Railroad, thus giving the anthracite coal region an
outlet. He was President of the company and, though financially
embarrassed before the completion of the line, shared largely in
the profits that afterward accrued to the company, becoming the
richest man of his day in Pennsylvania.
On the Democratic ticket Judge Packer
was elected to Congress, and was re-elected as a Free-soil
Democrat, serving from December, 1853, to March, 1857. In 1868
he received the votes of the Pennsylvania delegates for the
Presidential nomination in the National Democratic Convention.
The year following he was a candidate for Governor, and in 1876
he was a Commissioner for the Centennial Exposition. In 1865
Judge Packer gave $500,000, eighty-one hundred and fifteen acres
of land, to found Lehigh University at South Bethlehem, for the
purpose of affording the young men of the Lehigh Valley advanced
technical education without charge. The scheme of studies
embraces civil, mining and mechanical engineering, physics,
chemistry, metallurgy and classics. By his last will he secured
an endowment of $1,500,000 to the university and one of $500,000
to the library. His daughter, Mrs. Mary (Packer) Cummings, gave
a memorial church, which was dedicated on October 13, 1887, the
anniversary of the founding of the university.