Note 1 — VOLUME VII SLICE IV Coquelin to Costume (continued 4)

Ezra Cornell (1807-1874) was born in Westchester county, New York, on the 11th of January 1807. His parents were Quakers from Massachusetts. He received a scanty education; worked as a carpenter in Syracuse and as a machinist in Ithaca; became interested (about 1842) in the development of the electric telegraph; and after unsuccessful or over-expensive attempts to ground the telegraph wires in 1844 solved the difficulty by stringing them on poles. He organized many telegraph construction companies, was one of the founders of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and accumulated a large fortune. He was a delegate to the first national convention of the Republican party (1856) and was a member of the New York assembly in 1862-1863 and of the state senate in 1864-1867. He founded a public library (dedicated in 1866) in Ithaca, and died there on the 9th of December 1874. Consult Alonzo B. Cornell, True and Firm: A Biography of Ezra Cornell (New York, 1884).