American capitalist and financier, born in Newport, NH, on the 11th of July 1827, graduating from the Harvard Law School in 1849. After practicing law in his native town for a while, in 1851 he removed to Davenport, IA, where he lived for fourteen years. He entered the banking business, with considerable success; returned to New York a rich man in 1865 and started the banking business of Austin Corbin and Company. A trip to Long Island with a sick child showed him the natural advantages of its shores as an outing-place for millons. Obtaining control of the principal one of its then isolated and badly managed roads, he planned a system of future purchases to bring all its railroads under one management. The consummation of his plans occurred only in the year of his death. He built the first railroad from Brooklyn to Coney Island, and was instrumental in erecting the first of the large hotels there. His New Hampshire estate of twelve thousand acres was his favorite hobby, and its forests and lakes became in his hands a hunter’s paradise. He was killed in a carriage accident on the 4th of June 1896.
