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Samuel Sloan
Early Railroad President

Dictionary of American Biography,  PP 213-214, Vol. XVII

SLOAN, SAMUEL (Dec. 25, 1817-Sept. 22, 1907), railroad executive, was a son of William and Elizabeth (Simpson) Sloan of Lisburn, County Down, Ireland.  When he was a year old he was brought by his parents to New York. At age fourteen, the death of his father compelled Samuel to withdraw from the Columbia College Preparatory School, and he found employment in an importing house on Cedar Street, with which he remained connected for twenty-five years, becoming head of the firm.
     On April 8, 1844, he was married, in New Brunswick, N.J., to Margaret Elmendorf, and took up his residence in Brooklyn. He was chosen a supervisor of Kings County in 1852, and served as president of the Long Island College Hospital. In 1857, having retired from the importing business, he was elected as a Democrat to the state Senate, of which he was a member for two years.
    Sloan at forty was recognized in New York as a successful business man who had weathered two major financial panics, but it couldhardly have been predicted that twenty years of modest achievement as a commission merchant would be followed by more than forty years in constructive and profitable effort in a wholly different field - that of transportation.
    As early as 1855 he had been a director of the Hudson River railroad (not yet part of the New York Central system). Election to the presidency of the road quickly followed, and in the nine years that he guided its
destinies (including the Civil War period), the market value of the company's shares rose from $17 to $140.
    Resigning from the Hudson River, he was elected, in 1864, a director, and in 1867, president, of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, then and long after known as one of the small group of "coal roads" that divided the Pennsylvania anthracite territory. Beginning in the reconstruction and expansion era following the Civil War, Sloan's administration of thirty-two years covered the period of shipping rebates, "cut-throat" competition, and hostile state legislation, culminating in federal regulation through the Interstate Commerce commission.
    Sloan's immediate job, as he saw it, was to make the Lackawanna more than a "coal road," serving a limited region. Extensions north and west, and, finally, entrance into Buffalo, made it a factor in general freight
handling. Readjustments had to be made. It was imperative, for example, that the old gauge of six feet be shifted to the standard 4'8 1/2". This feat was achieved in 1876, with a delay of traffic of only twenty-four hours.
    The total cost of the improvement was $1,250,000. Great changes in the road's traffic ensued. In the decade 1881-1890, (P.214) while coal shipments increased thirty-two percent, general freight gained 160 per cent, and
passenger traffic, eight-eight per cent. Dividends of seven percent were paid yearly from 1885 to 1905.
    Although Sloan resigned the presidency in 1899, he continued for the remaining eight years of his life as chairman of the board of directors. At his death, in 1907, at the age of ninety years, he had been continuously
employed in railroad administration for more than half a century and had actually been the president of seventeen corporations. He died in Garrison, N.Y., survived by his wife and six children.

Evening Post (N.Y.), and N.Y. Tribune, Sept. 23, 1907;
Railroad Gazette, Oct. 11, 1907;
J. I. Bogen, The Anthracite Railroads (1927)
Annual reports of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company
Information as to certain facts from a son, Benson Bennett Sloan.

On our trip out west this spring, we went to Sloan, Iowa. I was curious about how it got it's name. I started at the Post Office, they sent me to the Bank where I met the town historian and she sold me a Centennial book, 1970. It is a small town, pop. 800. The town was founded in 1880. Here is the story.

When Samuel Sloan, the man for whom the town of Sloan was named., died, an eastern magazine printed the following story of the man and how he came to give this town his name:

"Samuel Sloan, for many years president of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railway, following his occupancy of the position by acting as chairman of the board of directors, who died at his home, Garrison-on-the-Hudson, enjoyed a unique reputation in his time of corporate investigations and the consequent revelations of corruptness on the part of the men in control, of being an absolutely honest, straightforward man in all his dealings.  He was born in the village of Lisbon County Down, Ireland, on Christmas Day, 1817, his ancestors being Scotch Presbyterians.  His father, William Sloan, came to America in 1818, when the son was less than a year old.  His father dying when he was only fifteen, it became necessary for young Sloan to go into business to make his own way and to aid in supportingthe family.  His first job was as a clerk of McBride & Co., Cedar street, with which firm he was connected for twenty-five years.  In 1843 he was married to Miss Margaret Elmendorf, of Somerville, N. J. In 1855 he became a director for the Hudson River Railroad, the presidency of which he accepted soon after, retiring in 1864.  From 1868 to 1869 he was president of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western.  During his term of office at various times he was president of seventeen roads.  Mr. Sloan was a member of the commission to raise troops in New York for the civil war, in this capacity being in friendly contact with President Lincoln, a friendship which was maintained until Mr. Lincoln's death.  It is interesting to learn that when Mr. Sloan first came to New York the city had only a hundred thousand population.

"When John I. Blair built the old Sioux City & Pacific railroad., Sloan was interested with him in the enterprise, and when a station was decided upon at this point, it was named in his honor.  The quarter section on which Sloan now stands was donated to Mr. Blair by Rufus Beall, an uncle of Geo.  R. Beall, who at that time owned hundreds of acres surrounding the town site.

"Such, in brief, is the history of the naming of Sloan, and the sketch of the man whose name it bears."
This article copied from the book "Sloan Yesterday and Today" by Louis N. Duchaine.