Benjamin Loder
American businessman (1801-1876)
Benjamin Loder (February 15, 1801 – October 7, 1876) was an American businessman and president of the Erie Railroad from 1845 to 1853, who had made his fortune in New York as dry goods merchant.
Biography
Loder was born at South Salem, New York February 15, 1801. He began life as a school teacher, and later engaged in the wholesale dry-goods trade in Cedar Street, New York City.
Having accumulated a comfortable fortune, he had retired from active business life at the age of forty-three. The reputation he had made as a progressive and successful business man led the struggling New York and Erie Railroad Company, at a crisis in its affairs, to solicit him to take hold of them, and endeavor to save the company from ruin. He was elected president, August 14, 1845, succeeding Eleazar Lord, and remained at the head of the Company eight years.
Loder retired from the presidency broken in health. A friend, knowing of his large subscription to the stock of the company, asked him, soon after he had retired, if he lost his money. No, said he, I neither lost nor made any money while with the railroad. As a matter of fact, the money President Loder received for his services, which were given night and day, barely reimbursed him for his expenses.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Loder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.