It was a Scot, Peter Fleming, Surveyor
of the upper part of New York city, who laid out the grades for the
first railroad in the state. John Inslee (or Insley) Blair (1802-99),
founder of the Lackawanna Coal and Iron Company (1846), financier and
founder of the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad, was a descendant of
Samuel Blair who came from Scotland in 1720. Blairstown, New Jersey,
is named in his honor. He gave half a million dollars to various
Presbyterian institutions. Samuel Sloan (1817-1907), President of the
Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad (1867-99), was born in Lisburn of
Ulster Scot ancestry. John T. Grant (1813-87), railroad builder in
Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, was of
Scottish origin; and so also was Thomas Alexander Scott (1824-81),
Vice-President and President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Assistant
Secretary of War (1861-62), and President of the Texas Pacific
Railroad. James McCrea (b. 1836), descended from James McCrea, an
Ulster Scot who came to America in 1776, was one of the ablest
Presidents of the Pennsylvania Railroad. John Edgar Thompson, third
President, Frank Thompson, sixth Vice-President of the Pennsylvania
system, were also of Scottish descent. Alexander Johnson Cassatt,
seventh President, was Scottish on his mother's side. Another
prominent Scot connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad was Robert
Pitcairn, born at Johnstone, near Paisley, in 1836. Angus Archibald
McLeod (b.
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