Groton native Asa Packer made a fortune elsewhere

Carol W. Kimball

Groton native Asa Packer
Lehigh University
third wealthiest man in the United States by 1852

Kim10-037

Scrapbook

8: Communication Artifact

Documentary Artifact

The Day

New London, CT

06/13/2005

Carol W. Kimball

Asa Packer was a Groton native who made good. He left Mystic in 1822 when he was 17 for his cousin's home is Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Through hard work and ingenuity he became the third wealthiest man in the United States by 1852, worth an estimated $321 million dollars. He made his money in canals, railroads and the coal trade and he founded Lehigh University. He was one of four children of Elisha and Desire Packer, born December 29, 1805 in the small red cottage which still stands on New London Road in Mystic just across from the late lamented Mystic Ice House. He married Sarah Blakeslee in 1828 but as a carpenter and farmer they were were poor as church mice. He travelled to Mauch Chunk, PA, since renamed Jim Thorpe, PA, in the winter of 1832 to build canal locks on the upper Lehigh River and was soon a wealthy man. The Asa Packer Mansion Museum, donated by his daughter Mary Packer Cummings, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

Packer, Asa
Packer, Elisha
Packer, Desire
Blakeslee, Sarah
Packer, Robert
Sloan, Samuel
Cummings, Mary Packer
Everett, Joyce

Jim Thorpe, PA
Mauch Chunk, PA
Groton native
Lehigh College
Asa Packer Mansion Museum
Mystic native
third wealthiest man