Benjamin Loder

Benjamin Loder (February 15, 1801 – October 7, 1876) was an American business man and president of the Erie Railroad from 1845 to 1853, who had made his fortune in New York as dry goods merchant.

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. In course of time, Loder's health was restored to somewhat of its old vigor, and he spent the closing days his life in Westchester County, New York. He died at Rye, October 7, 1876, aged seventy-five years. He was a modest, able, generous, and honest man. He was survived by two sons and five daughters. The older of the two sons died in 1890.

Loder was a native of Westchester County, N.Y. He had been for twenty years in the dry goods trade in New York, and had accumulated a fortune. It was said of him that he had never asked for bank accommodation in all his business career. According to a New York newspaper of that day:

If all classes of men held that belief, events proved that they had held it wisely, for even the metaphor of his newspaper friend did not daunt him. The difficulties President Loder overcame during his struggle to complete the work he had engaged to complete were unprecedented in the history of the railroad, shirking as he did no exercise of physical endurance, shrinking from no encounter with physical hardships, nor leaving untried any effort of his mind that mind that might sustain and hasten to completion the task he had in hand.

...
Wikipedia