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Notes

Phillip Thomas

REFERENCE: Information sent from Thomas Edwards [thomas@thesync.com] to T.Mason on 4Mar2002 referring to [HYPERLINK  http://www.colesville.org/book/ch5.html ] Colesville by Ned Baley. EXTRACTS: "He entered the hardware business in Baltimore with his younger brother, Evan Jr., and his brother-in-law. Originally known as Thomas and George, the firm later became P. and E. Thomas and Sons, hardware merchants and importers. Phillip also entered the banking business and became cashier of the Mechanics Bank.
    He was active in the affairs of the Baltimore community, being the first President of the Mechanics and Fire Company, a founder of the Baltimore Library Company, and an organizer of the State Temperance Society. He donated $25,000 toward the construction of Baltimore's Washington Monument.
    He was a commissioner for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1825, but resigned in 1826 because he didn't believe the canal would benefit Baltimore. His experience with the C & O introduced him to the politics of grandiose transportation endeavors and gave him an opportunity to appraise Charles Mercer, a leader in developing the canal. Mercer and Thomas became bitter, personal enemies in the struggle to establish a railroad that would doom the economic future of the C & O.
    Phillip E. Thomas and George Brown were the "fathers" of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first long distance rail system in America. Based on an enthusiastic report from Phillip's brother, Evan, about the railroads in England, Thomas and Brown started in 1826 to organize financiers, businessmen and engineers to construct a railroad from Baltimore across the mountains to the Ohio River. It was a venture for which there were no precedents,no rules and no certainty of outcome. Their objective was to bring to Baltimore, the grain, livestock and other trade that was floating down the canal to more southern ports.
    Thomas became the first President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827. Through years of struggle against the perils of then unknown feats of engineering, of political maneuver against the formidable opposition of canal interests in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the Federal Government, he successfully led the development of a profitable long distance railroad system that carried both passengers and freight. Exhausted and in ill health, he resigned in 1836.
    During all the years of intense business activity, Phillip E. Thomas was a leader in the Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends. He was clerk of the Meeting from 1821 to 1832, serving in that position during the traumatic schism of ideologies that split the Society of Friends in two. He was chairman of the Meeting's Indian Affairs Committee from 1808 to the time of his death in 1861. Because of his earnest efforts to help native Americans, he was adopted by the Seneca Tribe and given the name of "Hai-wa-nob", the Benevolent One.
    He was the representative to Washington for the Six Nations of Indians.