Frederick A. Canfield Papers

Frederick Alexander Canfield was born on the Canfield family estate known as Ferromonte in Randolph, New Jersey on April 7, 1849 to mother Julia Ann Halsey and father Frederick Canfield (1810-1867). He graduated from Rutgers College in 1870 and subsequently attended the Columbia College School of Mines in New York, receiving the degree of Engineer of Mines in 1873.

Frederick Alexander consequently came of age in the tumultuous Industrial Era in America. Such booming industrial endeavors and rapid transformations in manufacturing and transportation likely influenced Canfield's own trajectory and ultimate mining and related railroad pursuits. Morris County, New Jersey where Canfield grew up was also particularly significant for its iron industry which had been active during the prior century as well (1).

By the later years of the nineteenth century, however, the iron industry had to adapt to greater demands and became increasingly subject to the whims of the larger fluctuating market (2) . Further, iron railroads began to be widely established during this period when it became apparent that the Morris Canal and iron-transporting wagons would not be enough to handle the iron mines' great increases in production (3). Frederick Alexander was involved with one such railroad as one of its initial incorporators alongside his brothers Augustus Cass and Edmund; this was the Ferromonte which served the Dickerson Mine of the Dickerson Suckasunny Mining Company (4).

Jonathan Dickerson (1747-1805), Frederick Alexander's great-grandfather established the Dickerson Suckasunny Mining Company after buying shares in the Morris County iron mine (later known as the Dickerson Mine). Frederick Alexander also ultimately took this over as secretary and one of its general managers. Dickerson's nephew and Frederick Alexander's father were the other two managers of the mine (5).

In mineralogical and mining pursuits, Canfield specifically also spent much time researching minerals and participating in mining operations in Potosí, Bolivia. He maintained mining and mineral interests during his years living throughout Morris County, New Jersey as well. He was a member of the Society of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the American Numismatic and Archaeology Society, and the Brooklyn Institute. He was ultimately also a life member and trustee of the New Jersey Historical Society, vice president of the Mineralogical Society of America, New Jersey Commissioner to the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition and an honorary doctorate of science degree recipient at his alma mater Rutgers College (6).

These mining and mineral interests further dovetailed with his involvement with the family business pursuits and his employment as an engineer for various mining and iron companies. Such companies included the Allentown Iron Company, the Cranberry Furnace Company, the Empire Steel and Iron Company, the Glendon Iron Company, the Hibernia Iron Mining Company, the Lehigh Zinc Company, the Mount Pleasant Mining Company, the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Mining Company, and the Tilly Foster Mines (7).

Additionally, Canfield was invested in research related to his family's lineage in New Jersey. Proving to be an avid genealogist, Frederick Alexander compiled enough family history and traced enough family names to publish his findings in a complete work. This is work was published as A History of Thomas Canfield and Of Mathew Camfield: With A Genealogy of their Descendants in New Jersey.

(1) Larry Lowenthal. Iron Mine Railroads of Northern New Jersey. (Dover, NJ: The Tri-State Railway Historical Society, Inc., 1981), 4. (2) Ibid. (3) Ibid. (4) Ibid., 133. (5) Canfield-Dickerson Family, (Morris County, NJ), Manuscript Group 249, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, New Jersey. (6) Ibid. (7) Ibid.