Hiram Sibley

1807 - 1888  (81 years)

• Name	Hiram Sibley
  Born	6 Feb 1807	North Adams, MA
  Gender	Male
  Died	12 Jul 1888	Rochester, New York
  Buried	Mount Hope Cemetery
  Person ID	IHSIB	Sibley Watson Family
  Last Modified	6 Feb 2018

  
  

  Father	Benjamin Sibley,   b. 29 Apr 1768, Sutton, MA ,   d. 2 Oct 1829, Mendon, NY  (Age 61 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Mother	Zilpha Davis,   b. 13 Apr 1771, Oxford, MA ,   d. 10 May 1824  (Age 53 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Family ID	F72	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Elizabeth Maria Tinker,   b. 11 Aug 1815,   d. 11 Jul 1903, Rochester, New York  (Age 87 years)
  Married	24 Jan 1833	North Adams, MA
  Children	1. Zilpha Louise Atkinson,   b. 7 Dec 1833,   d. 16 Jun 1868  (Age 34 years)   2. Giles Benjamin Sibley,   b. 1841 Apr 8,   d. 1843 Mar 14  (Age 5 years) + 3. Hiram Watson Sibley,   b. 2 Mar 1845,   d. 28 Jun 1932  (Age 87 years) + 4. Emily Sibley,   b. 10 May 1855,   d. 8 Feb 1945  (Age 89 years)
  Last Modified	11 Jan 2018
  Family ID	F1	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Photos

  Hiram Sibley

  
  

• Notes

  Entrepreneur and capitalist, nurseryman and founder of Western Union, Hiram Sibley was born in North Adams, Massachusetts. He moved to Western New York around 1829-1830, and by 1835 he and his lifelong friend and partner Don Alonzo Watson had opened a machine shop in Sibleyville (now Mendon). He was elected Monroe County Sheriff in 1843 and began to invest in local nurseries in 1844. Before the Civil War he was active in Republican (anti-slavery) politics. After the invention of the telegraph in 1844, Sibley’s interests turned to telegraphy and railroads. He organized and invested in patents and companies, consolidating his interests through the formation of Western Union in 1856. During the Civil War, Western Union consolidated its hold on northern and western telegraph lines. Sibley traveled to Russia in late 1864 to negotiate with the Tsar for an undersea telegraph cable that would cross the Bering Strait from Alaska to Russia, uniting the Americas, Europe and Asia. The plan was stymied by the ultimate success after several failures of an Atlantic cable in 1866. In his later years, he again invested in nurseries, purchasing the largest farm in the country and founding Hiram Sibley & Co., a seed company based in Rochester and Chicago. He was a prominent supporter of both the University of Rochester and Cornell University in Ithaca.