I recently came across the following article on an early American, John McManus, in the History of Berks County, Pennsylvania which was published in 1886. While, unfortunately, of no direct relation to me, the biographical sketch should add to the body of information on the McManus Clan and may perhaps link someone out there with a relative.  

 

John McManus, a well known man in his day throughout the country, and a resident for the most years of his life in Reading, was born in September, 1808, in the county of Fermanagh, province of Ulster, Ireland.  His parents, of whom the father was Irish and Catholic, whilst the mother was English and Protestant, occupied glebe lands, which his father had farmed under a lease that had been held and renewed for many generations by his people.  The father was well-to-do in his farming, according to the measures of the country, and able to send his son to Portumna College, where he had the benefit of a good education.  At the age of nineteen, alone and without acquaintance, he came to this country.  Owing to the friendly interest of the captain of the ship on which he made the passage, he was able shortly after his landing to get employment in a dry-goods store in Philadelphia.  But the position of a dry-goods clerk was irksome and promised too little future advancement.  He preferred a sturdier and more independent walk in life, and the public works at that period, 1828, just beginning to take great form, under the needs which the political and commercial growth of the country created, attracted him.  He started out as a common labourer, though his term of service in that position was but brief,  for his employer soon discovered that he was fitted by natural ability, as well as by education, to higher duties, and shortly thereafter he became a "boss" or director over portions of his employer's work.  The step was not then a long one to taking contracts for himself, and his first work as a contractor was on the Morris Canal.  There were but few of the great public enterprises under way between the years 1828 and 1842 in which he was not engaged, and the location of his works in the various and then remote parts of both the States and Canada, compelling him to travel widely, enabled him to gain an acquaintance with public men and an intimate knowledge of the country's resources, which made him a man of practical and interesting intelligence, and proved to him in after-years valuable achievements.  In 1838, he built the section of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad  around Neversink Hill, just south of Reading and underneath the landmark known as the "White House," where he kept bachelor's hall while prosecuting his work.

 

During his stay about Reading he met Caroline Seyfert, daughter of Simon Seyfert, a well known merchant and manufacturer of Reading , to whom afterwards, on January 29, 1839, he was married by the Rev. Keenan, of Lancaster.  In 1840 he was at work on the construction of the Croton Dam and Aqueduct, the water supply system of New York City, and a stone tablet affixed to the reservoir at Croton bears testimony to his important connection with this work.  As a contractor he did other work near and about Reading:  To wit, the grading of  a portion of  the line of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad near Shoemakersville, and the widening of the Schuylkill Canal and Union Canal.  His last work as a contractor was the building of a section of the Hudson River Railroad opposite West Point.

 

In the meantime, in 1840, he had fixed his family in Reading as a place of residence, and at the urgent solicitation of his father-in-law, -  for he was loth to leave a field of business which had been so profitable to him, and which at that time, too, was offering even larger and more important stakes by reason of the great railroad and canal extensions just then being projected, - he invested a large portion of the accumulated fruits of his labours and exertions as a contractor, then amounting to over $100,000, in the rolling-mill business, at Reading, of Whitaker & Seyfert.  In 1844 Whitaker left the partnership, and Mr. McManus, who had been quietly instructing himself in the iron business and the process of its manufacture, took personal charge, and the business thence-forward was carried on under the firm-name of Seyfert, McManus & Co.  Under his unremitting and vigorous energy and enterprise there were added to the rolling-mill various branches, one after the other, of manufacture, and the firm made great strides in the expansion and development of its business. It became the owner or controller of thousand s of acres of coal, ore and farm land, in one locality being the owner of one hundred and sixty thousand acres in a block.  Bloomaries, furnaces, rolling-mills, tube mills, forges, foundries and machine shops were built or secured and the firm name became nearly as well known on the Pacific as on the Atlantic coast.  Its name and brand can be read today on many of the largest cannon of our national defence;  and vessels of both our own and foreign navies, in the guns which man their decks, the plates which frame their hulls, as well as in the shafts and other heavy parts of the ships' interiors, display the handywork of the firm.  The promptness with which he turned the resources of his firm , so far as its works were applicable, to the aid of the government in its trying need for guns and heavy armament, at the outbreak of the Rebellion, was fittingly testified to in terms complimentary to him in an autograph letter of General Scott.  It was due to this letter that one of the firm's largest industrial departments was named the "Scott Foundry."  Mr. McManus' early experience as a contractor and the inclinations bred of that employment would never wholly permit him to give up taking an active part in public enterprises, and he was prominently connected with many of them.  His connection with the Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific and Texas Pacific Railroads is worthy of note.  In the first he was an incorporator;  in the second he was both an incorporator and an active member of its board of management to the time of its completion and for some time thereafter;  in the third he was also both an incorporator and a director, and in the construction of the road itself, closely allied to it as the president of the California and Texas Railway Construction Company.  When telegraphy was little more than a dream, he became satisfied of its ultimate success, and for quite a time he held a controlling interest in the capital stock of the Philadelphia, Reading and Pottsville Telegraph Company, nearly the oldest of existing telegraph companies in the country.  Letters now in the possession of his family, between Professor Morse and himself, show an arrangement with the great inventor for the building of the line. 

 

No one took more active part in developing and extending the railroad facilities of Reading , either by personal energy or substantial money assistance.  He interested  himself in the building of the Lebanon Valley, the  Reading and Columbia  and the East Pennsylvania Railroads from the time of their inception and building till the acquisition of each and all of them by the Philadelphia  and Reading Railroad.  In the building of the East Pennsylvania Railroad he made a great effort to acquire an independent outlet for Reading, subscribing and taking a large number of shares of its capital stock.  Beyond the benefit to Reading in toe possession of an independent and competitive railroad outlet, there were other and very important motives for resisting the attempts of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to get control of  this line.  The East Pennsylvania Railroad had been built and adequately equipped, and under traffic arrangements with the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had not yet acquired the present line to New York.  It  had become the link in a chain of roads by which numbers of through trains from the West via Harrisburg, passing daily through Reading, were enabled to reach New York City.  It was naturally the short and direct highway for freight and passengers from the West to New York or vice versa, and had the road been retained in the control of its builders and original owners, the present enormous tonnage now carried to Philadelphia, and thence to New York over the New Jersey system, subsequently acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad, would have passed through Reading, much, no one can doubt, to the latter city's advantage and prosperity.  It was one of Mr. McManus' grievous disappointments in life that these arrangements had to be abandoned when the East Pennsylvania passed under the control of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, not alone because he deemed it a blow to some of his own business projects, but because he knew that Reading, the city of his home,  had lost an advantage that tended greatly to its industrial and commercial advancement, and which would never possibly arise again. In character Mr. McManus was a man of indomitable will and an energy untiring, qualities which were well displayed and evidenced in the expression of his countenance and the erect and sturdy carriage of his person.  Fixed in his purpose and plan, and certain of its honesty, he pursued it to an end, whether successful or not, regardless of criticism or remark.  He feared no one and respected all who were worthy.  His truthfulness and sincerity in all things no one was able or dared to question.  In his habits he was correct to severity, yet never obtruded on others his own methods of conduct and practice.  In religion he was of the Roman Catholic faith, whose principles and obligations he strictly followed through life, making them a duty and a guiding star to himself in all things.  He died June 2, 1875, in the sixty-seventh year of his age, after only a few days' illness.

 

(From 'Heart and Hand' Journal 6)

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