HISTORY OF CORBIN PRESERVE — ^MANVILLE 443 



years ago by Corbin's longtime friend, Ernest Harold Baynes (1931: 

 120), as follows: "The thought came to me that, of all the works of 

 the late Mr. Austin Corbin, the preservation of that herd of bison was 

 the one that would earn his country's deepest gratitude. . . . His ex- 

 periment led to the founding of the American Bison Society, and was 

 connected, directly or otherwise, with the formation of some of our 

 National Parks." 



APPENDIX 



With the thought that the development of the Corbin Preserve 

 might be better understood by an insight into its founder's back- 

 ground, further biographical notes are presented here. 



In the small town of Newport, Sullivan County, N.H., Austin 

 Corbin was born in 1827 to a family of modest circumstances. 

 Here he grew up, went through grade school, and worked in local 

 sawmills as roller, scaler, and sawyer. Intent upon greater things, 

 in 1846 he departed for Boston and work as a shopkeeper. With his 

 savings, supplemented by earnings as a clerk in Boston stores, he 

 worked his way through Harvard Law School, and in 1849 began 

 practice in partnership with Ralph Metcalf, later Governor of New 

 Hampshire. Then, in 1851, with his younger brother Daniel (who 

 later pioneered as a banker and railroad man in the Pacific North- 

 west), he went to Iowa. At Davenport he soon abandoned the law, 

 speculated in land, and with money saved he organized a private 

 bank. 



This was a time of wildcat banks throughout the expanding West. 

 The financial bubble burst with the Panic of 1857, but Corbin's bank 

 was one of the few to survive. The First National Bank of Daven- 

 port received the first charter granted under the National Baulking 

 Act of 1863, and soon became one of the leaders in the field. But 

 Corbin was still restless. He returned to New York and established 

 the firm of Austin Corbin & Company, private bankers, which flour- 

 ished at Broadway and Jolm Street. He helped finance recreational 

 developments on Long Island, and developed Manhattan Beach and 

 Coney Island, including the building of two hotels. Railroading 

 attracted him and he ministered to the Long Island Railroad, which 

 was ailing even then. He later was active with the Philadelphia and 

 Reading, ultimately becoming its president. He explored the pos- 

 sibilities of a subway system for metropolitan New York, but in the 

 1880"'s this was still premature. He seriously considered developing 

 the extreme eastern end of Long Island as a steamship terminus, 

 considerably lessening the traveltime to Europe, but this scheme was 

 forestalled by his death. 



In 1853, Corbin married Hannah M. Wheeler, of Croydon. The 

 couple had five children — three daughters born in Davenport and 



