Charles F. Mayer

Charles Frederick Mayer (1795-1864) was an American lawyer, Maryland state senator, and railroad director.

Mayer was a son of Christian Mayer, who emigrated from Germany to Baltimore in 1784. Wealthy by inheritance, Christian Mayer came to Baltimore as the representative of a large Amsterdam merchant house.[1] In America, he increased his forture as an East Indies ship owner and merchant, and also served his home country for five decades as Consul General of Wurttemberg.[2]

Born in Baltimore on Oct. 15, 1795, Charles attended Dickinson College and later became a trustee.[2] Returning to his home city, he became a leading light in its intellectual life: "His house was a center for all that was intellectual and cultured in the Baltimore of those days".[2]

In 1830, he was elected a Maryland state senator from Baltimore City.[3] In 1833, as the chairman of a joint committee of the legislative house, he helped produce the "Report relative to the plans of operation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company."[4] His efforts helped settle a dispute between the C&O and B&O and thereby helped ensure Baltimore's access to western markets.[1]

In 1838, he was a director of the Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad, whose president was Lewis Brantz, his father's business partner. The B&PD, along with three other railroads, built the first rail link from Philadelphia to Baltimore. The firms merged in 1838 into the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, and Mayer stayed on as director. His service as an early railroad executive is noted on the 1839 Newkirk Viaduct Monument.

He was a member of the Maryland Club[5] and helped found the "Baltimore House of Refuge."

Mayer died on Jan. 3, 1864, and is buried in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery.[6]

Family

Mayer married and had a son, Henry Christian Mayer (1821–1846). He married again, to Eliza C. Mayer (Aug. 26, 1803-June 28, 1885),[6] and their children included painter Francis Blackwell Mayer (1827-1899) and physicist Alfred M. Mayer (1836-1897). When Joseph Henry, the director of the new Smithsonian Institution paid Mayer a visit, he was shown Alfred's various scientific apparatuses, and later helped the boy begin his career in science.[2]

Charles' younger brother, Brantz Mayer (1809-1879), would become a diplomat like their father; in 1844, he founded the Maryland Historical Society. Another brother, Lewis Mayer, was a pioneer in anthracite mining and the father of Charles F. Mayer (ca. 1834-1904), the 10th president of the B&O.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Forrest, Clarence H. (1898). Official History of the Fire Department of the City of Baltimore: Together with Biographies and Portraits of Eminent Citizens of Baltimore. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Company Press.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "ALFRED MARSHALL MAYER." (PDF). Biographical Memoirs (Vol. 8). National Academy of Sciences. January 1916. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
  3. ↑ "History of Baltimore city and county, from the earliest period to the present day: including biographical sketches of their representative men (1881) By J. Thomas Scharf
  4. ↑ "William McNeir". Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series). Maryland State Archives. February 21, 2013. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
  5. ↑ Shepherd, Henry Elliot (1893). History of Baltimore, Maryland. S.B. Nelson. p. 953. Retrieved 15 July 2015.
  6. 1 2 "Charles F Mayer". Find A Grave. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
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