George W. Scranton

George Whitfield Scranton (May 11, 1811 in Madison, Connecticut, † March 24, 1861 in Scranton, Pennsylvania ) was an American politician. Between 1859 and 1861 he represented the State of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

George Scranton was a second cousin of Congressman Joseph A. Scranton ( 1838-1908 ). He attended the common schools and the Lee's Academy. In 1828 he moved to Belvidere, New Jersey. There he quickly rose from a simple driver of vehicles drawn on the rich merchant. Between 1835 and 1839 he also worked in agriculture. In 1839 he got together with his brother Selden in the iron industry. In Pennsylvania, they founded Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co. and the city of Scranton. The company melted iron produced by the local anthracite coal. The breakthrough came in the Scranton brothers with the progress of railway construction in the late 1840s and their metal requirements for rails. Previously, the material had been imported for the railroad tracks from England. The Scranton company was the second largest steel manufacturer in the world.

George Scranton was active in the sequence itself also in the railway business and was president of two other railway companies. At the same time he proposed as a member of the Republican Party launched a political career. In the congressional elections of 1858 he was in the twelfth electoral district of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he succeeded the Democrats Paul Leidy on March 4, 1859. After a re-election, he could remain until his death on March 24, 1861 in Congress. This period was marked by the events in the immediate run-up to the Civil War.