WILLIAM CALDER, with only a limited education, he was inducted into the business of his father at an early age. When only sixteen he was placed in charge of the Philadelphia packet from Columbia to Pittsburgh. In 1851 he assumed the entire management of his father's affairs, and in 1857 undertook the completion of the Lebanon Valley railroad, employed six hundred men, finished the road and paid his men in full. In 1858, he became a member of the well-known banking firm of Cameron, Calder & Co., which afterwards became the first National Bank of Harrisburg, of which Mr. Calder was chosen president. The same year he was elected a director of the Northern Central railway, and was active in preserving Pennsylvania's interests in that corporation. At the breaking out of the Rebellion he rendered the government important service through his large knowledge in the purchase of horses, and supplied the government with no less than forty-two thousand horses and sixty
seven thousand mules, establishing the price ($125 and $117.50) so low as to effect a very great saving to the Government in this department. Mr. Calder was always foremost in the promotion of industrial enterprises. He was one of the founders of the Harrisburg Car Works, the Lochiel Rolling Mills, the Harrisburg Cotton Mills, Foundry and Machine Works, the Fire-Brick Works, the Pennsylvania Steel Works, etc. In 1873 he was appointed by Governor Hartranft a trustee of the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital, and reappointed in 1876. In 1876 he was appointed by the same Governor a member of the commission to devise a plan for the government of cities, and in 1880, just prior to his death, was elected a director of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. For many years he ably officiated in the management of city affairs through its councils, and his social qualities gathered about him a host of warm personal friends. He was among the founders of the Harrisburg Hospital and the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he was an attendant. He was formerly a Whig, latterly a Republican, and influential in local and State politics, and one of the Presidential electors in 1876.