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Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million ($113 million in today's dollars) at about two cents per acre ($4.74/km²). The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized (or incorporated) territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.
http://www.pbs.org/harriman/1899/collection.html
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It is not surprising that, within an hour, Harriman ordered several crew members to the beach to lower the poles and take them aboard the Elder. Expeditions to Alaska often included this kind of collection -- at the very least, travelers to the coast expected to buy Native souvenirs made and sold at every steamship stop between Vancouver and St. Lawrence. Large expeditions, like the Harriman, often hoped to bring back pieces of size and importance that would be of value to museums in the United States.
Native Artifact Collection in the 19th Century
Collecting Native artifacts was so much a part of the Alaskan experience for whites in the 19th century that almost no one on the Harriman Expedition protested as the totems came down and the houses were emptied. Only John Muir, in his later writings, referred to it as "a sacrilege."The collecting of Native objects -- including everyday objects, art and ceremonial pieces, and even human remains -- can, in a way, be traced back to a packet boat that arrived in New York harbor in 1838 with 105 bags of gold on board. This was the fortune of James Smithson, a British mineralogist who had never once set foot on American soil. But he held the ideals of American democracy in such esteem that he left his entire fortune to the creation of an "establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Eight years later, the Smithsonian Institution was created; its early curators set out to build collections that would fully illustrate the ethnic history of America.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Averell_Harriman
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Early life
William Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell, and brother of E. Roland Harriman. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt (brother of Eleanor Roosevelt).
During the summer of 1899, Harriman's father organized the Harriman Alaska Expedition, a philanthropic-scientific survey of coastal Alaska and Russia that attracted twenty-five of the leading scientific, naturalist and artist luminaries of the day, including John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, C. Hart Merriam, Grove Karl Gilbert, and Edward Curtis, along with 100 family members and staff, aboard the steamship George Elder. Young Harriman would have his first introduction to Russia, a nation that he would spend a significant amount of attention on in his later life in public service.
He attended Groton School in Massachusetts before going on to Yale where he joined the Skull and Bones society.[1]:127,150-1 He graduated in 1913. After graduating, he inherited the largest fortune in America and became Yale's youngest Crew coach.
[edit] Business affairs
Using money from his father he established W.A. Harriman & Co banking business in 1922. In 1927 his brother Roland joined the business and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931, it merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Notable employees included George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman
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Early years
Harriman was born in Hempstead, New York, the son of Orlando Harriman, an Episcopal clergyman, and Cornelia Neilson. His great-grandfather, William Harriman, emigrated from England in 1795 and engaged successfully in trading and commercial pursuits.
As a young boy, Harriman spent a summer working at the Greenwood Iron Furnace in the area owned by the Robert Parker Parrott family that would become Harriman State Park. He quit school at age 14 to take a job as an errand boy on Wall Street in New York City. His uncle Oliver Harriman had earlier established a career there. His rise from that humble station was meteoric. By age 22, he was a member of the New York Stock Exchange. And, by age 33, he focused his energies on acquiring rail lines.
http://scripophily.stores.yahoo.net/orandtrancom1.html
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The Oregon and Transcontinential Company was a holding company organized by Henry Villard. They controllled the Northern Pacific and Oregon Railway and Navigation Company which was a dominant force among railroads in the Northwest.
E. H. Harriman 1848-1909, American railroad executive, b. Hempstead, N.Y.; father of William Averell Harriman. He became a stockbroker in New York City and soon entered the railroad field, where he attracted attention by able management of the Illinois Central RR, of which he became a director (1883) and vice president (1887). He became executive committee chairman of the Union Pacific in 1898 and repossessed for it the Oregon Short Line. By purchase of the holdings of Collis P. Huntington, he secured control not only of the Southern Pacific RR but also of the Central Pacific RR. His attempt to secure an entrance into Chicago by gaining control of the Burlington & Quincy RR was blocked by James J. Hill in a struggle famous in American financial history. In a later compromise, he joined with Hill and J. P. Morgan in organizing the Northern Securities Company, a holding company formed to prevent railroad competition. But in 1904 the trust was ordered dissolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Harriman used the financial strength of his roads to buy widely and speculatively in railroad stocks elsewhere. He conducted the Harriman Alaskan expedition of 1899, a scientific undertaking; sponsored boys' clubs; and pledged $1 million and 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) of forest land to New York state for park purposes. The reservation, now the 42,500-acre (17,200-hectare) Harriman State Park, is part of the Palisades Interstate Park.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Villard
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