Benjamin Pierce Cheney

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Benjamin Pierce Cheney (August 12, 1815 - July 23, 1895) was an American businessman, and a founder of the firm that became American Express. The surname is pronounced ['tʃi:ni].

Cheney was born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire to a blacksmith. At age 16, he started work as a a stage-coach driver between Nashua and Keene. Five years later he had become a stage agent in Boston and soon organized an express between Boston and Montreal. He later consolidated that stage-coach line with others to form the United States and Canada Express Company, which 37 years later he merged with American Express, at which time he became the firm's largest shareholder.

Cheney endowed a professorship at Dartmouth College, commissioned a bronze statue of his friend Daniel Webster in front of the New Hampshire State House, and helped develop the eastern part of Washington state with a railroad. As a result, Cheney, Washington is named in his honor, and he helped establish a school there that evolved into Eastern Washington University.

In 1910 Cheney built a barn in Peterborough, New Hampshire patterned upon medieval English tithe barns. It still exists (as of April 2006) but is threatened with demolition. Cheney's estate in Wellesley, Massachusetts has since become the Elm Bank Horticulture Center.