Hiram Sibley (February 6, 1807 – July 12, 1888), was an industrialist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
Sibley was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, and later resided in Rochester, New York. He became interested in the work of Samuel Morse involving the telegraph.
In 1840, he joined with Morse and Ezra Cornell to create a Washington to Baltimore telegraph service. Sibley later served as first president of Western Union Telegraph Company. In 1861, Jeptha Wade, founder of Western Union, joined forces with Benjamin Franklin Ficklin and Hiram Sibley to form the Pacific Telegraph Company. With it, the final link between the east and west coast of the United States of America was made by telegraph. In conjunction with one Perry Collins, he later hoped to build a telegraph line from Alaska to Russia through the Bering Strait, the so-called Russian American Telegraph, but this dream collapsed with the establishment of a cross-Atlantic line to Europe.
Sibley funded the Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts, as well as the building which housed it, Sibley Hall, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Today, the program is known as the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and is located in parts of Upson, Grumman, and Rhodes Halls. Sibley Hall is now a part of the College of Art, Architecture, and Planning. Hiram Watson Sibley founded the Sibley Music Library in 1904 for the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester. Sibley Music Library is the largest university-affiliated music library in the United States, with three-quarters of a million items in collections. Sibley died in 1888 and was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester.
His grandson Harper Sibley was also a successful businessman. Hiram Sibley is also an ancestor of attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley (also a descendant of Montgomery Blair), who gained notoriety in 2007 for defending Deborah Jeane Palfrey.[1] His home near Rochester, the Hiram Sibley Homestead, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and his Rochester home is included in the East Avenue Historic District.[2]