(17 April 1827-7 Oct. 1889), contractor and author. (D.C. Linsley, Daniel C. Linsley) Born in Middlebury, Vermont. Parents: Charles Linsley and his wife Martha. Daniel C. Linsley was educated in the public schools of Middlebury and at Middlebury College, and became a contractor on railways and other works. In 1870 he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and he retired from the mayorship in 1871. He was the author of a book on Morgan Horses (1857 and later editions) and founded and published the Vermont Stock Journal, of Middlebury, Vt. Linsley died in New York City, where he had been living during the last two years of his life. “At the time of his death he was engaged on the plans for a gigantic elevated railroad in that city, and had he lived to complete his work it would no doubt have been as great a success as have been his other works.” (obituary) He was married in 1858 to Martha Hatch, daughter of another mayor of Burlington. (two children) Daniel C. Linsley was buried in Burlington, Vt.

     Daniel C. Linsley was the general contractor who built the Canada Atlantic Railway through Eastern Ontario from Ottawa to Coteau, and for some distance farther south. The Canada Atlantic Railway was closely associated with GC through the original founders of the project and through the early directors of the company. The railway went through Alexandria, and the new town of Maxville grew up about one of the Canada Atlantic stations. In the late winter of 1881, at a meeting of the directors of the Canada Atlantic Railway held at Lancaster, in GC, Linsley signed the contract to complete the line. “The contractor [Linsley] deposited $30,000 in cash besides a personal guarantee, as security for the due fulfilment of the contract.” (Gleaner 3 March 1881, quoted Cornwall Freeholder 4 March 1881) It was at this meeting that D.A. Macdonald was replaced as president of the company by another Glengarrian, Edward McGillivray.

     The Alexandria columnist in the Glengarry Times (Lancaster) of 28 May 1881 wrote, “Mr. Linsley was in town this week. He has purchased steel rails in England,…” A few months later the same column (13 Aug. 1881) included a vaguely satirical passage on how Linsley and the D. A. Macdonald already mentioned chose D.A.’s property for the Alexandria station buildings. And again, the same column at the end of the year (24 Dec. 1881) had praise for the contractors Fitzgerald and Powell, who had been working under Linsley and had just left Alexandria. From this source, it appears that these two men, newcomers to the community presumably, had been socially very much valued in Alexandria.

     A warmly complimentary article on the “Canada Atlantic Railway” in the Cornwall Reporter of 15 Oct. 1881, stated that “The contractor, Mr. D. C. Linsley, is to be congratulated upon the success which has crowned his efforts, and the good judgment with which he has chosen his sub-contractors.” The line from Ottawa to Coteau was completed by Sept. 1882. About the beginning of 1884, John R. Booth, the financier and promoter of the railway, asked Linsley to cease work on the southern extension of the line because of the current difficulties in the money market, and Linsley complied with the request. Linsley’s association with the railway continued, however. And in 1887, at a meeting of the Canada Atlantic Railway directors in Booth’s office, Ottawa, Linsley was elected president of the company, which was reported to be prospering. (Glengarrian 3 June 1887) Linsley Street in Alexandria is named after him.

The Burlington Free Press and Times [Burlington, Vt.], 9 Oct. 1889 * Allan Bell, A Way to the West (1991) [a history of the Canada Atlantic Railway] * MacGillivray & Ross 147-153 * information supplied July 1977 by Mr Robert L. Hagerman, assistant editor, Vermont State Papers * Edgar J. Wiley, compiler, Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Middlebury College…1800-1915 (1917) 166 * W.S. Rann, ed., History of Chittenden County Vermont (1886) 531 * Robert L. Hagerman, Mansfield: the Story of Vermont’s Loftiest Mountain (2nd ed., 1975) 78