Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lampson, Curtis Miranda
LAMPSON, Sir CURTIS MIRANDA (1806–1885), advocate of the Atlantic cable, fourth son of William Lampson of Newhaven, Vermont, by Rachel, daughter of George Powell of Louisborough, Massachusetts, was born in Vermont on 21 Sept. 1806. He came to England in 1830, and set up in business as a merchant, and was afterwards senior partner in the firm of C.M. Lampson & Co. at 9 Queen Street Place, Upper Thames Street, London. On 14 May 1849 he was naturalised and became a British subject On the formation of the company for laying the Atlantic telegraph in 1856 he was appointed one of the directors, and soon after vice-chairman. For ten years he devoted much time to its organisation. The great aid he rendered was acknowledged in a letter from Lord Derby to Sir Stafford Northcote who presided at a banquet given at Liverpool on 1 Oct. 1866, in honour of those who had been active in laying the cable, and on 16 Nov. Lampson was created a baronet of the United Kingdom. He was deputy-governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and one of the trustees of the fund that was given by his friend George Peabody for the benefit of the poor of London.
He died at 80 Eaton Square, London, on 12 March 1885; the value of his personality in England was sworn at 401,000l. He married on 30 Nov. 1827, in New York, Jane Walter, youngest daughter of Gibbs Sibley of Sutton, Massachusetts. His only daughter, Hannah Jane, married, in 1874, Frederick Locker, poet and Shakespearean collector, who assumed the additional name of Lampson. His son, George Curtis, born in London on 13 June 1833, succeeded to the baronetcy.
[Illustrated London News, 1865, xlix. 545, 556 with portrait. Appleton's American Biog. 1857.iii. 602; Foster's Baronetage, 1885. p. 375; Times, 13 March 1865, p. 10.]