He did not give to Lehigh University alone. "St. Luke's Hospital, so well known throughout eastern Pennsylvania for its noble and practical charity," says Mr. Davis Brodhead in the _Magazine of American History_, June, 1885, "is also sustained by the endowments of Asa Packer. Indeed, when we consider the scope of his generosity, of which Washington and Lee University of Virginia, Muhlenburg College at Allentown, Penn., Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, and many churches throughout his native State, of different denominations, can bear witness, we can the better appreciate how truly catholic were his gifts. His benefactions did not pause upon State lines, nor recognize sectional divisions. "In speaking of his generosity, Senator T. F. Bayard once said, 'The confines of a continent were too narrow for his sense of human brotherhood, which recognized its ties everywhere upon this footstool of the Almighty, and decreed that all were to be united to share in the fruits of his life-long labor.'" Asa Packer was born in Groton, Conn., Dec. 29, 1805. As his father had been unsuccessful in business he could not educate his boy, who found employment in a tannery in North Stonington. His employer soon died, and the youth was obliged to go to work on a farm. He was ambitious, and determined to seek his fortune farther west; so with real courage walked from Connecticut to Susquehanna County, Penn., and in the new county took up the trade of carpenter and joiner. For ten years he worked hard at his trade. He purchased a few acres in the native forest, cleared off the trees, and built a log house, to which he took his bride. When children were born into the home she made all the clothing, and in every way helped the poor, industrious carpenter to make a living. In 1833, when he was twenty-eight years old, Mr. Packer moved his family to Mauch Chunk in the Lehigh Valley, hoping that he could earn a little more money by his trade. When he had leisure, his busy mind was thinking how the vast supplies of coal and iron in the Lehigh Valley could be transported East. In the fall of 1833 the carpenter chartered a canal boat, and doing most of the manual labor himself, he started with a load of coal to Philadelphia through the Lehigh Canal. Making a little money out of this venture, he secured another boat, and in 1835 took his brother into partnership, and they together commenced dealing in general merchandise. This firm was the first to carry anthracite coal through to New York, it having been carried previously to Philadelphia, and from there re-shipped to New York.