Austin Corbin

Austin Corbin (July 11, 1827 – June 4, 1896) was a 19th-century American banking and railroad entrepreneur. He consolidated the rail lines on Long Island, bringing them under the profitable umbrella of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR).

He was the owner of Manhattan Beach, a resort in Brooklyn, New York City, from which he barred Jews. He was also the owner of the Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas, from 1886 to his death in 1896, where he used convict laborers and later brought Italian immigrants to work on the land.

Early life and education Corbin was born on July 11, 1827, in Newport, New Hampshire, to Capt. Austin and Mary (Chase) Corbin, one of three siblings to survive infancy, along with Lois Corbin Dunton (23 December 1819 – 7 July 1893), and Daniel Chase Corbin (1 October 1832 – 29 June 1918). His brother, Daniel, was also a businessman, involved in banking and railroads, who contributed to the early growth of Spokane, Washington.

Career Corbin practiced law in his hometown until 1851, when he moved to Davenport, Iowa.

In 1854, he became a partner of the Macklot & Corbin banking firm, the only bank in Davenport to not suspend payments in the 1857 financial panic. This success set him up to start the first national bank, when his cousin, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, established the national banking system early in the Civil War. By 1865, when Corbin moved to New York City, he was considered wealthy. However, the plan never materialized, as the planned port at Fort Pond Bay in Montauk could not be dredged to handle the seagoing vessels.

Corbin's tactic included the infamous strong-arming (along with his cohorts) of the Montaukett tribe out of nearly they owned around Montauk. The tribe is still seeking compensation for this tactic. Relics from the tribe are still visible at Camp Wikoff which the LIRR sold the government and where Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were quarantined after returning from the Spanish–American War.

Corbin acquired the Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas, from John C. Calhoun II, the grandson of John C. Calhoun and brother of Patrick Calhoun, in 1886. In 1894, he entered into an agreement with the state of Arkansas whereby he was given 250 convict laborers to pick cotton for him on the plantation. The profits were shared between Corbin and the state.

Personal life He resided in a mansion in Newport, New Hampshire. He also owned a summer estate in North Babylon, New York along the shores of what is known today as Deer Lake in the Parkdale Estates neighborhood. His daughter married René Chéronnet-Champollion, a French artist and grandson of Jean-François Champollion. The preserve was stocked with boar, bighorn sheep, antelope, elk, Chinese pheasant, and other imported animals, but, most importantly, with some 150 bison. This enabled Corbin's park naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes to play a vital part in the saving of the American bison from extinction, a contribution highlighted in the 2023 Ken Burns PBS documentary The American Buffalo.

Death and legacy Corbin died in a carriage accident near his country home in New Hampshire in 1896 at age 68. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Austin Street in Forest Hills was named after Corbin.