John F. Winslow

Who was John F. Winslow?

John Flack Winslow was an American businessman and iron manufacturer who was the fifth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He was born on November 10, 1810 in Bennington, Vermont, and was a direct descendant of Kenelm Winslow, brother of Edward Winslow, a Mayflower colonist and a governor of Plymouth Colony. John Winslow worked as a clerk in a commission house until he was 21. In 1831, he joined the New Jersey Iron Company as a manager in the Boston office. In 1933, he started his own business, making pig iron in Bergen and Sussex counties in New Jersey. In 1837, he and Erastus Corning started a partnership to produce iron. Their partnership lasted for about thirty years. They owned the Rensselaer Iron Works and the Albany Iron Works, which were the largest producers of iron in the United States. When Corning gained control of the Lulworth Iron company in Mount Savage, Maryland, he made Winslow the President. In 1863, they sent Alexander Lyman Holley to learn more about the Bessemer process and they also obtained the US rights to the Bessemer patents. They started the production of Bessemer steel in 1865.

Starting in 1861, Winslow and his business partner John Griswold worked with John Ericsson to build the USS Monitor. After the naval board had not approved Ericsson's proposal for the ironclad warship, Griswold and Winslow met with President Lincoln personally to advocate for its construction. Lincoln then arranged a meeting with them in the office of the Secretary of the Navy. During subsequent meetings, the Navy resisted the project but finally approved but without funding on October 4, 1861. Largely out of frustration, Winslow arranged to finance the project himself, at a cost of $275,000.