Asa Packer (December 29 1805 - 1879) was an American businessman who pioneered railroad construction, was active in Pennsylvania politics, and founded Lehigh University.
He was born in Mystic, Connecticut; in 1822 he became a carpenter's apprentice at Brooklyn , Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. He worked as a carpenter in New York City for a time and then in Springville, Pennsylvania , but in 1833 settled at Mauch Chunk, in the Lehigh Valley, where he became the owner of a canal boat (carrying coal to Philadelphia), and then established the firm of A. & R. W. Packer, which built canal-boats and locks for the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company , probably the first through shippers to New York.
He urged upon the Coal & Navigation Company the advantage of a steam railway as a coal carrier, but the project was not then considered feasible. In 1851 the majority of the stock of the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill & Susquehanna Railroad Company (incorporated in 1846), which became the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company in January 1853, came into his control, and between November 1852 and September 1855 a railway line was built for the Company, largely by Packer's personal credit, from Mauch Chunk to Easton. He built railways connecting the main line with coal-mines in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties; and he planned and built the extension (completed in 1868) of the line into the Susquehanna Valley and thence into New York state to connect at Waverly, New York with the Erie railway.
Packer also took an active part in politics. In 1841 and 1842 he was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives ; in 1843-1848 was county judge of Carbon County; in 1853-1857 was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives; and in 1869 was the Democratic candidate for the governorship of Pennsylvania.
In 1865 he gave $500,000 and 60 acres (243,000 m²), later increased to 115 acres (465,000 m²) in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a technical school for the professions represented in the development of the Lehigh Valley; Lehigh University was chartered in 1866, and its main building, Packer Hall, was completed in 1869.