Still in the telegraph business, Ezra Cornell struggled financially and his wife, Mary Ann, pressured him to leave the business and come home. He started the year nearly destitute, as reflected by this Jan. 16, 1853, letter to colleague J.J. Speed:

"O'Reilly sent round to me yesterday to borrow $10, which I did not have ..."

To make matters even worse, he ended the year with tooth troubles. On Dec. 6, 1853, he wrote to his wife: "I have had some tooth ache this P.M. in an old snag that was left some ten years ago, when I went to Ithaca at midnight with Dennis McCoy the Irishman to hold my head. You may recollect the history of that terable night. Dr Miles (I think) pulled on it 3 times with his entire strength, and as offin the irons broke loos. The fourth pull broke the tooth taking the tooth with one prong out, and a piece of the jaw with it. [sic]"

By late winter, his wife wrote on March 19, 1854:

"... I most sincerely hope that you will finally succeed in geting together enough of this worlds goods so that you can finally make up yuir mind to settle down on some nice spot and enjoy the comforts of 'home sweet home' with your family. Oh, how happy I should be if it could be so, my dear little do you know the many lonely hours I have passed in your twelve years of absence from home, the cares and anxieties of home all resting on me and the still more anxious care for one I loved dearer than life itself ...[sic]"

Adapted by Susan S. Lang from the Web site, "Invention and Enterprise: Ezra Cornell, a Nineteenth-Century Life."