SCRANTON, George Whitefield, manufacturer, born in Madison, Connecticut, 11 May, 1811; died in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 24 March, 1861. He settled in Oxford, New Jersey, in 1828, where he was a teamster and subsequently a clerk, engaged in the manufacture of iron in 1839, and the next year, with his brother Joseph, built furnaces for smelting ore with anthracite coal in the village of Slocum, Pennsylvania, which was subsequently named Scranton in honor of the brothers. For many years he was president of the Lackawanna and Western, and the Cayuga and Susquehanna railroads, and in 1858-'61 he was a member of congress, having been elected as a Protectionist Republican.--His brother, Joseph Hand, capitalist, born in Madison, Connecticut, 27 June, 1813; died in Baden Baden, Germany, 6 June, 1872, began life as a clerk in New Haven, subsequently entered business in Augusta, Georgia, and in 1847 settled in the coal region of the Lackawanna valley. Pa. With the aid of other members of his family he developed the vast coal and iron interests of that section, and lived to see Scranton, which was a hamlet of two or three houses, become a city with a population of 50,000. He was successively for twenty years the manager, superintendent, and president of the Lackawanna iron and coal company, and president of several railways and manufacturing and banking institutions.