Percival Farquhar

Percival Farquhar (York, Pennsylvania, 1864 — New York City, August 4, 1953) was an American businessman with extensive interests in Latin America and Russia.

Born to a wealthy Pennsylvanian Quaker family, Farquhar studied engineering at Yale University.

He was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1891, 1892 (both New York Co., 3rd D.) and 1893 (New York Co., 11th D.).

He was vice-president of the Atlantic Coast Electric Railway and the Staten Island Railway, which controlled rail services in New York. He was also partner and director of the "Compañía de Electricidad de Cuba" and partner and vice-president of the Guatemala Railway.

He developed businesses in Cuba and Central America. He owned railways and mines in Russia and dealt personally with Lenin.

Farquhar's dream was to control all the railways of Latin America, in a version of Manifest Destiny.

Visionary, controversial, and audacious, Farquhar became the greatest private investor in Brazil between 1905 and 1918. According to the writer and former minister Ronaldo Costa Couto, his empire was comparable to those of Count Francisco Matarazzo and Irineu Evangelista de Souza, The Viscount of Mauá.

The writing on Farquhar is full of contradictions, making it very difficult to sort through the legend, hagiography, and libel found in his biographies

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