across Lake Champlain, uniting the states of New York and Vermont Mortimer Yale Ferris was the son of Dr. Edward Mortimer Ferris and Marion Eliza Yale, daughter of merchant Cyrus Yale, son of Rev.
Cyrus Yale, members of the
Yale family. His brothers were Senator T. Harvey,
Lt. Commander Raymond West and investment banker Cyrus Yale. Cyrus became board director and vice-president of
Stone & Webster, an American engineering conglomerate in Boston, serving under president
Edwin S. Webster. He also graduated from
MIT and became a member of the Boston
Yacht Club. Mortimer Yale Ferris's nephew was Lt. Commander Edward Mortimer of
HMS Byard, a graduate from
Royal Naval College in London, and a notable yachtsman and businessman in New York. He was the grandnephew of
Horace T. Pitkin and Mary Yale Pitkin, wife of architect
Charles Eliot, son of
Charles William Eliot, President of
Harvard University and member of the
Eliot family. Mortimer was also a descendant of Capt. Thomas Yale, who was brought by his mother Anne, and stepfather Gov.
Theophilus Eaton, from England in 1637. His father graduated from
Harvard in medicine, working between New York,
Vienna and
Paris, managing the family businesses inherited from his father, a prosperous East Indian merchant. He attended the public schools, and graduated
B.Sc. in civil engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1903. His first employment was as an engineer in the International Mining and Milling Company. He was made a member of the board of trustees of Ticonderoga's Moses Ludington Hospital for 30 years, and for the last 20, he was its chairman. On February 14, 1905, he married Elizabeth Leavitt. They settled in
Ticonderoga, New York, and had two daughters. ==Career==