Samuel Dickinson Martin
Samuel Dickinson Martin (1803-1877)
1847 Partnership dissolved. '...the Partnership formerly subsisting between the undersigned, William Johnson, Henry Hornor Johnson, Samuel Dickinson Martin, and James Fox, carrying on business, at No. 24, Great George-street, Westminster, as Engineering Surveyors and Draughtsmen, under the title of Johnsons, Martin, and Fox, or Martin, Johnsons, and Fox, was dissolved, by mutual consent...'[1]
1878 Obituary [2]
11~. SAMUEL DICKINSON MARTIN was born in Leeds on the 12th of June, 1803, and served his articles with the late Mr. George Leather, M. Inst. C.E., of that town.
In 1824 Mr. Martin commenced business on his own account in Leeds, where he practised successfully as an engineer and surveyor for upwards of half a century. When the supremacy of canal navigation as a means of transit was challenged by Stephenson’s locomotive, and the commercial world had at length become interested in the development of the railway system, Mr. Martin was extensively employed in the surveys of projected’ railways, among the most important of which were the Manchester and Leeds, the North Midland, the London and York, the Leeds and Thirsk, the Leeds and Bradford, the Northumberland atmospheric, the South-Eastern lines through North and Mid Kent, and numerous other schemes which necessitated his appearance before Parliamentary Committees, session after session, for a great number of years.
During the memorable railway mania, from 1844 to 1850, Mr. Martin occupied offices at 24, Great George Street and at Park Street, Westminster, as well as those in Leeds. Some years afterwards, when railway enterprise became quieter, his attention was chiefly given to arbitration business ; his clear judgment and intimate acquaintance with the Lands Clauses and Railway Clauses Acts enabling him to take a leading part as an arbitrator in compensation cases-a position which he retained up to the time of his death. In the discharge of his professional duties, Mr. Martin was distinguished as well by his urbanity as by the exercise of a keen and vigorous intellect; while in social life he will be remembered as the kindly, generous friend, and the genial host.
Mr. Martin was the founder, and, for some time, President of the Yorkshire and North of England Land Agents’ and Surveyors’ Association ; and was one of the earliest members of the Institution of Surveyors. He was elected an Associate of the Institution on the 6th of March, 1849.
He died at Harrogate on the 26th of September, 1877.