[5][6] Cornell initially pursued a career in carpentry and traveled extensively throughout New York State in the profession.

On Eddy's recommendation, Jeremiah S. Beebe then hired Cornell to repair and overhaul his plaster and flour mills on Fall Creek.

The young and growing family needed more income than he could earn as manager of Beebe's mills, so Cornell purchased rights in a patent for a new type of plow and began decades of traveling away from Ithaca.

After joining with Morse, Cornell supervised the development of many telegraph lines, including a portion of the New York, Albany & Buffalo line in 1846 and the Erie and Michigan Telegraph Company, which connected Buffalo to Milwaukee along with his partners John James Speed and Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith.

Cornell gave Wood a job constructing new lines and made Phoebe his telegraph operator, the first woman operator in the U.S.[10] Cornell earned a substantial fortune when the Erie and Michigan line was consolidated with Hiram Sibley and his New York and Mississippi Company formed the Western Union company.

[14] To honor the 150th anniversary of his gift, a mural of Ezra Cornell was hung on the exterior wall of the current Tompkins County Public Library in October, 2016.

[16] A lifelong enthusiast of science and agriculture, he saw great opportunity in the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Acts to found a university that would teach practical subjects on an equal basis with the classics favored by more traditional institutions.

Under the land-grant program, the federal government issued the colleges scrip, documents granting the right to select a parcel of land.

[18] He also redeemed some scrip for promising land or for rights in timber, including pine forest in Wisconsin.

[22] He began construction of a palatial Ithaca mansion, Llenroc, whose name was Cornell spelled in reverse, to replace his farmhouse, but died before it was completed.

This was due partly to his wide traveling and also to the many business associates he maintained during his years as an entrepreneur and later as a politician and university founder.

[citation needed] Ezra Cornell was a birthright Quaker, but was later disowned by the Society of Friends for marrying outside the faith to a "world's woman", Mary Ann Wood, a Methodist, on March 19, 1831.