Henry Williams Sage (January 31, 1814 – September 18, 1897) was a wealthy New York State businessman, philanthropist, and early benefactor and trustee of Cornell University.

[3] After briefly studying medicine at Ithaca under Austin Church, he began work for his uncles' forwarding firm, with a line of barges on the Erie Canal, which he took over by 1837.

[2][5] In 1854, he purchased a tract of land at Bell Ewart on Lake Simcoe, 51 miles north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and was soon processing timber on a large scale.

From that point, the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Union Railroad carried the lumber to its wharves in Toronto, offering Sage a reduced rate for a specified number of carloads per month.

With previous experience on the New York State Assembly and legislation involving improvements to the Erie Canal, he attracted the interest of other Lake Simcoe lumbermen to form the Rama Timber Transport Company in 1868.

The canal to divert the logs into Lake Couchiching opened in 1869, later that year Sage sold the Bell Ewart mill and associated timber berths to Messrs. Silliman and Beecher.

"[6] Within a year, White had admitted Cornell's first female student, but since the university had only all-male dormitories, she was forced to rent a room in downtown Ithaca.

Jennie McGraw, who had inherited his partner John's fortune in 1877, and died of tuberculosis shortly after marrying University Librarian Daniel Willard Fiske.

[12] Sage is one of only fifteen people whose remains are interred in the chapel named for him, a list which includes founders Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White.

[13] His grandson Dean, named after the son, became president of Presbyterian Hospital in 1922, which affiliated with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1924.