Isaac Hinckley (1815-1888) was a president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad and the founder of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania.
Hinckley was born on Oct. 28, 1815, in Hingham, Massachusetts, a son of Isaac Hinckley (1793-1818), who had gone to sea at a young age and rose to command three ships: the brig Reaper (1809–10), which he sailed on a trading voyage from Boston to Aden and Calcutta; the ship Tartar (1812–13), on another voyage to Calcutta; and finally the ship Canton (1815–18) for three voyages from Boston to Guangdong, China.
The shipmaster left a widow in Hingham and six children, aged 2 to 11, including three-year-old Isaac.
[2] In 1880 and 1881, Hinckley helped the PRR take control of the PW&B,[2] a move that ultimately forced the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to build a costly new southwest approach to Philadelphia.
On Dec. 12, 1887, Hinckley chartered Ridley Park, a borough to the southwest of Philadelphia, in an effort to create an analog to the Philadelphia Main Line string of suburbs founded and served, lucratively, by the Pennsylvania Railroad.