Ionia and Lansing Railroad Ionia and Lansing Railroad The Ionia and Lansing Rail Road is a defunct railroad which operated in the state of Michigan in the 1860s and 1870s. The company incorporated on November 13, 1865; the investors hailed primarily from Lansing, Ionia and Portland. The original charter called for a from Ionia to Lansing; on January 13, 1869 this was amended with a much grander vision: a line from Lansing to the mouth of the Pentwater River at Pentwater, on the shores of Lake Michigan. In late 1869 the I&L opened a line between Lansing and Ionia; the first trains ran in
Robert Lansing Lansing resumed practicing law. He died in New York City on October 30, 1928, and was buried at Brookside Cemetery in Watertown, New York. In 1890, Lansing married Eleanor Foster, the daughter of Secretary of State John W. Foster. Eleanor's older sister Edith was the mother of John Foster Dulles, who also became Secretary of State, Allen Welsh Dulles who served as Director of Central Intelligence, and Eleanor Lansing Dulles, an economist and high level policy analyst and advisor for the State Department. New York State Senator Robert Lansing (1799–1878) was his grandfather; Chancellor John Lansing Jr. and State Treasurer