Summarized from Dictionary of American Biography, Volume IX, Sewell-Trowbridge, edited by Dumas Malone, 1936.

Anson Stager was born on April 20, 1865 in Ontario County, NY and was raised by his father in Rochester, NY. He completed his schooling at age 16 and worked for Henry O'Reilly as a printer's devil on the Rochester Daily Advertiser. By the time Stager was 20, he was learning telegraphy on his own whiel O'Reilly worked with Samuel Morse to build the first telegraph line to Pittsburgh. Stager was employed as a telegraph operator upon the opening of a telegraph office in Lancaster, PA in 1846 and was the manager of the Pittsburgh office by 1848.