The story
The American Line began as part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, although the railroad got out of the shipping business soon afterward. Its first president was Herman Joseph Lombaert (1816–1885), a PRR vice-president who resigned from the railroad when the shipping company became independent.
The company's most prominent president was Clement Griscom, who led the company from 1888 to 1902 and worked as a company executive for its entire existence. The company became much larger when it bought out the Inman Line in 1886.
In 1902, Griscom decided to merge his company with several other lines to become the International Navigation Co., soon renamed the International Mercantile Marine Company. In the IMM, the American Line generally handled traffic between the United States ports of Philadelphia and New York City and the British ports of Liverpool and Southampton. Sister company Red Star Line handled traffic between America and the European continent, primarily through Antwerp, Belgium.
When the IMM trust failed in 1932, the American pieces of the combine were once again solely under the American flag, this time in the guise of United States Lines.
From Wikipedia’s article on American Line, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4