American merchant and philanthropist, born in Philadelphia, PA, on the 9th of November 1805. He received a collegiate education, engaged in mercantile pursuits, and was, at the time of his death (April 10, 1886), senior member of a West India trading firm which had been established since 1834. During much of his life he gave largely of his time and means to public concerns, having been one of the founders of and heaviest contributor to the Episcopal Hospital. During the Civil War he was president of the executive committee of the Sanitary Fair, which disbursed over one million dollars for army needs; was president of the board of finance of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the success of which is said to have been largely due to his efforts, in recognition whereof the city presented him with fifty thousand dollars and a gold medal. With the money thus received he endowed the Welsh chair of English literature in the University of Pennsylvania. He was appointed minister to England in 1878, but resigned within two years.—His son, Herbert, born in Philadelphia on the 4th of December 1851; graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1871; spent two years in Europe, devoting part of his time to the study of art in Paris. Upon his return to America he turned his attention to the championing of the rights of the Indians, and strove for a higher and more humane policy in their behalf. He founded the Indian Rights Association, which has exposed and defeated several fraudulent schemes; advocated the holding of land in severalty, which was finally introduced by the passage of the Dawes Bill, and favored the education of Indian children and the extending of law to the reservations. He died in 1941. He wrote Four Weeks among Sioux Tribes of Dakota and Nebraska in 18S2, and Report of a Visit to the Navajo, Pueblo and Hualapais Indians of New Mexico and Arizona in 1884.
