Nathan Appleton
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| Nathan Appleton | |
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| In office March 4, 1831 – March 3, 1833 June 9, 1842 – September 28, 1842 |
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| Preceded by | Benjamin Gorham (1831) Robert C. Winthrop (1842) |
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| Succeeded by | Benjamin Gorham (1833) Robert C. Winthrop (1842) |
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| Born | October 1, 1779 New Ipswich, New Hampshire |
| Died | July 14, 1861 (aged 81) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Political party | National Republican and Whig |
Nathan Appleton (October 1, 1779 – July 14, 1861) was an American merchant and politician.
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[edit] Biography
Appleton was born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, the son of Isaac Appleton and his wife Mary Adams. He was educated in the New Ipswich Academy. He then entered Dartmouth College in 1794. However that same year he left college to begin mercantile life in Boston, Massachusetts in the employment of his brother, Samuel Appleton (1766-1853), a successful and benevolent man of business, with whom he was in partnership from 1800 to 1809.
In 1813 he co-operated with Francis Cabot Lowell and others in introducing the power-loom and the manufacture of cotton on a large scale into the United States, a factory being established at Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814, and another in 1822 at Lowell, Massachusetts, of which city he was one of the three founders (in 1821). His Waltham mill employed the first power loom ever used in the United States.
He was a member of the general court of Massachusetts in 1816, 1821, 1822, 1824 and 1827. In 1831-1833 and also 1842 he served in the United States House of Representatives, in which he was prominent as an advocate of protective duties. He was also a member of the Academy of Science and Arts, and of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He published speeches and essays on currency, banking, and the tariff, of which his "Remarks on Currency and Banking" (enlarged ed., 1858) is the most celebrated, as well as his memoirs on the power loom and Lowell.
He married twice and had eight children. His first marriage was to Maria Theresa Gold, whom he married on 13 April 1806. They had the following children:
- Thomas Gold Appleton (1812-1884)
- Mary "Molly" Appleton (1813-?), married Robert James Mackintosh.
- Charles Sedgwick Appleton (1815 -1835)
- Frances "Fanny" Elizabeth Appleton (1817-1861), married the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- George William Appleton (1826-1827), died in infancy.
His first wife died in 1833 and he remarried on 8 January 1839 to Harriot Coffin Sumner (1802-1867), the daughter of Jesse Sumner, a Boston merchant, and Harriot Coffin of Portland, Maine. They had the following children:
- William Sumner Appleton (1840-1903)
- Harriet Sumner Appleton (1841-1923), married Greely Stevenson Curtis
- Nathan Appleton (1843-1906).
He was also the cousin of William Appleton. Nathan died in Boston.
[edit] References
- Memoir of Nathan Appleton, by Robert C. Winthrop (Boston, 1861)
- Susan Hale's Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton (New York, 1885).
- "Nathan Appleton", Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Nathan Appleton Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography
- Nathan Appleton at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
| Preceded by Benjamin Gorham |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 1st congressional district March 4, 1831 – March 3, 1833 |
Succeeded by Benjamin Gorham |
| Preceded by Robert C. Winthrop |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 1st congressional district June 9, 1842 – September 28, 1842 |
Succeeded by Samuel A. Eliot |
